I Love Formatting My Comp

Just one fray bit...

2011-06-29T01:32:00.000-04:00

Woke up midnight by a startling sound
Seems to me to be a piece of ground
Windows shattered I find out why
A piece of moon fallen from your sky
Reaching out still dull and grey
Reminds me that life's astray

Looking up i view the empty space
With the sparkling dots and the glazed haze
Wishing I aimed higher in this crazy maze
Shooting for stars not believing it
And now, all that's left is this broken bit.

Turn it around to see it's mean dark side
A spot of glass with no where to hide
They say stars align to guide us somewhere
A bunch of dust,I doubt it cares

I look up and gaze the empty space
The sparkling dots and the glazed haze
Wish I fared better in this crazy maze
Forgetting stars and fighting my way
But all that's left is this savage flay

Woke up tonight by this startling noise
Seems to me to there's still a choice..

Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.

2010-10-10T23:33:00.002-04:00

Dating Etiquette For Women

In this day and age of women trying to be equal and bringing their wallets(or purses/handbags to be politically correct) on dates pretending to open it wanting to pay, when the check(or cheque which ever you prefer) arrives, only to hate the guy when he accepts the offer of going dutch, people (read as women) are forgetting the basic etiquette of dating and not to forget table manners. I hope to enlighten you all on the various points you have forgotten, or the media has made it seem a taboo.

The first and most important thing one needs to understand is that, if a guy pays for drinks and you sleep with him, it’s technically not prostitution.

Now that we have that covered, lets move on.

Lets all agree to one thing, being chivalrous is the name of the game, you pull up the chair, you open the door, you be nice to the waiter and more often than not you’ll be back at the same place celebrating your 1st anniversary. So just because it is good on a mans part to do all of these things, women shouldn’t just expect it. I remember having dinner with my other half ( I refrain from using the “better” word ), I was seated comfortably with the menu in my hands and she still standing over me, looking sternly at the chair opposite me. As if it would magically move back to allow her sit. To everyone’s surprise, it did. Now I am sure you wouldn’t believe in magical powers, but if you have long legs, you could pull a magic trick or two.

Since everyone has such low attention spans nowadays, instead of giving you para after para of manners and general behavioral guidelines, I will break this down into simple bullet points.

- Thank the guy for picking you up. Yes, he wants to sleep with you. Yes, he’ll do anything. But still, he’s not your driver.

- Do not constantly look at your watch. We all lead busy lives, but unless your husband is supposed to be home shortly, you have no excuse to look at your watch.

- Do not pick calls. Leave that cell in silent mode in your bag. The cell phone is for your convenience and not for the person trying to reach you. If its an emergency, they’ll call 911 (or 100 or similar other numbers depending on which country you are in)

- Do not excuse yourself to the ladies room unless you really have to go. It’s annoying and men just assume you are vomiting in there.

- Do not talk about your ex’s. Yes, you might be popular but no one needs to know which famous person you banged (in loss for a better word) previously. On a similar note, no one wants to hear you go on and on about your family, especially on the first few dates.

- Do not complain about food. Especially if he chose the place. You have a right to give constructive feedback, but do not insult his judgment.

- If the guy asked you out, let him pay. Guys love it. If you are feeling the pressure about not being able to pee standing up, then invite him out for the next time and make it clear that you are paying for this one.

- I am not sure how this one got forgotten, but yes, do not talk with your mouth full. Even if it’s your 16th date.

- Do NOT EAT MY FOOD! I know it sounds a bit paranoid, but if i am paying $16 for a meal and those fancy restaurants give exactly 5 spoonfuls, I will hate you (and your mother too) if you eat from my plate.

- Thank the guy for asking you out, and for paying the bill

- If you had a good time, mention it. And if you did not, tell that too. Everyone hates a maybe.

- Lets face it, men have boring jobs. You will be really lucky if you are dating a painter or a musician. And even if you are, he probably will be broke. More often than not, you’d be stuck with some software guy or some number guy. Neither job is interesting. And if you cant stop yourself from yawing for at least 10 minutes, do not ask the guy about his job.

- Always go to a second location, this one works very well personally. If you are having dinner or just drinks, make it a point to go to a different location, it changes the mood and atmosphere. You can go for a movie, coffee or your place.

- Sleep with him. He paid for your meal, it’s the least you can do.

And don't forget bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date.

It’s simple, if it jiggles, it’s fat!

2010-08-11T00:09:00.001-04:00

This post is dedicated to all people overweight and above the national average weight.

I was reading a report recently on your average news websites. I came across this article suggesting that 85% of the people in US are above the average weight limit. And I went like, eh??

One thing I really do not understand is how an entire nation can be above the average limit. Wouldn’t the fat people, or the gravitationally challenged if you prefer to be politically correct, bring up the average and automatically make them in tune with the nations average?

If you are, like most other readers who actually paid money for this book, stupid and mathematically dysfunctional, please use your favorite search engine to look up on how averages work. If you still haven’t figured it out, send me an Email and I'd be happy to sign you up for all the affiliate deals I can cook up.

I live in a nation obsessed with weight. Weight and sex that is. Its so obsessed that even the spam is directly related. Reduce weight, Increase size and thats it. I get mails to make my waist line go thinner and some other parts thicker. It’s only a matter of time till someone comes up with a way to redirect my stomach fat at appropriate places..

I have a great diet. You’re allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people. Always worked wonders at my family reunions. So in this age when 342432 is just a code for a sexy body and not the UN’s code for global food deficit.

Anyway, just because today is National Fat People Day. (umm, every day is. in a strange way) I am dedicating this entire article to FAT people. The really huge kinds. Following are 10 of the many reasons why being Fat rocks. Hope this list justifies the tasty chicken curry you have been having for the past one hour.

10. Fat people are hard to kidnap. I’ve never seen someone go on the news after their release saying, ‘I was held captive for 63 days, i lost 125 Pounds, never felt better, but the most important thing is, I respect my body now and with self discipline I can continue what I did for those 63 great days.

9. Fat folks barely get sexually assaulted. Don't believe me? Go read your newspapers.

8. Fat people save more money, think of all the expensive gym memberships and the controlled, vitamin balanced diet of their thin counterparts.

7. Fat people always get the bigger piece of the pie or cake at parties and other social gatherings. No questions asked.

6. You can walk around in a hurricane.

5. Your jokes are funnier, I mean comeon, no one expects anything good from you, so when you deliver, Bang! Life of the party.

4. If you do get ‘lucky’, then you’d probably be at the bottom, hence requiring you to do much less work.

3. Always warm, those layers of fat act as good insulation. Not to mention the surviving capabilities go exponentially up with every pound of weight you amass.

2. You can get away wearing anything you please. No one looks at a fat woman and goes, would you look at what she’s wearing? Expectations are way low on the fashion side, so a cloth to cover the unmentionalbles would just do fine.

1. Fat people are trustworthy. They have no reason to lie. They know that they probably wont end up with you tonight, so its truth all the way.

So there goes it, hope I have helped you kick that tasteless all fiber diet out of the window. Here’s hoping for the best water spashes in you pool and all the comfy 2 person seats on busses and trains just for you alone.

Happy ‘I-am-fat-So-what?’ Day.

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

2010-02-16T15:10:00.004-05:00

After months of rumors and speculations, the company I work (or pretend to work) for has finally decided the cafe is over crowded and the wait unbearable for any hungry engineer. Thus they formally announced the most logical solution, a 10% reduction in staff.
Few analysts and industry experts (you know, the kinds who wake up in their leopard skin robes with a pipe in their mouth, a coffee in one hand and the Wall St paper in the other ) say the economy and profit margins was a big factor, but all the employees know it, its those bloody lines.

Since this was a gradual process and every relatively smart engineer (an oxymoron some might say) deduced this fact way before the announcement and almost everyone has come in terms with it. Me, well I wake up in my sleep screaming, realizing I haven't slept yet. Stress aside, i feel every one in these situations must accept reality and develop scripts that will auto delete all your work. Since I'm not that negative and for the fact that I haven't done anything for me to delete, I've decided to utilize this time at work to update my blog.

Speculation is at an all time high, will they let go people with lot of experience (hence with higher salary) or those newly joined (and thus a lesser severance package). Will they let go senior management thereby reducing the layers in management, or will they let go the folks who actually do real work. Will they let go people who update their blogs during company time (A great reason to write anonymously) or those who short sell the company stocks based on insider information. In all this mess I've figured out the only way to laugh about it, figuring out innovative ways a company can layoff its employees. I know I should have written this earlier so companies, at the start of this recession,could have used my methodologies to make the experience a memorable one for everyone. Well this recession is far from over, so here goes the 'Top 10 ways to layoff an employee"

10 - Step forward : The manager makes everyone stand in a straight line. Bouncers from a local pub are behind each employee holding them tight. Once the manager says start, the employees, who in 1 minute, can struggle and take one step forward have their jobs, the remaining are laid off. This way the determined and strong ones are retained and employees who are weak get laid off and at least get a really long hug in the process. If the required number of employees aren't stuck in the bouncers arms, then this process is repeated after a shot of vodka.

9 - Bachelor Style Rose ceremony : This one's simple and dramatic, managers are given a bunch of roses, a few less than the total number of team members. At the end of the ceremony those left out without a rose are laid off.

8 - Relocation : Shift your company to a totally new, unknown location. Leave a hidden treasure sorta map with all employees with clues at various other locations. Those who make it to your new location are smart and worthy enough to work, the rest are laid off. If laying off more than 50% of the staff, then a clue to a foreign location is a must.

7 - Junkyard wars : All employees are taken to a junkyard. All of HR is split as captains. Each captain then selects one employee each (thereby determining the HR's selection process). This person , the manager, then selects his team lead and team members (With help from the captain). The divided teams consisting of HR,engineers, quality engineers managers, team lead etc are asked to make a robot using materials available in the junk yard. The employees use their skill to make robots that compete in a 'till destroyed/immobile' robot war competition. Managers can have meetings with other managers to determine rules for fair play and to exchange resources. The matches are set up randomly and are elimination based. When the desired number of teams are eliminated/laid off, the remaining will form a stronger company. (with stronger HR, better management and excellent engineers)

6 - Layoff by explosion: Hire external consultants to inject bugs in your products which cause them to explode randomly. Give each employee a sample product and the source code. Everyone is given one day to debug the code and to flash the new software onto the product. Everyone meets up the next day and switches on their product. Ones that have isolated and corrected the bug are fine. The rest, well they get laid (off) in peace.

5 - Fire alarm : Switch on the fire alarm. After 5 minutes of it being on, make rounds of the building to look for employees who are so dedicated that the fear of being burnt alive is not enough to get them to stop working. Promote these employees, layoff the rest. If you really have to find gems in your company, pour fuel over few walls and create a real fire.

4 - Layoffs by meetings : Schedule random meetings throughout the month using great keywords. Make sure these meetings are optional and cover an employees calender for the whole month. After receiving 'acceptance' notices, layoff those with the highest number of acceptance, there by showing they have no work.

3 - Farmville photos : Give employees one day and ask them to post photos of their farmville farm on the company intranet website. Those with the best and most developed farm obviously have been playing from much before and most likely during office hours. They need to be eliminated. (p.s I hate farmville and people who play it ). If your company has blocked facebook and employees still manage to get the images of their farm during office hours, they need to be fired for using proxy servers and thereby violating company policies and thus saving you their severance package moolah.

2 - As soon as an employee enters the building, he/she is escorted by security to the manger. The manager delivers the news, and the employee is asked to leave immediately.Their login ids and security badges don't work anymore. Their belongings can be collected under the watchful eye of the security or they are shipped to them.
I know what you are thinking, GW, this is how almost all companies are doing it.. Well, that's called being popular dear friend.

And the best one yet, my favorite way for a company to layoff an employee...

1 - Survivor style tribal council - Notify every employee that there will be a 'tribal council' meeting the next day and that someone will go home. Employees on that day will frantically run around trying to make alliances. They will plot blindsides and look for immunity idols(which are hidden by VP's and can prevent the employee holding one from getting laid off). On the day of the tribal council , employees gather around with their laptops. Each one defends themselves and suggests who goes home, the manager will try to get juicy details from the employees as other teams watch on. Everyone votes, and the person receiving the highest number of votes gets laid off. And the manager presses the power button of their laptop for 5 seconds for the hardware shutdown, cause in this day and age, computing power represents life.

[have a fun way to layoff someone? Or your dream layoff scenario, comment away.]

We're obviously going to spend a lot in marketing because we think the product sells itself.

2010-01-25T20:04:00.009-05:00

I wonder what’s more annoying, the endless rumor articles on the Apple tablet or the endless articles on why the rumors are true/false. Obviously Apple's marketing department is amazing, they make you believe that mac owners are superior and that your life's incomplete not owning an iPhone (do notice how many grammatical errors exist in this article but all iPhones have a small i and a capital P ) . Heck they made me buy an iPhone, and you know the worst part, I DO feel that my life would be incomplete without the phone. It's gotten so bad that I call out to my friends 'hey can you pass me the iPhone' rather than 'hey can you pass me the phone'.

I thought I was bad till I reached my friend (let’s call him AMV[Apple's marketing victim]) AMV's voice mailbox. This is what i heard "Hi, you've reached AMV's iPhone. I am currently not available, please leave a message on my iPhone and I'll get back to you as soon as possible". Needless to say, I have one friend less on facebook now.

To make matters worse, now I really want an apple tablet. No one outside of Cupertino knows what the device looks like, or if it even exists. But here I am, willing to even pre-order the device just so i get it the day it’s launched.

Thankfully, the event's on Wednesday, at least the rumors will stop after that. Only (and unfortunately) to be replaced with the 17 articles on why it is not a 'kindle killer' or the 14 articles on how it can change your life or the 198 Microsoft fans screaming ' it’s exactly like the surface, only portable' and that 1 article from the poor guy whose device always blows up and he's unable to change the battery.

I can see the day in the near future where youtube will be flooded with folks uploading videos of their 'unboxing' the tablet in a attempt to capture for eternity, the glorious event of removing tape and cutting open a cardboard box to reveal a device worthy enough for the gods.

Taking the rumored price into consideration and after reading the countless articles on the supposed device, I've deduced the following two features for the device.

- Able to cure severe diarrhea

- Replacement for the failed (so far) health care bill.

Spoiler alert : If you like the many need the excitement of the keynote to see the device for the first time, then you probably do not want to read ahead. The following section showcases a rare picture of the tablet, whose name is [removed due to legal reasons].

And for that 1 person still reading my blog, here's the real Apple Tablet.

Just like I said the yellow tablet to cure diarrhea and the apple to keep the doctors away.

I would rather exercise than read a newspaper.

2009-07-13T22:35:00.001-04:00

News publishers here're some points to be noted..

1. For the last few weeks I've got "breaking news" about Endeavour's launch being delayed. The first day it was interesting, the second 'again?' and the third day it was like, alrighty enough. This is the 18th straight day you have updated my google news page with yet another delay about the launch. Here's the tip, we (your readers) will assume it is delayed indefinitely, till you actually update us telling us otherwise. Deal?

2. Its recession time, people lose jobs and everyone is aware of it. People[me included] are bugged reading yet another "well researched" report on why the stocks are tumbling, and how savings are becoming half.

3. Lets face it, bing is another search engine, yay. 400 reports on your site to tell me how bing is taking share away from google and yahoo just show you are on M$'s payroll. Henceforth, I refuse to google using bing.

4. I am not sure how you classify "Technology", but getting this [Cats Use "Irresistible" Purr-Whine to Get Their Way] news link in my technology RSS feed shows me either you are desperate to get whiny readers who own pussies or you need to fire your software engineer. Hey this way you can save the mandatory layoff money.

5. Less than 100 people are affected by swine flu, deal with it. If you aren't aware, more people have aids, some 100,000 times more. And more have cardiac problems. Keep things in perspective.

6. Before you advise me on stocks, whether to buy/long or sell/put, please disclose your/your company assets and stock holdings. A few pieces I've read have asked me to buy "hot" stocks. Many of which were smaller holdings of your parent company. Caught you.

7. Enough with the iPhone articles already. It's been 3 years already, and you people are still obsessing over "copy and paste". And wait, the compass. I have an iPhone and I haven't had one decent phone cal since. Portable hand held touch screen computer, yes, cell phone, no!

8. Twitter is stupid. And it isn't news (definitely not worthy of my 2 minutes to see and delete the link on my RSS feed) when a new celebrity starts twittering.

9. Stop obsessing over privacy issues, this is the 10th article this week about how my privacy is compromised if I eventually use Chrome OS. If you are that paranoid that google with use your browsing habits to take over the world, then please, google using bing. I rather see relevant ads than those that want to increase my "size".

10. Alright, enough with the teachers with students bit, that was so 2007. Jeez.

It’s not cheating unless you get caught.

2009-03-02T03:05:00.001-05:00

I cheat. I was born that way, and I don't think there is any game that I cannot cheat in. It doesn't matter whether I am winning or losing, nor does it matter who I am playing against. Cheating is an art, it's skillful. After every game I do tell my opponents what I did and the look of amazement on their faces is my victory.

And no, I am not your average cheater, I set the bar high. Real high. For instance, if anyone had to cheat in a game of Pictionary what would they do? Common folk tend to whisper the answers to their teammates when no one is looking, or make some hand gestures to support their drawing. Not me. I take it two levels up.

Imaging this, I pick up a card, it's a very difficult word and you think neither can I draw it, nor can my team guess it. I start drawing some nonsense on the sheet and in 15 seconds flat my teammate has the answer. No words were spoken as you were keeping a strict eye on me and my mouth. So how exactly did I do it? Stay tuned…

Here's a few simple techniques to cheat at most games.

Most games have a sand clock to keep the time, well, after extensive research on the subject, I have concluded that keeping the sand clock on a flat surface will maximize the rate of flow, thereby giving the opponent the least time. Shaking, rotating and other movements will give them added time. So G.W how exactly do I cheat with the sand clock. Simple, before half the sand has fallen just rotate the sand clock. Thereby making time elapsed the new time left, hence robbing your opponents of valuable time.

The next technique requires an equally skilled cheater teammate. You need prior preparation, if you can't find a skilled cheater, then marry someone and train them properly. Marriage in this is important as you don't want your skills to go to the opponent team. Very rarely will your friends make you and your wife in different teams. All you need is code language for common things, for alphabets you can cough. For numbers you can sneeze. Once you coughed, a series of actions can determine the code word. Blinking (number of blinks), hand movements, times when you look up, look down etc etc can all mean something. You and your partner need to remember this. My code is this, cough-lookup-blinks gives alphabet in order. And cough-lookdown-blinks give alphabets in reverse order.
Now, if it's a game where you cannot talk, or a game where you cannot say particular words and there is no way you can complete it legally, cough, look up and do your thing. Though this technique was not developed for board games and was originally meant for mathematics and physics exams, but well we all adapt.

If there is a huge group playing a game and they have to guess something, and there's a lot of noise(due to random guessing by everyone). To win, simply announce(loudly) that [insert name here] said [insert word to be guessed] which is the correct word. 98% (not a made up figure) of the time [inserted name from above] will never confess that he did not say [that word]. For the 2% of the time, don't invite [inserted name] again. If [inserted name] is the host, make sure you are in the opposite team.

Trying to move your pieces in front in any board game is simple. But it is also the stupidest thing you can ever do. Opponents keep track of your progress like baby kangaroos on ice cream (Hey! I am a science major. Analogies aren't my thing). But what no one will argue with is you moving back a step or two. So if moving back can help you become a doctor in the game of life, and earn you children every time you pass the mating line. So be it. Not to mention finishing snake and ladders in 10 dice throws flat(didn't I mention I was a born cheater?).

I have never solved a Rubik's cube in my life. Not the way it was intended to be anyway. Though there are algorithms and tricks to solve it quick. I find my way to be the best. Break it apart and put it piece by piece in place.

There are so many tricks to cheat in card games that I can't do justice to them all by mentioning only a few here. But since I am not playing with you guys, I'll tell you what you should all be capable of. Pattern shuffling, Card deck memorization, Illegal dealings and so on.

Letting your opponents win: If you are so good at cheating that you can never lose, then no one would like to play with you. This is not good. So let others win too..

The best cheaters often have many tricks up their sleeves. A friend of mine was so good that he used to get scrabble alphabets from home and had them stored in his many pockets. Vowels in the left, high point letters in the right. Identifying such people is tricky, unless you start noticing two 'Z's and two 'X's on the board. Once you realize it, work hard to keep such people on your team. If that doesn't work, insist a strip search before playing. Hey what's a little nudity between friends?

But this is for amateurs; pro's like me use their strengths to better my game. For instance, once this certain someone was found keeping high point letters in his shirt pocket, all I needed to do was aim and drop a duplicate 'i' (don't you hate when you have 3-4 of them with you) into his shirt pocket and insist you threw a 'z' to keep him from [insert action here]. There's no way anyone will confess having additional alphabets, so the Z is all yours. Just in time for 'JAZY'.

As far as how I guessed the word, well, if you studied in a class where talking/texting was not permitted, then all you had was your cell in your pocket, communicating with the outside world with text messages typed with one hand while looking at the teacher..

If all the students who slept through lectures were laid end to end, they'd all be a lot more comfortable.

2008-12-22T23:37:00.008-05:00

There comes a time in every grad student’s life; that they look back and wonder if they should have started their thesis a few months back. This more often than not happens during the few months before they hope to graduate. And this gentleman and ladies is my story.

There are many signs that you better get up from your lazy ass and start working before you get kicked out, or worse, lose your job offers because you can’t graduate. Well, since I have suffered already, I will save you all future agony of realizing things too late.

Just follow my point-guide system. (if you read cosmopolitan way too often for your gender, you'd know what to do). For those who don't, all you need to do is select an answer and then later sum up the number within brackets and read the section below the questions for interpretations.

- How good is your social life?

- You can differentiate between Saturday and Tuesday just by looking out of your lab window (-4)

- You talk to the occasional opposite-sex person (0)

- You tell them about your progress in your thesis (-1)

- All local bouncers know your last name (+6)

- Can you play any musical instrument?

- I designed one with a FPGA board, I can sorta play that (-8)

- I know this person, who can play guitar (0)

- I play 6 instruments, and sometimes with red bull, all at once. (+7)

- Do you know what the bell curve of grading is?

- I am too busy submitting assignments and writing research proposals to care about that (-5)

- I know what a bell is, and i also know what a curve is. Hence by rule of mathematical deductions, i know what a bell curve is (+2)

- You kidding? I plot them on excel daily, to see the inverse slope and my standings in the class.(0)

- Describe your School newspaper

- We have one? (-3)

- Sorta in black and white (0)

- Describe? I design it weekly, I am the chief editor and the best reporter they have. (+5)

- Have you travelled much?

- Well, yeah, I find my way well to Starbucks and my lab. (-2)

- Yup, few places close by, during fall and spring breaks. (0)

- I have been to more cities here than my total number of credit hours (+5)

- What do you do for exercise?

- Yeah, the occasional basketball to keep fit. (0)

- Well, i run around trying to find my advisor. (-4)

- Wii-fit for body, PSP for hands, guitar hero for abs, wii tennis for arms. (+5)

- What websites do you visit frequently?

- Weather ones, just to check if its too cold to walk back home. (-2)

- Just my emails, to see if my advisor has mailed (0)

- rentacoder .com to see if someone has placed a bid on my thesis project. (+5)

- How good is your cooking?

- I can boil water (-2)

- I love take away food (0)

- When my mom came to visit, she had tears of joy in her eyes to learn that I cook better than her (+10)

Ok, now that you have answered all questions, let me give you an easy way to interpret these results.

If your total is less than 0.
   - You have way too much time reading stupid articles online, you need to concentrate on your thesis.

If your total is 0.
  - This could be your total marks if you continue taking lame tests online.

If your total is greater than 0.
  - It's a wonder you took enough time to take this test, the same effort and time on your thesis will ensure you graduate.

As for me,

If your total is equal to 45 points.

- You need to stop writing weird tests on your blog and get back to the real world and start working on your thesis.

There are two tragedies in life, neither one is love.

2008-11-06T03:44:00.005-05:00

He wakes up in the hospital after a long night; unconscious, breathless, with tubes and needles covering him. He wakes up not knowing what happened, not knowing what lies in store for him. All he can see is her beautiful face, all he can feel is the warmth of her touch. His life ended the previous night, but a new one started this very day. A one starting with her and he only has her to thank for it.

I am not a good writer, so I’ll just steal lines from great ones. George Bernard Shaw once said “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.”

I had a tragedy, I had what I wanted and was going to lose it, in a matter of a breath; it’s absence. We all think about our final day in this world, what people would say about us. What they would feel after we’re gone. Would it matter to anyone? How many people have you touched on this planet, how many have you moved? Who touched you?

It’s funny how you remember the most silliest of things, and in a strange way, I guess that’s what matters. The way the cute girl from your fourth grade shared her lunch with you after the bullies put sand in yours or the way you find that secret letter written to you by the nerdy boy you like who didn’t have the courage to give it to you.

Life is full of surprises, some good and many you could live without: but that’s what life is, a rollercoaster you ride just once, never know what’s around that corner, but you are over excited and screaming to see and feel it. Sometimes you do get sick, sick of the ride and tired of that uneasiness in your stomach; and you just want to get off. But the truth is, you started this ride with many people on board and you are going to get off with them, together, like it or not. And that’s what keeps many going I guess, the fact that we are all in this together.

He holds her close, looks deep in her eyes filled with tears. He wants to say he’ll be there for her no matter what, no matter how nauseating the ride makes them. They paid for it, they are going to finish it together, with each other. He just stays quiet, looks deeper into her eyes, holds her hands and continue this rollercoaster ride…

If I would have ever got a chance to talk to George Bernard Shaw, I would correct him and tell him, the two real tragedies in life are people giving up on their hearts desires and people not knowing them.

I’m not a great writer, I just copy lines...

There are two tragedies in life, one is not knowing your hearts desires and the other is giving up on them.
G.

Life is like a hot bath. It feels good while you're in it, but the longer you stay in, the more wrinkled you get.

2008-09-25T15:53:00.010-04:00

People often ask me (ok, maybe not “often”) what I think the secret of life is. My reply as usual is in a short two word sentence, “Who cares”.

After a stern look they reply ‘I care’ and I’m back putting on my thinking cap wondering what they want to hear from me.

They generally ask when a boyfriend becomes an ex, or the expiry date on the milk carton shows that of last week. Expecting somehow, that I have been the chosen one to carry the secret of life along and that I am ready to share the secret with their ~~dumped ass~~ confused soul.

And here I was with my recent kiss with death (hmmm, smooch sounds more like it..) asking the same questions to myself. What is the secret of life?

Well, as the status message on my chat client reads ‘don’t worry about life, you’d be lucky to get out of it alive’ (ok, i lied again, i don't have cheezy status messages like that. All my status msgs are pimped to send viewers to my new websites) , I suppose that’s the bottom life, relax, take it easy and you’ll do just fine. Guess don’t let work affect your personal life comes a close second in the secret of life. A close second only to, at least have a personal life.

Till recently I was always worried about money and I soon realized, remembering the age old song, we’ve come to this world empty handed and we are gonna leave that way.

Donald Trump might beg to differ being buried with a $10,000 Armani suit and a Rolex watch and a few hundred dollar bills in each hand. But I suppose he’s smart enough to remember Egyptians and grave robbers. If he doesn’t, well, show me where he’s resting in peace.

In the end, just remember, there is no secret to life, it becomes just what you plan to make of it. Though more often than not, that plan does not work out, but I won’t go into that now, there are a million self help books out there.

But people are not willing to believe that there’s no secret so in order to keep them satisfied with answers, I just repeat, taking a line from peanuts.

The secret to life is owning a convertible and a lake.

When it rains you are pissed that you can’t drive the car, but hey at least your lake is filling up. And when the sun is out shining brightly and drying your lake up, you see the silver lining and take your convertible out for a spin…

Hell was full i guess, so they sent me back..

2008-07-09T11:07:00.001-04:00

Prologue:
"I am sorry to put you through this", "I really am".. saying these last few words, i collapsed on the the floor next to the Toyota rental vehicle.

Holidaying in Florida over the July 4th weekend, one would barely expect to die..
but if you are that allergic to prawns as i am, well, that is a harsh reality.. After a blast of a weekend parasailing, clubbing, playing Frisbee in the sea the last sunday, we went to a casino.. having never been to one, i was excited as a child on his first camping trip.. or a women's first love.
The casino was exciting, blackjack, roulette, poker. you name it, i lost money there..After a few hours on the floor, we were hungry and went to grab a bite. I ordered a chicken fried rice and general Tso's chicken from an Asian restaurant at the food court. After eating half i felt uneasy, i saw a prawn piece or two on the plate and then it struck me, they had given me prawn fried rice instead. Knowing what happens to me when i eat prawns, i started walking to the car, my condition becoming from bad to worse. My lungs swollen and wind pipe shut i couldn't breathe. I reached my car and my inhaler didn't seem to work.after over 40 puffs from it, my condition didn't improve a bit. I gave a friend the thumbs up to call for help. The feeling i had was the same as one would get if they held their breath for over 5 min, with no oxygen in my body, i felt faint, they say your life flashes in front of you the last moments you are alive, for me it just did that. Few moments long forgotten came back me me, i managed a smile to have lived a fuller life up till then. But i couldn't believe i wasn't in control at that moment. I felt sorry for what i was putting my friends through and what they had to go through after i was gone. I lost consciousness.
Still on the phone with 911 my friends were trying to direct they cops our exact location in the parking lot. I could barely hear what was going on, but i remember hearing stuff like open the back, switch on the light. Figuring out they couldn't find us in the huge parking lot, somehow in the lapse of any reasoning, not able to convey anything, i put my head on the car horn, And i don't remember anything since then.
What i gather from people around me was the cops were there a good one minute after i was unconscious, and they put me to the floor and a couple of minute later the ambulance was here. My friends had given the exact problem over the phone with the female on the other side of the 911 call. They intubated me (put a tube down my throat, so that the blockage could be bypassed) and i was on artificial breathing whole night. I don't remember anything, but i can only imagine what people around me had to go through, seeing my hands tied to the bed a pipe through my mouth and no way to know if i would get up or have any permanent brain damage.
All i remember the next day was some one shouting out my name, telling me this would hurt just a little bit, when they removed that respirator from inside me, luckily for everyone around me, i started breathing normally, all i could muster asking was "where am i" and "how long was i here". The answers reminded me of the harsh reality of last night.
Having being so used to medications from India for my condition, i wasn't responding to any of the treatment they had in US. My heart kept going into Tacky each time they gave me the breathing medicines. I was fine from that morning. But trial and errors with the medicines were scaring me. And every doctor asking me if my family had heart issues wasn't helping any cause either.
She stood by me, for hours and hours, taking care of me, doing whats needed, i am only so grateful, cant even begin to tell her. From calling 911 to calling a nurse everytime my heart rate jumped above 165.
It was one hell of a night i guess for everyone. Lucky for me, i don't remember much. for those who remember, i guess, thanks doesn't begin to express my gratitude. From a phone call to an ambulance next to me taking 10 min, i suppose this system works, remind me next time not to crib about the taxes i pay here. Most of it ends in good hands.

Epilogue
Got discharged directly from the ICU on Tuesday, having being classified as a flight risk (cabin pressure might collapse my lungs) i am still stuck in Florida, but somehow the paper masala dosa i had yesterday, tasted like the best paper masala dosa out there...
I wonder if life will be any different now, apart from being extra extra careful about what goes into my mouth. Guess not everyone gets a second chance.

There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane.

2008-04-26T23:45:00.003-04:00

Have been doing a lot of travelling lately, so its only fair that i write about it.And since lists are so popular nowadays, not to mention the space they take up because of tabbed bullet points, here goes one.

Top ten things that tell you that your flight is going to be a horrible one.

- You are allowed 2 bags of 23 Kgs each and you end with with 3 bags of 30
Kgs each.
- Your carry on baggage is heavier than you - you are 6.3
and the distance between the seats is 1 feet.
- The on board
entertainment system attached to your seat has malfunctioned and is stuck on a
language you dont understand.
- And on a channel you dont wanna see.
The channel was the on board information system. I mean who care if
you are flying sooo high and the temperature outside is soo low...
- Of
the 15 cute people on-board to serve you, you get served by the 16th.

- Your travel agent messed up and you end up eating a low fat - diet
meal. Basically a lettuce leaf with grated carrots.
- You plan great
things on your four hour stop over at Paris airport including getting lost at
their thousands of terminals and shops and having some good looking french
people help you out. You get off at terminal 17E and
your next flight takes off from 17F.
- You land and try to act really
suspicious so you could be strip-searched, adding a great article for your new
book. Custom officials done even look up to see you, inspite of you checking yes
on the 'Live Animals/insects?' box on the immigration form.
- Your connecting
flight is delayed because of bad weather( or a quick search for insects on-board
) and all the TV sets in the terminal are tuned to the weather channel. Thank
you, but I can see outside!!
- Your friends coax you into buying insurance
for lost baggage, and quote the increase in chances because of three bags and
multi-country destinations/transfers. Hoping for a quick thousand or two
(dollars) you anticipate few bags less at the baggage collection. First three
bags that come out are yours, red in color and tagged by your dads unique
ribbons ( which btw, every Indian dad had the idea before their sons/daughters
left for the land of opportunities )

Yeah Okay! I know thats 11 points, you can imagine the flight I had. Anyway, the drama didn't end there, try balancing three huge bags on a small luggage cart carrying a heavy backpack and a lonely planet USA book.

Some Study, Some Have Fun But People Like Me Are Born To Annoy The Hell Out Of Others.

2008-03-20T19:36:00.001-04:00

Having come all the way to this far off land, having spent all of the money parents hoped to spend after retirement feeding the greedy funding-less professors and having wasted enough time in the lab doing research work for some moron who wouldn't add my name to the paper he is publishing based on my work I felt it was time to give some back to the society. And the easiest target was the Teaching Assistant of my Programming course.

These guys get paid like 12$ an hour, how would I know? I quit as a T.A before. Anyhow, if they were getting 12$ to grade my assignment, I sure as hell am not going to make it easy for them.

So I present to the world wide audience ( or the 2 people who actually read my webpage ) ,
Top Ten Ways To Really Piss Off Your Teaching Assistant.

10 . Write your code, then delete all enters and non required white spaces. Send the entire assignment in 1 huge line.

9. Write proper comments, in fact copy paste 90% of the man page( it's the help page ) of the function into the comments for each and every function you write. In fact write comments for braces, whitespaces and so on. Make sure you include the following comments as well.
\\ This is the start of the assignment, I am almost ready to write code. So here I go.

\\ This is the end of my program, and this is the last word I would type. Damn.

8. Write functions for every operation. And make sure you put them in a different file and include them in your main file. A simple program should consist of at least 50 submitted files each with their own .c .h and readme.txt files.

7. On graphical assignments, print screen the windows blue screen of death and make that appear every time the TA runs your program correcting and running properly after a few seconds ( you don't want to get Zero do you ). Extra fun/points if you assignments are Linux based.

6. Declare really really really really really really long variable and function names.

5. If your assignment is due at 11:59 Pm, then send it at 11:58 Pm and bombard the TA's mailbox with 70 mails saying, and I quote "Did ya get it". Keep repeating this and other mails like "I am wondering if you got my previous mails" or "since I haven't heard from you, I am assuming that you haven't gotten my mail, so find it attached".

4. Send print copies of code with no indentation and no supporting binaries, and if executables are compulsory make sure you burn them on a blue ray disk or 3inch floppy disks.

3. On text assignments, quote famous people in the IT industry as, "Steve Jobs defines Fork function call as the following.." or "Gates considers multithreading better than multi processes because". Go one up by quoting them from movies and incidences involving them.

2. Check online for various courses you have already taken in your undergrad, go sit in few of those classes, just send the TA a completed assignment without you being officially part of the class.

1. This is how you should go about writing your assignment, write a batch file which will create a shell script which will run a perl script which generates a c file which depending on your mood could be the program required by the assignment or if you are feeling evil could generate another shell script which generates a perl script……

In olden times, sacrifices were made at the altar, a practice that still continues.

2008-01-05T06:12:00.000-05:00

Will you marry me?

Well, this bit is part fiction, part fantasy and a part based on a real life story. Any resemblance to anyone living or buried might not be as coincidental as you might think.

“AAAAggghhh” he screamed when she slapped him half across the floor. The marks of her tiny fingers making, what seemed to him, to be deep gorges on his unshaven face. He had never once been slapped before, let alone by someone he adored. He had been planning for this moment for a long time now, and had thought of every possible course of action, taken every step to ensure a perfect evening, and a perfect end to the evening. Pity, head gears wasn’t on his planned agenda.

He met her a few years ago at a bungee jumping event, he was the safety instructor and it was her first time. He still remembers how she trembled before she leaped off the edge, the only reason she did was ‘cause he said he’ll buy her a hot cup of coffee at Starbucks if she survived the fall. Well he was joking of course, anything to take her mind from the few hundred feet of free fall, there was no way he’d meet her again, the safety crew at the bottom would dust what’s left of the lifetime memory of her pants and he’d get back to promising hot beverages to the never ending line of people.
She screamed her lungs out, and then a breath later, once more. Finally, with her feet firmly secured to the ground, she swore never to let herself be tortured like this again.
“And the area code is 216” she said when he was attaching the safety harness to her yet again, and this time she jumped, life at stake, with a lunch and a coffee promise.

“Hey, dude” he said when he called one of his friends, “Of the four C’s for a diamond which one of them is Cost?”.
“Ha Ha, wait, are you serious?”
“Yeah, been thinking of this for a while now. So want to join me ring shopping”
“Absolutely, congrats man, she’s one lucky girl. Am so happy for you guys”
“ Thanks, I am so excited, now all we need to do is figure out the cut, the carats, the clarity and the color.”
“Dude, women are not shallow and don’t look for all that in a ring, for them it’s a constant reminder of their loved one, and his commitment to their love. It represents their belonging to someone and the emotional bond they share. It doubles as photo album storing memories of all the good times and the bad,
It is more about the promise you make of your journey together rather than your carats or cuts”
“Yeah Right!!” they said in unison as they decided a place and time for their shopping trip.

A million ideas from his close friends for that perfect proposal, he knew what she’d love most. A quiet evening at home, lying in his arms. She was never the outgoing person, very quiet and laidback. For her, life was this mystical thing, like the shadowed part of the crescent moon, she was content with the smallest of the smallest things. She never had a perfect day she could tell her grandkids, so he had to make this one big. Thus began the preparation for that one night, when the two became one.
He knew she’d always like to play some game after dinner before they watch a movie. He stole all the letters needed to spell ‘will you marry me’ in case she wanted to play scrabble, he modified the top chance and community chest cards to read out the same in case she was in the mood for monopoly and so he went on, altering all games they could possible play to suit his needs.
He made a cd for the player with a slideshow of their photos, right from the bungee jumping days till now, the funny comments about her hair, the remarks about her short height compared to his gigantic self. And ending the snaps with a perfect photoshopped image of them in wedding attires in an alter right besides the ocean and the caption reading his mind.
He’d been taking dancing lessons, so when his friend, the local RJ, played their song as a dedication to them both, and she looked at him with those eyes gleaming for him to take her to the middle of the living room and dance away, he wouldn’t have to say no like always.
He came back home early from work and set on what was left of his master plan; he cooked her favorite dishes, funny how the most common of the dishes was her favorite, he still had to email his mom for the recipe though. He set the table for two, the scented candles all ready to be lit. His friend just called and confirmed the song and a give-me-a-missed-call-when-she-says-yes notice; he planned to run a ‘Lovers Paradise’ section tonight on radio. He lit the candles to aromatize the room.
Then the doors opened, she was early, a man wrapped around her lips. She didn’t expect to see him there. ( What? You don’t like this? What did you expect from a story from someone like me?? Ok ok, ignore the last line then.. I’ll move on with my love story.. though it would be great if you would let me continue on the cheating bitch direction. Spoil Sport. )

She called him, said she was stuck at work. ( you still think she is cheating on him, don’t you. If it helps he’s hot, funny, tall, attractive, smart and rich with good hair. What’s wrong with you negative people?? How can you think this about this sweetheart of a girl? She’s like a kid, well, He does treat her like a kid, and in a way she is, she loved him way too much, so much that even a poem wouldn’t describe. )
She said she has to entertain a few clients at the restaurant by the lake and wouldn’t be home for dinner. He was crushed, all the planning for nothing, another day then.
She called him a sometime later, said it’s was an early dinner and wondered if he could pick her up. He was halfway there before she could finish asking him.
He stepped in the restaurant on the lakeside of Lake Erie, not a soul there, just a table near the window with a lit candle and a gift box. He read the card, it just said “Love You”. ( NO, she didn’t not leave him and run away, will you people STOP thinking about her like that, she’s an angel. She’s just waiting for him to open the gift. Come on who else books a whole restaurant for one dinner on a random night? )
She hugs him from behind; he almost decks her to the floor (Guys and their reflex actions). She wishes him a happy birthday, and he’s confused cause his birthday is more than a month away. “Yeah silly, I know” she replies. “but then it wont be a surprise will it?”.
“So, I guess I get two gifts then huh?” he says opening the gift.
After a more than perfect evening next to the lake with the fireplace keeping them warm and with its cracking sound every time there was silence in the room when they kissed, they drive home stuffed with food.
He opened the doors only remembering his master plan for the night; she sees the table set, radio running, with the candle halfway through its life.
“Never leave a fire unattended” screams her army upbringing.
“What about the thousand times you leave it in the bathroom so close to those shower curtains” he complains.
She asked why he didn’t tell her that he’d planned something too, he honestly said that he completely forgot with the sight of her and the vastness of waters next to him. She sits down, napkin on the lap,
“So waiter, what is tonight’s special”
“What?? You can’t possibly eat another bite. You ate more than a baby elephant at the restaurant”
“Don’t expect much tip Sir” she says as she serves herself the food laid out. “You are crazy you know, don’t complain when you wake up with a severe stomach problem tomorrow” he says smiling while warming the remainder of the food.
“Yes, your food does get my stomach upset a lot” she says giggling her favorite wine down her throat.

“So which movie are we watching tonight” she asks while settling down in the sofa. “How about Rush hour” he says while wondering about the wasted time altering the games. “How about titanic” she says.
They’ve probably watched that stupid movie like a thousand time. “No way, let compromise, how about Shrek”. Finally after a run down of last years top ten at the box office for all categories. She challenges him to a game of hangman, winner gets to pick.
So after half an hour of guessing ‘The Truman Show’ ‘ Forest Gump’ ‘Apocalypse now’ ‘Pretty Woman’.
He finally writes down this as he puts the cd on the player while she thinks. After all her chances and after the man was dead and hanging. She asked, ok, what is it?
He bends down, takes out that ring from his pocket, opens the box and says
“Will you marry me?”

He rubs his face and its red, he’s surprised. And in pain, he looks at her confused. His eyes asking why.
She replies “Firstly, for the fact that you even had to ask. Secondly, that confused look on your face after you asked, like the answer was anything but a hell yeah!. And last but not the least, that’s not even a movie, cheater!”
“So you want this or what” he teases her showing her that diamond. He puts it on her finger as she admires his photoshop skills. “We don’t need an expensive wedding now, you can use your skills to put our faces on celebrity wedding images” she kids while they hear his friends voice from the radio, “Tonight there’s a special moment here, I know this couple for a long long time now, well they are my best friends, both wanted me to dedicate a song for the other. Everything was set, they were supposed to give me a missed call when they wanted their song played. Funny part is, they both called it ‘their’ song, but both songs were different. Anyway, neither of those morons called me yet. She was surprising him for his birthday and he was proposing. So either the wuss backed out, or she said no which I don’t think is possible, or maybe they both are waiting for the other to show up for their surprise. Hey, I couldn’t ruin their surprises so I kept shut”.
“Wait till I tell him you slapped me” he cut in.
“Since I promised I’ll play these songs for them tonight, I’ll will keep that up and play them for the two love birds, hope you all enjoy them. Thanks for listening; I will see you same time tomorrow night. Until then, let love keep us alive.”
She looks at him, as Lionel Richie fills the room with ‘Stuck on you’, with those eyes again, he takes her to the middle of the room, holds her close and sings along in her ear as they danced to the tune. A moment later they are on the couch tongue tied as “their” second song plays on the airwaves ( frequency modulated ).
“ ‘Come a little closer’ is so not our song” he complains…
“It is now” she says with the ring gleaming on her fingers and as the candle melts its way down..
And as the song ends with the Dierks singing ‘Come a little closer baby, I feel like laying you down.’, she pulls his face away, looks deep into his eyes.
He knows she wants to say something, so he asks what.
With her piercing eyes still stuck on him, the candle just burning out, in the sudden darkness, she says “Honey, you do know that you aren’t supposed to use blanks for punctuations in hangman right?”

A mate She sought in He.

2007-12-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

I was chatting last night with someone who has a poetic strand in her DNA. Well she inspired me to explore my hidden talents.
So here's my attempt,

A mate She sought in He.

Two parts of stone, never meant to be,
Like bricks like clay, lay astrayed indeed.
Two hearts two souls, too much too soon,
Crushed to pieces, all set to doom.
One ring one touch, one hope she sought.
A parting letter was all she got.
She cried all night, and then all day.
Little she knew, he'd end up gay.

Oh, Come on!! Like you could have resisted that ending.

It's better to burn cut out, than to fade fall away..

2007-11-24T21:42:00.001-05:00

And it was that time of the month again, hair combing minutes featuring in the late 20's, spray's, gels, conditioners, shampoos taking most of my research allowance, a good snow day ending up looking like a bad case of dandruff. Measures have to be taken my friend, and a hair cut it was.

With my experiences as a civilized being ( inspite of what other seem to think ) i have taken the privilege of getting many a cut, and some might think that with this kind of experience i'd be good at it by now. We'll have to wait and find out.

Going to a trendy hair salon, trendy enough that they have a computer to store all customer details like preferred style I am asked if i have a booking. Being the in-the-moment kinda person, I just roll my eyes(almost) at the thought that I would need to make a reservation for a haircut, then remembering that my future look and any chance for holy matrimony would be determined by the next few moments of behavioral patterns, i change my eye-roll to a look up and wonder pose.

Lucky for me the person scheduled for 6pm didn't turn up, so in the chair, the stylist glances over the computer and says "The usual huh?".

People think i am way too predictable, like they think that when i say i'll be ready in 15 min, i actually take 45, or the way the cafeteria's chef starts making my order before i've placed it. So wanting to turn into a new leaf, i say something incoherent that sounded more or less like "surprise me!".

I then realized that 'surprise' is quite a relative term, while i might have meant, surprise me in the "Oh my god, wow" my-heart-skipped-a-beat way, i probably never bargained for "OH MY -beep- GOD, What the -beep-?, are you a -beeping- intern here?" heart-stopping way.

Anyway, after a lot of gel and some nice sprays i left, head held high.

Cause any lower and I could have gotten arrested for carrying an assault weapon, the spikes looked dangerous.

"And this is how Uncle G.W got the spikes" is what my friends would tell their kids, showing snaps. Naa, thats not happening, so before that nights party, i used two layers of gel and sprays to get the monster down.

Fact is a grad students budget for hair gel is far far lower than a hair salon's ( with computers to record hair style preferences ), and i obviously don't have to explain my smart readers about spring actions ( not smart? read appendix B ). So halfway through the party, the salons gel won.
Many a person complimented me on my shoes ( which incidentally went unnoticed for a week prior).
Guess we can attribute it to hair, it shifts focus to the farthest point possible.
Come to think of it, its not that bad, but still no, No pictures! Next time i'll stick to the 'usual', which in the stupid computer would now read SPIKES.

Ask me about my vow of silence.

2007-10-18T15:38:00.000-04:00

Okay, ages back when the sun was in its dwarf stage and the people were friendly and the food was good I did an experiment with the one tool i have which is properly insured, me.

To catch up if you missed the first part, click "Das Experiment".

Formula used ( umm, made up ) –

Accuracy value = No of correct questions answered correctly * 2.46 + 0.345

Time value = Actual time taken for 10 questions in minutes

Brain value = ( ( accuracy value ) / ( time value ) ) * 82.34

Brain power = (Brain value / Initial brain value ) taken on a scale of 10

Exceptions –

As a “normal” human, the body does need some minimum rest, so tabulate the hours slept, and subtract the value from total awake hours.

Graphs and plots –

Observations -

I spent over 4 days without sleep (well basically very little sleep) with more than 75% of accuracy levels than my initial start. It did go down in the middle ( day three ) but I did sleep longer then ( 3 hours ) and was back up to full potential.

Surprising how versatile the human body is.

So what did happen in those 90 odd hours without sleep ( <>

1. I stalled my car in the middle of the road and a motorist rammed into my car.

2. I paid 900 Rs to this guy I owed 853 rupees, he asked for 3 rs change, I said I didn’t have. But I did have a 50 Rs note, I gave him that and took 3 rs from him.

Honestly, I didn’t realize this till hours later in office, trust me, the weird looks he gave me also didn’t give me any clues.

3. I got lost near my house, inspite of living there for 2 years.

4. I was deciding whether to take a left turn into a parking lot or go on straight, and I couldn’t decide quickly enough, lets just say, that’s one hit and run case I want to forget fast. ( to be completely honest, that was a white car, and I barely scraped it, I mean compared to the scratch on my car the one on that car was nothing )

5. I bought my friends lunch ( expensive ) for no reason.

6. I hit a pole with my car.

7. I was genuinely worried for no apparent reason.

8. I made good friends with people on the night shift..

9. Amazingly no bugs at work during the experiment stages, come to think of it, I don’t know what I did.

90 odd hours awake, long lasting friendships, remarkable brain power... Apart from the three car accidents I had, and the experiment costs(in coffees, lunch and stupid calculations) going way above expected, I present you with the results…

Results –

I am smart, you probably aren't. Have a great day.

Oh and don’t try this at home.

And I haven’t touched my car ever since.

Don’t tell anyone this, it was my dad’s car, and he’s not in station. Yet another reason to write anonymously.

Golden Words

Proficiency at Pool depicts a wasted childhood.

2007-09-18T00:48:00.000-04:00

Or that’s what every one of my dad’s friends used to say to me when I used to beat them 5 frames in a row, I often wanted to say “Lucky for me, I was good when I was a child as well”… This generally used to make me think, elders are such sore losers. They just couldn’t take the fact that a kid beat them. Let alone clobber them left right and upside down. The only thing worse than losing to a kid is losing to a kid and tripping over the bottle of beer and ending up screaming ‘This isn’t over’ while the wife takes you away to the rest room to wash the bleeding nose.

“Maybe I can beat the brat at Chess” he says, “ I mean how smart can he be” .

“Would you just let it go, now look up else you will spoil your new shirt with blood stains”

You wouldn’t know how much fun it is beating a drunk at a game of chess. And little did he know that I was junior school champ at chess. Well it wasn’t a formal event, people just started calling me that when I beat my 7^th grade math teacher 3 times in a row. And she claimed to be a “State Champion”. Suddenly the day after the ‘defeat’ she took maternity leave. And although she was fat, I couldn’t have sworn she wasn’t pregnant.

More than the joy of winning is the fun at recollecting the excuses people come up with after losing to a kid,

“ I had something on my mind” “Hey, you cheated” “I wasn’t wearing my glasses” “No one makes money winning a stupid game of chess” “I couldn’t see the ball” “Its getting dark” “I think you should spend more time studying” “I let you win”

“hey” says the wife “how’s the game going, you guys done?”

“yes honey, can we have lunch yet, or are you going to nag us with your questions, what do you know about snooker anyway”

“Okay ok, I get it,” she says with a wink towards me “who lost? “

“Its me ok, I lost, happy, now bring out the damn grub”

“Its I” I corrected.

Big mistake, I stopped playing with ‘elders’ after one such conversation

I Love Formatting My Comp - The Book, is currently on hold till i get things straightened out and till more interesting things happen in my boring life.

Don't judge a book by its movie...

2007-03-28T12:50:00.000-04:00

I Love Formatting My Comp

The book, coming soon.. for more information visit www.iloveformattingmycomp.com

p.s - Updates on this blog will be discontinued till the book is out...

Golden Words - The Writer.
www.iloveformattingmycomp.com - The Book.
iloveformattingmycomp.blogspot.com - The Blog.

Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.

2007-03-13T13:40:00.000-04:00

As usual, I was up to no good, too much free time and the devils workshop in action, I decided to conduct this experiment.
Since I didn’t want to waste any of my ‘hard’ earned money and buy expensive props for an experiment, I chose to run experiments on the one thing I ‘got’ for free,

The experiment began on a cold winter morning, come to think of it, it wasn’t that cold, but a warm summer day makes me picture nice beaches and the closest beach from where I am is about a nights’ journey away. And that is always a depressing thought.
The experiment is quite simple,

Thesis – I can stay awake for a long period of time with minimal sleep and low loss of mental power.

Requirements - A set of mathematical questions, a stop clock, Graph plotter loads of coffee and good company.

Assumptions –
1. I have an initial mental power.

Procedure –
1. Solve a set of 10 mathematical questions taken randomly from a pool of many questions. Note the exact time taken and the accuracy of the answers. Enter this data into the plotter ( I used a pirated version of offi¢e* )
* This is a low cost experiment remember?
2. Keep repeating this every two hours and tabulate the results.
3. Record unusual happenings during the experiment for further analysis.
4. Create a fictitious formula for calculations, as any experiment that doesn’t involve the use of your scientific calculator is, well, time wasted.
5. When brain power falls to 75% of initial power, stop the experiment.
6. Show off to your friends how long you can stay awake without having to sleep like general humans.

Part 2 ... coming soon. real soon....

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

2007-03-01T13:49:00.000-05:00

I don’t generally dedicate my posts to something/someone. But in the view of Oscar fever and the dedication cliché I am gonna do just that. For those who are planning to own a cell phone, or those who already do, or those who have my cell number. This post is for you.

As long as we are talking about cell phones, I bought a new one; it’s called the 2040i by Fly. I could put up images of the cell or provide you links of the specs but it will make u feel miserable about the cordless equipment you hold and call a Mobile. And being such a nice person I just can’t do that. But just so you have some mental picture, this is like the new I-Phone by Apple, only cheaper and lesser features.

Now back to the dedicated post, well I stopped(well reduced usage at least) using my cell phone lately, that means no ‘chatting’ , no ‘unnecessary calls’ and other things college kids do with their cells, you might ask me why, well I guess that’s the price you pay for maturity.

Unfortunately, people don’t seem to understand, so read the top 13 things not to do with your phone if you have my number on it! Yes, I said 13.

I have used “I” and “Me” in the points, but I guess most of the points are applicable to every cell user annoyed with the lack of etiquette of others when it comes to using a phone.

I wouldn’t go through the points like “keep your cell in silent when in public” and other points like these, cause you all are a bunch of morons and will never learn, and an article on the net won’t help either. So these are personal points related to me. While reading few points you might think, “OMG, G.W is talking about me”, well, No. Get real, I wouldn’t waste an entire point writing just about you.

13. Avoid sms lingo when messaging me, its not like I don’t understand, I am one of the pioneers of that language, but have grown since. Also very common short hands like gr8 are still ok, what is not ok is this “ I hd a gd tme in drgl, gt bk tda mrng, cl me whn u fre”

12. Avoid all forwards, I don’t mind the really really funny ones, but if its that funny, I probably would have read it elsewhere. Additionally don’t copy the “sms of the day” in the newspaper and send it, we all can read Bangalore times. Also avoid messages in other languages, I can read and understand many languages but I prefer English.

11. Messages like “you haven’t called in a long time” , “when will we speak next” , “you haven’t messaged me in such a long time” “where have you been all this while, no calls, no msgs” , “you don’t call me anymore” etc make you seem really needy, you don’t need friends but therapy.

10. Don’t send me messages like ‘good morning’ ‘good night’, if it has to be a good morning, it will be, with or without your message. Moreover sending a message at 3Am wishing me good night isn’t going to make me like you at all.

9. If you have sent me any variation of the following message
“Hi , xyz here, this is my new number…”
and you haven’t received any confirmation of any sorts from me, chances are, I don’t care about your new number. Remember this point when you change you number again.
p.s as an added thing, please refer points 10 and 11.

8. I eat when I want to, I drink when I want to, avoid messages like “had dinner?” or “had lunch?”.
Additionally for people really concerned with my eating habits, I don’t eat breakfast; I eat lunch at office at about 12, snacks at about 5:30 and dinner by 8. Memorize this, just for memory sake, let’s go through that again. Come on, repeat after me. No breakfast, lunch at 12, snacks at 5:30, dinner by 8.

7. I sleep at odd hours, avoid messages like “awake?”
If someone ‘had’ to know I was awake, they would already do so. Moreover, even if I ‘am’ awake, I generally don’t reply to such messages.

6. If you hadn’t received a reply for the “awake?” message immediately, I would generally return the message in the morning (courtesy sake). If you haven’t got any such messages, chances are I forgot/don’t care. Either way, when I meet/msg/talk to you next, don’t bring it up. It would lead to an uncomfortable situation.

5. If I call you and you have some weird caller tune which I don’t like, I WILL disconnect. If you love that song/tune so much, set it as you Ring tone, don’t bug your callers with that.

4. Don’t give missed calls expecting a call back, if you are that cheap/stingy I much rather not talk to you.

p.s this does not apply to students and other non-earning cell owners.

3. If you are partying and having a great time getting drunk, enjoy and live the moment, don’t call me trying to prove what a wonderful life you are leading or what a party animal you really are. Fact is I’ve been there, done that. And frankly I dislike the ‘wannabe’ kinds. You can’t act cool, you are born with it.

2. I have a modern cell phone and it has an answering machine on that, I use it to screen calls and avoid talking to people I don’t feel like at the moment. So when my voice on the cell says “Leave a message after the beep”, just leave a damn message.

Also once if you have called and left a message, and I haven’t gotten back to you, I am probably busy and have higher priorities in life. ( Yes remember, No breakfast, lunch at 12, snacks at 5:30, dinner by 8 ?? ) Don’t call back!

1. The cell phone is for my convenience and not yours; I didn’t buy a cell so that ‘you’ can reach me anytime of the day. As the tag line of iloveformattingmycomp goes, don’t say anything, if you can’t improve on the silence..

A bargain’s a bargain, no matter how expensive it is!

2006-11-18T23:40:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I had to go to Hyderabad ( This article comes to you from there by the way ) for some higher education stuff. My credit cards were cancelled ( or barred, whatever u call not paying the 40 grand I owed them ) and the new ones were just on their way. So anyway, kind dad was ready to shell for my air tickets from Bangalore to Hyderabad and back. He books me both ways on Spice Jet ( it’s a no frills flight ). He got a ‘great’ deal and was really happy about it.

“Great” turned out to be 2:45 Am on a cold winter night, or really really early in the morning if you prefer. There are many problems that can rise from traveling on such early flights.
1. No auto’s / cabs are willing to take you.
2. Everybody ( read as ‘mom’ ) who’s supposed to do your packing is already asleep.
3. There is no pick up at the destination.
4. Granny sleeps at night.

Since no one was ready to take me to the airport, I consulted dad’s help yet again.
His solution pretty simple, take the car, go to the airport.
Now, why didn’t I think of that? Only problem is they charge like 50 Rs per hour and 200 if the car’s parked overnight. So for a three day trip, any reason of buying those ‘cheap’ tickets is nullified.
Now that the option was withdrawn, alternative ways to reach the airport were being put forth on the table, by me and well wishers ( read ‘my sis’ ) who didn’t want to take me there themselves.
One point I strongly considered was taking the car to my friends house ( you know him as oxymoron, I don’t use the oxy bit ), and then walking to the airport which is a short 10 min walk from there ( or a really long 15 min walk if you carrying luggage and you are as lazy as me). Oxymoron offered to drop me at the airport in my car, but apparently he can’t park or drive. Later he offered to walk with me to the airport (initially I thought he was being really sweet, then I remembered the air hostesses), anyway he had an early morning picnic to attend so he couldn’t come either way.
As luck would have it, I found a taxi who was willing to take me to the airport, and the best part is, I didn’t have to sell any body parts so I could afford getting there. Thing about me is that luck doesn’t seem to stay with me for long. 1Am (1.45 min left for flight take off) taxi dude was lost, simple directions like come here, take the first left then right failed. So he parked his cab a few km’s from my house and I had to drive and fetch him.
Reached the airport in the nick of time (actually I reached quite comfortably, but if dad asks, I got there just before take off ).
Flight? Well bus on wheels should be more appropriate. After a turbulent flight without food I got to Hyderabad.
With my good luck charms back in Bangalore, I found that the pre-paid auto counter guy was sleeping, seeing his size I quickly judged that waking him up wasn’t a safe option. The only auto willing to come to my place said 'meter charges * 1.5' , sounded fair enough especially that early so I got on. The meter as I later found out was running (as my aunt put it ) “way too fast”.

In conclusion here’s the equation –

Total Money saved by dad because of the ‘great’ deal < Cab fare from Bangalore home to airport + Hyderabad airport to Granny’s place.

And if you think that is bad, imagine I still have to get back tomorrow night ( or day after really early in the morning if you prefer ).

If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.

2006-11-04T16:30:00.000-05:00

So, you know the latest fad doing the rounds here is Orkut. He asked me a rather confidential question.

What have I learnt from my previous relationships?
I pondered upon it for a while… don't you learn only from your mistakes.. is he implying that it was a mistake. It was, I thoroughly agree. But does he have to publicly proclaim the same fact. Anyhow, since boring history is learnt so as to prevent it from repeating itself, I guess my teachings or leanings if you prefer can be put into better use if I spread the word. Since there are so many "learnings", I will just list the top 10. I guess that should take you through your next learning process ( aka relationship ).

So what are the Top 10 things I learnt from my past ~~mistakes~~ relationships?

10. Guys don't get pregnant.

9. Especially not by holding hands.

8. If you forget a birthday or an anniversary and u are confronted with the fact, appropriate answers don't include the following
a) Big deal.
b) It is ??
c) Kidding me right?
d) Its been that long?
e) Ok, if you say so.
f) Does that mean I have to take you out?
g) Where's my gift?
h) Ok.
i) Oh, I knew it all along, I was just waiting to see if you remember.
-Doesn't work when it's their birthday.
- Especially not twice in a row.
- And never if they reminded you a few moments back.
j) That explains why you were hugging everyone else.
k) Can I borrow some money?
l) My reminders didn't go off.
m) Is it April Fools day again?
n) Stop bugging me.
o) Whatever you do, don't yawn.
p) Ok so you yawned, never follow it up with, I am so sleepy.

7. Comments to this disapproving observation " will you look at what she's wearing " do not necessarily include the following –
a) Wow.
b) Wow. ( with mouth open and tongue out )
c) Oh mama.
d) Don't you have a similar dress?

5. If you use terms like 'honey' , 'baby' , 'doll' , 'sweetheart' , 'sweety' , 'cutie' etc all the time, you might forget the actual name.
- You might want to avoid using the wrong names too.

4. If you are introducing them to your friends, appropriate 'introduction' lines shouldn't include –
a) This is the one I was taking about.
b) Hey remember, I told u about the new one?
c) This is so-n-so. I know I could have done better but..
d) Hey, this is… If you think this is bad, you should wait till it's bright.

3. If you are going to 'the better half's' place for the 'first' time, at least as far as the opponents parents are concerned, knowing the way around the house especially the exact route to the bedrooms isn't necessarily a good sign*.
*So whatever u do, if the mom is looking for a something you saw the last time you were there, do not, I repeat DO NOT volunteer to bring it for her.

2. Buy your own birth control. Don't use the hosts' parent's available methods( if you know what I mean ).. Also the round tablet with the label Aspirin on it, is indeed aspirin. It doesn't double up as anything else under any circumstances.

1. Pay attention to detail. Don't miss out on points.. Especially not the 6th one. That one was the best.

Be the flame, not the moth...

2006-10-10T14:08:00.000-04:00

Things don't always end up the way you planed or hoped, sometimes they are better then you could imagine.. but most of the times they suck.. (and if you were giving TOEFL, the question would be "whom did g.w refer to with 'they' ? " )

Everybody's looking for that something

One thing that makes it all complete

You'll find it in the strangest places

Places you never knew it could be...

Life generally takes a left turn right when you had them all, an awesome job, great friends you can call up at 3 in the morning saying you wanted to talk and they would talk right till sunrise, so called everlasting love, a happening life, everyone u loved happy.. and a very good dream…

Some find it in the faces of their children

Some find it in their lovers' eyes

Who can deny the joy it brings

When you find that special thing

You're flying without wings

Just when you wanted to take the straight road to the highway, you come across a red signal..You figure taking the free left turn you could save some valuable seconds.

How often do you wake up to a really loud alarm clock (that I ought to replace real soon) thinking what if you had not taken the left turn?

Some find it sharing in every morning

Some in their solitary lives

You'll find it in the works of others

A simple line can make you laugh or cry

If you believe in faith and destiny then how much are you willing to put on it (I am not that good a gambler if you didn't know already, ask me that some day, it's a really nice story ), how long are you willing to wait for something to happen?

Truth is you make your own destiny (and if you can cook, and your mom finds out, you make your own Maggie ), you chose your own path in life, no one forces you to take one route and leave the other, but whichever route you take, that becomes your destiny. Whatever happens your fate.

You'll find it in the deepest friendships

The kind you cherish all your lives

And when you know how much that means

You have found that special thing

You're flying without wings

Sometimes you think your dream was just a stupid child fantasy..

Then you realize the awesome job was the icing described by people who are tying to sell you a stone, the friends've gone abroad and it costs 20Rs per min to call them.. worst is you don't even get the synchronous sunrises. The love is over in a matter of 10 days, or was it love to start with? Happiness is just a show we put up isn't it, just to keep the ones around you not wondering what the hell is wrong with you. Are we that superficial that we have to smile even when we feel like crying?

It's the little things that only I know

Those are the things that make you mine, all mine

And it's the flying without wings

Some rock stars dying words ( by that I mean the suicide note ) were, its better to burn out than to fade away.. As for me, I am not sure which way I have to go..Right now, the wrong left turn left me in the middle of nowhere, in case you are there too, well can meet up at the coffee day counter ( they seem to have branches everywhere ).

You're the place my life begins

And you'll be where it ends

I'm flying without wings

And that's the joy it brings

I'm flying without wings

But one things for sure, I can't be the moth!!!!

You might not understand the post fully, you need to really know me to do that, and since you don't, well you cant. The song in italics is Flying Without Wings by Ruben S ( American Idol winner few years back )

They didn't let me out, they just gave me a day pass!

2006-08-29T04:36:00.000-04:00

Sitting at home in the summer, having cold coffee, starting at the hot sun from inside your air conditioned bedroom, bunking work and pitying your colleagues who are suffering at a stupid meeting which was scheduled for around this time sure beats being at work attending a stupid meeting with the ‘moron’ ( you should know him well by now ). But the problem being, I am not sitting at home, I am sleeping on my bed. I aint having cold coffee, but cough syrup instead, I don’t have air conditioning at home, and there aint any meeting planned for today!
Well just when you think the day couldn’t get ‘better’ you are reminded of the fact that you need to go study for an all important exam which encourages you to learn such words like “soliloquy” which is apparently pronounced as soh-lilo-quee and the meaning being something someone speaks to himself/herself in a drama. Now I don’t know about you, but I kinda survived my entire life (so far) of slightly over two decades without using words that end with the sound ‘quee’ , especially when you say the word with a pronunciation that ends with an exclamation. Queee!! .Ttrust me I have known mental patients that say stuff like that. Ok ok I don’t ‘know’ mental patients so to speak, but I surely know people who come darn close. And they don’t use words in the likes of quee..
Come on try it once, say ‘quee’ and end with a slight grin, come on, no one is watching.
See? Don’t you feel retarded?
Yeah I know what you are thinking, “you did it to retard..” well, at least I have heavy medication to blame, and it surely doesn’t help if u swallowed your nasal drops. Why cant people in the medical fraternity make medicines that taste a tad bit better.

Also with the advent of technology ( which in this article is limited to Microsoft word ) I wonder why people deem it necessary for me to increase my vocabulary which till now was limited to 5 characters or less words. I mean haven’t people heard of thesaurus?
For folks who haven’t watched the episode in friends where joey uses it to write a letter, let me demonstrate how simple it is.
Lets take a simple line from the above paragraphs,

“…bunking work and pitying your colleagues who are suffering at a stupid meeting which was scheduled for around this time sure beats being at work attending a stupid meeting with the…”

look how technology ( again, limited to Microsoft word ) can make me sound so much (more) intellectually superior than retards using Notepad.

“Missing employment along with the sorry feeling for your contemporaries who are distressed at an unintelligent conference which was programmed for approximately this instance no doubt beats being at work attending a dull summit with…”
That my friend is technology.

Ok, back to the main point, (whatever that was) no good can come off of reading 3000 words that one never gets to use in real life? I mean, which one of you have friends that go (on being asked how their day was) like “ It was breathtakingly astounding, I received a panegyric from my manager for my stupendous performance last month”.
This is how a basic conversation between me and my friends goes –
Me – Sup?
F1 – NM, U?
Me – Nm either.
For smarties who know the meaning of panegyric, ‘NM’ is the short for ‘nothing much’. And ‘sup’ is a fast way of saying ‘what’s up’.
I would embellish the various shades of meanings of panegyric for the readers, but I don’t see how it would help them in anyway. So I will refrain myself from doing so.

Well I guess they don’t read blog posts and won’t change the exam pattern, so I guess I better get back to studying long words which make me seem smarter, the only problem is I read about 50 odd words just an hour back, can’t seem to recollect any one of them.
Just realized ‘moron’ is on leave for the whole week. Damn! waste of a leave.. but I guess you gotta hand it to the ‘moron’, if it weren’t for people like him.. nobody else would have an above average IQ.

G.W certifies that no paragraphs apart from the one mentioned have been through the thesaurus process, and as such G.W or any affiliating members cannot be held responsible for the increase in vocabulary after reading the above mentioned article. G.W also would like to call you a stupid idiot to check if people actually read fine prints.

Do sick days include when you're sick of work?

2006-06-30T02:54:00.000-04:00

I figured sooner or later I’d be famous and someone would like to interview me, well if I am not famous, I figure I’ll be rich enough to buy a local newspaper and get interviewed. Worst case scenario I’ll bribe my way through to page 3. And if I don’t have enough money, considering I have two working kidneys and a lot of ready-to-sell body parts, I’ll find my way through.

Anyway, as one of my mottos goes "Always be prepared" so I am taking a mock interview of myself, not the technical types required for jobs ( though I should admit, I do excel at impressing prospective bosses with great fakes of my non existent amazing tech skills ), but a general interview.

The aim of this exercise is two fold
1 - To stick to my motto for the week - "Always be prepared".
2 - Get paid for writing. ( I am supposed to do my job, instead I chose to write this piece, and my employers have to pay me anyway.)

As part of my motto, and for the fact that my manager, we will call him 'moron' hereon, has been acting a lill bit too snoopy nowadays, this post comes to you from a machine running windows, accessing unix on server side, a nice VI editor ( which btw, I learnt basically for the purpose of this post ) (OK! sorry, I lied, I knew VI before itself, u are just acting like the 'moron', never trusting. sheesh, did I tell u I hate that guy? he's like the perfect example for the Dilbert principle. anyway wont go into that now, that’s a whole new post altogether.. we'll call him a 'moron' there as well. don’t ask me why 'moron' is in quotes. It just is. )

So we’ll start of easy and move on to more difficult questions.

Me-1 – Interviewer
Me-2 – Interviewee
Me-3 – Just in case a fight erupts between Me-1 and Me-2 .

Ok here goes,

Me-1 – We are gathered here today, to … wait a sec, this is my wedding opening line.. apologies. Lets try this again…
Me-1 – Ladies and Gentlemen , we have with us today Golden Words, a humor writer, an engineer, a great person ( coughs ), and the leading individual in frequent traffic miles. Welcome, pleasure having you here.
Me-2 – ( humbly, for the camera[if any] ) (*thinking* Duh! ) Its wonderful being here.
Me-1 – How does it feel to be the leading individual in frequent traffic miles?
Me-2 - It feels great, when you put so much effort into something, so many years of hard work, perseverance, its good to see something pay off like it did .
Me-1 – For our readers and viewers not aware of your journey, can you please put it in a nutshell?
Me-2 – It all started when I turned 16 and my parents bought me my first vehicle. It was a two wheeler. From there on there was no turning back, signal after signal, traffic jam after jam, day after day… there I was accumulating my traffic miles. And today as I sit here, I have no regrets for not taking the potholed filled easy way out, never jumping a signal even if there was no one in sight for miles. It’s a proud moment for all of us who suffer.
Me-1 – You had a bit of luck, being in the public’s eye, what do you say to the people suffering without getting noticed?
Me-2 – You are not good because you will get something out of it, you do it because you want to, it’s the same way, one shouldn’t think of the future and the consequences, they should just enjoy the journey.
Me-1 – You are very wise.
Me-2 – (Duh!) Thanks.
Me-1 – What about your personal life, you ever been in a serious relationship?
Me-2 – Aren’t all relationships serious? Friendship is a relationship, brother-sister is a relationship, parents-kids, work and you, everything is a relationship, you have to take all very seriously.. so yeah, I have been in a serious relationship.
Me-1 – What about your fittest finger award? Could you shed some light on that?
Me-2 – It all came with years of being around the most stupidest of all drivers/riders on the roads, plus having pathetic teachers all round, many of the people I knew had sad ‘better halves’ , working for the most incompetent person alive (or dead for that matter), so inadvertently one finger of mine got a lot of exercise. Which in turn led me to that award.
Me-1 – What about young people who want to follow in your footsteps?
Me-2 – I tell them just this thing, it takes large-number-of-muscles(google and fill in the number) to frown but less-number-of-muscles to give the finger. Moreover , its free.. it doesn’t cost you a cent.
Me-1 – We are almost out of time, tell us GW, What are your plans for the future.
Me-2 – We are all in the mercy of the lord ( and George W Bush for some unfortunate people living to my left* ) I’ll take what he gives. There is one award I am going to try out for. Most bad words in a minute.
Me1 – Really? That’s wonderful, who inspired you for such a feat.
Me2 – There’s this ‘moron’ we spoke about ( please note the quotes ). He’s a great inspiration. Everyday.
Me1 – It was really great talking to you, maybe we will speak soon. All the best for your future.
Me2 – Thanks. Pleasure is all mine.
Me3 – Hey hey hey?? What about my part?
Me1 – Who the f** are you?
Me3 – Scroll up and read you Arsehole.
Me2 – Arsehole? You British?
Me3 – No, I am planning to go there but, heard it’s a neat place, slightly expensive, sad food, but it’s a treat to the eyes.
Me1 – Whatever, times up fella, off you go.. security!
Me2 –Hey, they are taking me!! I am Me2 not Me3.
Me1 – Man you all look so similar..

* - Assuming you are facing the Himalayas
** - Short for fuck.

I doubt that’s how a ‘real’ interview would be.. moreover I can always show up on television claiming I was misquoted and that I love my ‘moron’. Pity I have only two kidneys. Any idea if anyone would be interested in buying clippings of nails? I seem to generate a lot of them.. Wish I did my majors in bio, I would know exactly what to sell without its absence affecting me, hey, is that why doctors are so rich?

Anyway a lot of time passed since I started off this journey for getting paid for writing. My stomach says its time for lunch. And that’s one meal I don’t miss. Well actually I don’t miss any meal. As a matter of fact I don’t think I have missed brunches, suppers or dinners either…

If you love someone so much just let go…

2006-04-25T13:43:00.000-04:00

And if she comes back, shoot the bitch!! It has been a long time since I’ve been here, so a quick update.
-I started thinking of relationships past my old one.. nothing could happen and nothing will, why one asks, hmmm something’s are better left untold I guess.. what I can say is , it wasn’t my fault ( not entirely at least )
-I have started thinking about alternative career options cause the ‘dream’ didn’t happen.
-I went on quite a few trips the last few weekends, fishing camps / gokarna-mangalore to name a few.
-Work place is hectic with unrealistic deadlines.. just the way I love it.. separates the men from the not so manly*
-*With such a large lapse in the times I spend writing, my quoting abilities have come down drastically..
-There is a cute opposite sex person who lives somewhere near my place.. haven’t spoken yet, don’t think I have the guts to speak to strangers.. its totally against the principles my parents embedded in me**.
-**I never listened to them before, why start now huh?
-Too many first dates have left my bank accounts as thin as a baby elephant’s trunk^!
-^my analogy skills haven’t improved either..
-Have got many ideas for new business ventures, but mostly all, actually all, involve me selling one of my kidneys in the grey market to get started^^.
-^^Its apparently illegal to sell it in the open when you are alive, how the hell am I supposed to sell body parts when I am dead? Hmmm maybe a website which pays you in advance for your body parts.
-Have got many (+1) business ideas, but some involve me in the non-living state.
-Everyone around me have their 5 year plans set and moving further, am the only one stuck right when I came out of college.
-Yeah yeah, good job, good friends, caring family.. tell that to the forbes-list-of-richest-people generating guys..
-Football fever has kicked in, funny part is, football season hasn’t even started, so I guess it’s just the fever that’s in.

Anyway, will be back around soon. Maybe a kidney less*, only time will tell.

*if you are filthy rich and about to die, and you wish to adopt a fully grown person. Contact me!

We are having EVER so much fun!

2006-03-05T05:52:00.000-05:00

The day started as any other would, I mean nothing can change a start of the day can it? The sun would rise, you will get some stupid ‘good morning’ forwards on your cell , the birds chirping away, the dogs barking.. But No, none of that happened today, I got up early… why in the heavens sake would I do that one would ask, especially on a Sunday.
Few hours down that line , and here we were, five sore butts, tired bodies, bruised bikes and a story that stays for ever.. Here is where I document it..

We just finished prash’s* birthday celebration , went to 100 ft restaurant and then coffee day, it was around 12:30 when we all said our goodbyes..Were supposed to meet at Carric’s* house at 6:30 the next day ( technically it’s the same day as it was past 12 ) , but as usual prash delayed, so we ended up meeting up only at 7Am . Carric had some bad news , the useless cops had punctured the tyres of all bikes for fear of theft, their reason, if we remove air from the vehicles the thief’s cannot steal your vehicle. I know, I know.. this is Indian cop situation for you, well so it was a long discussion whether to go or stay and watch a nice movie in the cozy comfort of the bed…
Prash n me being the lazy ones voted for the bed, well not the same bed so no assumptions please, the rest wanted to go .. so it was 3 votes agains 2 so we all met up at the puncture shop.. by the time we left there it around 8… So we headed, Destination Savan Durga..

After a long long ride, roughly 10 km on Bangalore roads, our stomachs had spoken, we stopped at a Shanthi Sagar for breakfast, we all ordered idly vada.. carric from morning wanted alcohol in his body, he went to search for a shop early morning… karthik* went with him.. pran*, prash n me ate our food waiting for the other two to return, n they had good news when they came back… many bags of chips, biscuits, Bacardi breezer, and beer..
So we ( 5 guys, 2 fiero’s , 2 pulsars ) fully filled with fuel started off yet again. Next stop, as carric put it was Savan durga. We got on the mysore road, that road is so so awesome, u can eat dinner off of it ( yeah that’s the correct spoken English wise guy ). So me and prash ( a fiero n a pulsar ) decided to drag, we came up on an empty stretch n came to a halt.. with two bikes with almost the same specifications and two riders equally good it would have been a good drag. So it started, we decided to do one km , who won? Well its really lucky that u cannot lap someone in a drag race.. Pulsar – 0 , Fiero – 1.
Thinking it was just luck and not sheer control and performance, prash figured 2nd time lucky, I even let him take a head start… well for those keeping scores Pulsar – 0 , Fiero – 2…
Took a turn just after a dental college, well the road went downhill from there ( in both sense ), and then weird noises started coming from my bike, two computer, two electrical and one electronic engineers deduced it was the chain causing the problem, well we carried on, luckily in the middle of a village we spotted a repair shop, got the necessary changes done, well I guess Fiero gets minus one for reliability.. a lill ahead we saw the Big banyan tree, if u ask me I think its just a hoax, they just look like a bunch of banyan trees growing close together.. anyway we decided to check it when we were returning..
So on the road yet again and karthik proclaimed ‘next stop savan durga’ , ok we stopped a few km later for a break to buy bananas and soft drinks.
We started yet again and traveling on the bumpy road wasn’t what one would call a smooth ride… then we saw the most beautiful lake we had seen in a long time.. forgot all about the stupid mountain, we all knew we had to stop there.. went down to the lake side, parked our bikes and three hours later we wondered how time flew… we talked about how dumb bush is.. we spoke about how amazing our lives are without women in them.. we spoke about what future holds for us.. we spoke about what we’ll be 5 years from now.. we concluded that carric would be married, rest were as confused as I am…
A couple of hours later, and a quick stop at the big banyan tree, where carric photographed some ‘graphic’ images of naked monkeys, we were back at Bangalore, went to another hotel cause we were all famished, ate loads of food, had lots of ice cream.. came back home.. tired.. bruised bodies.. bikes holding up just together… and yeah the memories.. we’ll do it next week for sure..

* some names n gender have been changed to protect privacy.

Its not a love letter

2006-02-23T13:13:00.000-05:00

Hey S,
Just wanted to say that I miss u too much… never thought it’d be so hard to move on…never knew I loved u so much… isn’t it always like that, u realize what precious things u had only after u lose them.
Just wanted to say a few things before we part our ways forever... I would call, but I would end up saying something stupid as usual, please believe me when I say I never wanted to hurt you on purpose… I never would make you cry on purpose…but I know I did… and u should know that each day I feel so sick for making u cry for silliest of reasons, and believe me I couldn’t regret anything more than making you cry.
I wonder how u tolerated me for so many years…
Do believe me when I say that breaking up with you is the biggest mistake I could ever do in my life.. bigger than not joining the only m.navy offer I got…
I know I didn’t offer you a shoulder to cry on when you did cry.. I know I didn’t hold you close when you needed to be held.. I know I didn’t do all those things I was supposed to.. I know I said all mean things, used dirty words.. I know I did all of those.. but do believe me , that was just the surface…
Insecurity cannot explain my over possessiveness, but I hope love can.. We had a lot of ups and down and it wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, but we pulled through..but I guess v were never meant to be…funny how our journey sounds just like a Hindi movie, the worst part is it ended like one too..
Thought we’d be good friends afterwards but I guess the 2 year ride was so rough , I wouldn’t blame you if you just wanted to run away…
Last time we spoke I said many things, I guess you know I didn’t mean one bit…
Just wanted to wish you all the very best for your future, may god bless you with all the joy and happiness u truly deserve, hope you are blessed with the two lovely daughters you wanted, hope you have the big black car you wanted, hope what ever you wish for comes true…
You told me long back that nothing could keep us apart, and trust me, nothing can. Remember the song I sang for you, I meant every word of it n I still do..

Felt so weird not talking to you on valentines.. guess life goes on right.. wonder why it isn’t easier though..
I guess I didn’t wish you as usual on the day, so happy valentines baby..

I don’t know if my ego will let me mail you this letter, but I sure hope u get to read it once someday…just so you know, I still keep the letter and the card you gave me safely tucked in a book, I still use the same keychain ~~you gave me~~ I stole from you and you know what.. whenever I need you, I just have to close my eyes and somehow I know I am with you.. I just reach out and I know we are just a small touch apart.
Good bye baby, god bless you. I don’t know if I ever said this to you, but thanks, thanks for everything… just remember this, if at all you need me sometime in the future, don’t hesitate to call, am just a heartbeat away…

Me

Top 10 things one should not do while buying a laptop.

2006-01-25T13:29:00.000-05:00

10. Don’t take leave from office to buy a laptop. The prices are the same in the evening.

9. Don’t walk into a computer shop asking for a, and I quote, “Black laptop”. Colour doesn’t guarantee performance. Instead use terms like RAM, GB, in fact better yet ask an office geek what he wants for Christmas, note down the first 5 things he says.

8. Don’t dress up in formals hoping for a corporate discount, it works only in hutch shops. Take extra notice to this point if the temperature inside your clothing is hitting the I-can-wash-my-clothes-with-my-sweat stage.

7. Don’t forget to read the fine print* , you might end up paying a few grand more than the price u thought.

* Something like this.

6. Don’t buy a laptop just so you can check your mail, the office desktop suffices for the same.

5. Don’t fall for cheap selling pitches like, “built in Mp3 player” , “User Manual FREE with operating system” , “FREE carry bag” , “FREE battery and charger” . Nothing is free in this world, or any world for that matter.

4. Don’t sell your Mp3 player figuring you wouldn’t need it anymore as the laptop can substitute. The truth is, a laptop cannot fit in your pant pocket. No matter how fat you are.

3. Whatever you do, don’t sell your Mp3 player for half its cost price.

2. Don’t pay few extra thousands for a functionality you don’t understand, remember this analogy, if you cant pronounce it, chances are you’ll never use the word.

1. Don’t make your dad pay for the laptop and then claim you bought it with your ‘hard’ earned money.

In case you are wondering why hard is in quotes, you should read my post about my daily routine in office.
Anyhow in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I bought a laptop, and no, I didn’t find a black one, but I sure got an awesome mp3 player built in…

If the feeling of love is the same as eating chocolates, why do I feel so miserable?

2006-01-05T11:17:00.000-05:00

She sits alone by a lam post,
Trying to find a thought that's escaped her
mind.
She says there's the one I love the most,
His type's not far
behind
She never lets me in only tells me where she's been
When she's had
too much to drink,
I say that I don't care I just run my hands through her
dark hair
Then I pray to God, "You gotta help me fly away" and
just
Let her cry if the tears fall
down like rain
Let her sing if it eases
all her pain
Let her go let
her walk right out on me
And if the sun comes up tomorrow,
Let her
be, let her be

This morning I woke up alone found a
note standing by the phone
Saying "maybe, maybe I'll be back someday"
I
wanted to look for you
You walked in; I didn't know just what I should
do
So, I sat back down, had a beer and felt sorry for
myself

Last night I tried to leave
Cried so much I
could not believe
She was the same girl I fell in love with long ago
She
went in the back to get high
I sat down on my couch and cried
yelling
"Whoa Lord whoa, please help me. Won't you hold my
hand?"

Let her cry if the
tears fall down like rain
Let her sing if
it eases all her pain
Let her
go let her walk right out on
me
And if the sun comes up tomorrow,
Let her be, let her
be
And if the sun comes up tomorrow, let her be

I wish it were so easy, I just wish I could just let go.. I wish I could cry it out.
I wish there was help somewhere.. I wish I didn’t let her cry.. I wish I could fly away..
I wish I didn’t feel sorry for myself.. I wish someone could help me let go.. I wish it weren’t my best friend. I wish things could be like they once were.. Just wish there's one good reason for me to get up tomorrow morning.. Just something I can look forward to. I just hope.. Hope I can love again..

And if the sun comes up tomorrow, let her be.. I wish I could...I really wish......

If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, wouldn't it be a Merry Christmas?

2005-12-25T04:14:00.000-05:00

Its Christmas,
Doesn’t feel so without our Christmas tree in the vicinity.. had to leave it behind when we shifted, it had grown in tremendous proportions. So, besides that, there are no gifts from anyone, and I am tired after a 150 km bike ride. Let me explain.
So the day started as any other Saturday would, me getting up 7ish cursing my project leaders, managers & colleagues and then realizing it was Saturday and getting back to the comforts of my razai(blanket).. anyway the entire day passed by watching TV, checking mails( too many automated greetings I say ) and most importantly eating food..
So it was evening and I met up with few of my friends at brigades, went to a restaurant to eat ( it’s the purpose of survival ) and sat right across a few drunk men…
Now I don’t know about u, but I find drunk people pretty amusing.. and being the person who doesn’t drink [read loser] that much [read broke] I take my ‘highs’ watching others in their momentarily lapse of reason.. and I take my pride in making fun of them the morning after ( generally afternoon by the time they get up ), in case u want a few “drunk” stories I’ll be more than glad to share.
As much fun it was watching him, we gobbled up our grub and head to the church. By the time we reached there the crowd was scarce.. but building up rapidly.. and this being next to the catholic club, the ‘all-night-party-animals’ were present there.. and I still wasn’t sure if my handkerchief had more cloth then two peoples clothing combined [and this was the church mind you]..anyhow after mass.. we headed towards our bikes, filled em up with fuel [ god it costs like 50 rs here ] head out towards ‘Nandi Hills’.
Its about 60 km, approx, from Bangalore, well if one doesn’t consider that we missed the turn and went about an extra ten. It was cold, and wearing two shirts and a heavy jacket was still not enough. We were freezing in the cold, and luckily spotted a tea stall open. [ it was about 2:30 AM ] had a quick tea.. maybe coffee, we are not really sure..and head towards the top of the mountain.. it was just too exciting, cool wind in ur face, visibility down to a zero[heavy fog] and gravity opposing you.. reached to the top only to find out the ‘gates’ would open only at 6 am , so we had a 3 hour wait, so what, we didn’t come here for nothing.. We opened a packet of chips we purchased at the tea stall.. it was open yet no one was taking a chip, it was too damn cold to take your hands out of ur pockets.. yet the brave souls [read fat asses] risked frostbite and hypothermia and started eating.. fog was building up and temperatures were dropping by the minute, and it was too too quiet, a sharp contrary to city life, its then we decided that v couldn’t stay up there much longer [ now that the chips were over ] and decided to head back.
If is fun riding the bike when u can see zilch.. and actually stopping to ponder upon where the road was. Regardless, we reached the foot of the hill, a journey of about half and hour, atleast in one single piece. Then on it was a cold ride back home, freezing temperatures, high speeds, it’s a wonder I can type now, for the fact that they had gone num in the morning..
Reached home at about quarter to 6.. just about the time the ‘gates’ were supposed to be open.. didn’t even think what it would be, if v stuck around there. Slept long, just woke up in between for the cursing and swearing.. Cold, tired, 150 kms, and Christmas has just begun…

Merry Christmas one and all, to you and your loved one(s)… May the warmth of this festive season bring comfort and joy in your heart. Here’s wishing you a bright, happy and prosperous new year.

Here is a story u might wanna disregard.

2005-12-22T09:27:00.000-05:00

Theory - women are dumb.
Materials required - positive IQ

Preface -
Being in an environment where females are considered 'bugs'...not 'bugs' as in slimy, repulsive eight legged things, but 'bugs' as in blood sucking, sleep depriving creatures. Somewhat like mosquitoes, cause i still don’t know the purpose of the existence of mosquitoes on this planet, do they serve any good purpose? Coming back to the dumb women part, i quite apologize for this big generalization, the fact being that this concept of "dumb women" came about with my own personal experiences and stories of my friends or my friends friends. but mind you, these all come from highly reliable sources..so they can be treated as good as if it happened to you.

I know i cant base my theories on the few dumb women i've met.. but in a sea full of fishes, if u swimming for two decades and see only green fish, u tend to think each and every fish in the sea is green*.

Now now, dont get me wrong, i am not saying that all men are born geniuses or something.. but the fact being, leave out George Bush and u can safely say that all men have an IQ above their shoe sizes..Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but i wont go into that.. that is a new post altogether.
As every theory in physics has substantial( lovely word eh? ) proof associated ( I promise I didn’t use thesaurus, I am using notepad ) with it, so to support my proposition ( man am i on a roll or what? ) here are some snippets you ought to know.

Proof -

Man - can I have your snap?
Dumb woman1** (DW1) - why?
Man - So I can send it to Santa.
DW1 - So sweet of you.
Man [confused] - Huh?
DW1 - It’s so thoughtful of u to send it to Santa so I get good gifts for Christmas.
Man [still confused]

Few hours later on the phone with someone.
Man - can I have your snap?
Dumb woman2** (DW2) - actually I don’t have one snap right now. I have one in which I look slightly fatter.. And there is this other one where in I am wearing a red dress but the background is not nice.. Another snap of mine I'm wearing a shirt which doesn’t match my pants.... [3 min later at a break for breath]..i have a normal snap. I'll get [friends name] to scan it and send it to you... But why do u want it?
Man - I want to send it to Santa.
Dumb woman2 (DW2) - But why Santa?
Man [out of words] - here talk to DW1

DW2 - what was that about?
DW1 - nothing they were testing their pick up lines.
DW2 - Really? Oh I didn’t get it.
DW1 - Neither did i.. Oh we are so dumb..
[laughter]
DW1 , DW2 - A@#$fgdf GF@#$df DG@#$Fdfbg DFvf$%^DFG fgD#$%FGdfg DFG#%DFjtyju^
Man [To himself] - Isn’t that my cell? DAMN!!

Dumb Women3 **(DW3) - I came to your house, the other day, but u weren’t at home.
Man - Which day?
DW3 - Friday evening.
Man - No, I was at home.
DW3 - But ur bike wasn’t there
Man - So? I had given it for servicing.
DW3 - Oh ok.
Man [confused] - Wait let me get this straight, you came 5 odd kilometers out of your way to meet me, then u came till my doorstep and not seeing the bike u left without ringing the door bell.
Dw3 - Yeah I tho...
[loud sounds of screaming muffled the voices]

But don’t get me wrong, not all women are dumb.. serious. there's got to be someone who doesn’t lower the average IQ of an uninhabited furnished room when they walk in..Take for e.g. that chick who invented penicillin, then again.. didn’t she die because of the 'research' she was doing?
But hey, giving credit where its due, women have scaled to the top in every aspect of life, business,IT,civil.. even space. Last i heard there was this Indian born woman going to space, I wont talk about her, its ill to talk about the dead they say ( may her soul rest in peace, Amen )

Conclusion - Some women are VERY dumb, and the others are men***.

* I used green, it could as well be yellow or black..

^ Its the merger of two women complaining at the same time, if u can’t understand it, then you are male.

** Being a work of fiction, these instances don’t represent any individual alive or dead, and any resemblance to anyone is purely coincidental.#

# Yeah Right!!

***The above conclusion doesn’t hold good if any of the following events are reported to be true,
Newton actually died because he was standing below a coconut tree testing gravity.
You can read this inspite of being the president of the United States.
The first man on the moon was actually a woman. ( This point is still under controversy )
Thomas Edison actually preferred candle lit dinners.
Alexander Graham Bell got calls from telemarketers.

But guys, don’t be happy yet, thank your lucky stars that women cant tell one end of the remote to the other.. if the women were'nt that dumb, I don’t see a point why they would even consider dating someone like you… so all said and done.. And I seem to have said a lot of stuff.. We all are happy women are that way(atleast most of them).. As the age old saying goes, cant live with them..cant live without^^..

^^I mean, how can a fish live without a bicycle...

I'm not a poet , this aint a song..

2005-11-23T08:37:00.000-05:00

Its not the past , it’s the history..
Its not the laughter , it’s the
fun..
Its not the ride , it’s the company..
It wasn’t the distance , it
was the journey..
Its not how you look , it’s what you feel inside..
Its
not about holding hands , it’s the warmth of the touch..
Its not about
making friends , it’s that connection with someone..

Its not about money
, it’s what ya gonna do with it..
It wasn’t about jealousy , it was about
avoiding pain..
Its never why , it’s always why not..
It shouldn’t have
been about the kisses , it should have been the closeness..
It was never
about the song , it was only the words..
It wasn’t about the love letters ,
it was just the way I felt..
It wasn’t about love , it was love.

The world is more like it is now then it ever has been before

2005-11-01T00:40:00.000-05:00

Had a few days leave, so was upto no good... just lying in my bed, TV, bag of chips and my new cell... in case the word hasn’t spread, I bought a Nokia 7610, black and red.. Apart from the sexy looks it has, its got a whole load of features.. surfing has never been so much ~~porn~~ fun before..
So as I said I was upto no good past month or so.. fell sick so many times.. I’m already into next year with my leaves at work.. so it was just my bed, my TV and my cell...
Has anyone noticed how many ads seem to be displayed on out television screens lately.. of a 30 min soap, I get to watch 10 min of stupid ads about some freakin aerated drink I’m supposed to buy cause some stupid sports/movie star was heavily paid.. all they end up doing is making a complete ass out of themselves..Take for e.g. the new pepsi add, the one with SRK acting like that snake charmer, someone please do me a favor by explaining that add to me. I haven’t seen a more idiotic add than that.. coke did a good thing by completely stopping airing their ads few months back..and just for that I drink only coke nowadays..With 60% of the population around the poverty line, I think companies like pepsi should do more than coming up with idiotic dumb phrases like "oye bubbly" ... if only I had a cent for all the times I’ve abused the advertising geniuses of pepsi..
Ok now I’m not saying that all adds on TV suck as much as Pepsi’s... there are a few creative people around.. sprite used to do well mocking pepsi...(though I have to admit its not that tough)... but haven’t seen an add lately..maybe they followed coke on no stupid ads..not too sure..
but I have a few favorite adds.. you might remember a hot woman, wearing a black dress sitting at a café. I’m sure u'll recollect the add when u hear the words "One black coffee, please"...Lately there haven’t been so many good adds around, though MasterCard always comes up with a good one here and there...there are something’s money cant buy ( yeah, I hear you.. don’t believe you )..
Incase one wonders why I’m taking about advertisements so much..here is why.. 24 hours in a day.. 8 hours sleep, remaining 16 hours TV.. of which 6 hours are ads..so there u have it..1/4th my day I’m watching commercials..
As for pepsi, I am not going to drink another sip, unless they stop their stupid adds.. hope many people follow..
I thought I was the only one feeling like shoving that bottle up Pepsi’s creative geniuses rear ends..then a small search around google reveled that there are many like me..
If you have jobless people in your workplace, you would have got this awesome forward.. this short kid goes to a soft-drink machine.. puts money in and gets one pepsi can, he does it again.. picks them up, arranges them on the ground... then the next scene shows him standing on the two cans putting money and pressing the coke button...which was obviously too high for him to get to before..Now thats great advertising...pity they cant telecast it.. if I were the CEO of coke.. I would stop all stupid ads for a whole year.. then play this add on tv..and give pepsi the money saved in that one year when they sue..maybe thats what they are doing.. its been over a few months.. we’ll wait n see.. its worth the wait..

Another series of stupid ads are from pizza companies.. Anyone knows someone who dances around after ordering pizza? Or does anyone know anybody who orders two pizzas to impress the girl next door? Get creative people.. what the *%$# does "basi dhekela" mean anyway.. and for the information of the general public.. last 4 times I was in pizza hut.. there was no "stock" of freshizza... yes those were the exact words.. sorry, no stock.. I though they make the dough after you order..how can there be stock then? And yes.if I want to get fresh, I generally take a bath..not eat pizzas.. wanna get fresh? indeed..
And don’t even get me started about the shampoo commercials.. the way they portray their product..i don’t use it and its a big surprise that I’m not bald or dropping snow flakes off of my head..

Hey what's up with those hutch ads? where ever you go our network follows? They have the most shitty network service.. half the conversation goes in 'hello-hello.. can u hear me?' What if there are two people standing at the same place..and one of them goes away, if the @$%#@$ network follows him.. what the hell is the first one supposed to do?? guess that explains the service..atleast they have a cute dog in their ads..but i guess they can double up their subscribers by replacing the dog with a semi naked woman..

I found a way to beat the system.. I stopped watching adverts… what do I do when they annoyingly pop up on my TV screen? I switch channels.. that’s what everyone should do.. stop watching adds.. The break is generally 2-3 min.. so u can switch back in time.. or u might end up watching something much better than what u were originally watching.. win-win situation..

So all I’ve been doing is complaining that adds on TV suck.. many of u might be thinking.. ok, lets see you come up with something better..
Since I hate pepsi, I wont do them any favors of coming up with decent ideas..let them stick to the "oye bubbley"...can someone believe that they actually thought people would buy that cd they came up with titled Oye bubbly.."Commercials use ugly stereotypes to appeal to the lowest common denominator" says the creator of commercialsihate.com. Amen to that. you wont find any Indian ads there, but the sentiments are the same..Pepsi actually thought someone would pay 150 rs to buy a pathetic cd with stupid songs (oye bubbley included) when people think twice before buying their 10 rupee beverage..
Enough said..here is the add for MasterCard...
Scene : A young couple..
Voice over :
One short skirt and a tight top 940 rs
Trip to the lake in her favorite car 560 rs
A romantic dinner under the moonlight 1820 rs
The look on her face when you pass the bill to her.. priceless
There are something’s money cant buy....

As for many companies in the likes of Pepsi. that’s one giant leap. Backwards.

A tear falls forever, inside a broken heart.

2005-09-06T15:31:00.000-04:00

The two of them met on the dance floor, the music softened, the lights grew dim, he asked her, “Could I have this dance please?”. He didn’t have to, she was all his. She didn’t say one word, just looked into his eyes. He knew the answer.
He held her hand, took her to the middle of the floor, he held her so close that he could hear her heart pounding, so loud that it masked the sound of music. They didn’t need a song, the rhythm of their hearts was music enough. But nevertheless he started singing to her. She held him closer, the warmth of his breath made the hair on the back of her neck stand.
His hand on her back and hers on his shoulder. He was wearing a black suit, she was draped in red silk. They danced to his song. The crowd around them separated giving them room, but they didn’t need any, they had all the room they needed, never did either one ever feel so comfortable, as they did now in each others arms.
The dance floor atop the cruise liner was among the finest on this planet, sea on all sides, lights of the harbor at a faint, safe distance away. Cool wind blowing on this moonlit winter night. The stars shining in their sparkling sensation. The cruise was coming to an end, everyone in a blissful mood. The slow revolutions of the disco ball adorned the space with colorful polka dots. The spot light was searching for a couple.
They moved in such perfect harmony. The world was their stage for that instant, but they couldn’t be concerned any less, they had their entire world in their hands. Atleast for now.
As he continued to sing, meaning every word he sang, she wanted to cry, he sang so beautifully…but how could she show the hurt and the pain she was going through? She was brave, very brave… The song ended, the dance seemed to last an eternity for them, but it was only for a few moments.
He missed her, he missed her way too much, the worst way to miss someone is to hold them in your arms, knowing you can't have them.. They had to go their separate ways. The way he figured…if you love something so much you only have to let go…and if its meant to be, life would fall into its place.

But somehow this time he knew that it wasn’t meant to be, atleast he didn’t see her coming back. He knew it was the last time he would hold her so close…the last time he could hear her breathing, the last time looking so piercingly at her, that he could see the angel of an soul she had. It was the last time he would feel the softness of her touch, the last time to feel the warmth of her heart… It was probably the last time he’ll ever see her.. but one has to let go…he had to let go..
She pushes her body close to him, he holds her tighter. Their lips meet…for those few seconds all their worries dissolved, creating an eternal bond, they close their eyes for a brief moment, just to savor this timeless masterpiece of an instant, to etch it into their memories..
Opened eyes, gazing dreamily at one another, they stepped apart… She says “I’ll never forget you”… He stands there mystified… he wants to say so many things… he wants to so badly apologize, to tell her that he was sorry for everything.. but there was so less time, she looked at him one last time as she turned around the corner, the tear drop from his eyes replaced a thousand words he could have ever said…she looks away.. mumbles in her heartrending breath.. “I’m sorry too” …

I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons.

2005-08-28T04:52:00.000-04:00

I started working on the 8th of July, well this is kinda like my first job, if you don’t count the part time things I used to do. I mean, frankly, charging your mom to eat her cooking was just too mean, but hey, it was hard earned money… The company I work for ( well not so much work as sitting, acting busy, drinking cappuccinos and café lattes ) decided it was time to teach ‘freshers’ about money management.. and so we had a seminar on taxation and benefits.

I learned two things sitting there,
1- The difference between tax exemption and tax evasion.
2- It is an absolute must to visit the rest room and then attend a 2 hour seminar.
After a great deal of explanation, it was an no-brainer that tax evasion was illegal, some various examples were cited..in the pretext of telling us what not to do, but from where I was sitting ( extreme end ) , I could see the slight wink every time he told us something illegal.
Thus we had my dad signing a receipt for rent for the house I live in, its just plain simple-fool proof, my parents charge me to live in their house. How hard can it be to explain it to the I-T dept if at all I am caught? Apart from all the illegal methods ~~I came up with~~ he told us, there were some actual legal stuff I could do, to avoid paying those greedy govt. officials, but I still don’t understand as to why I cant write off my shopping expenses and restaurant bills, aren’t those the most important things in life, roti-kapda-makan? But no, exotic trips, cars, travel, insurance, all were important..but not my food! Another thing I don’t understand is the major hype about life insurance... some people are proud to insure themselves for millions but at the end of it all, they don’t get the money, their family( or in some cases their pet ) gets the money, frankly speaking when I go( go as in die ), I want my family to be sad and to cry, and bagging say half a million will definitely make them list the pros and cons(the cons being minus half a millon) of me being alive, now wont it??

But the way I figure it, if I spend all my money as soon as I get it, the ‘guys’ cant ask me to pay them, cause, hey, I have nothing to offer! Its either that or go to the Himalayas and renounce the world, then come back a year later, write a book about the things you learned ( or make them up ) and hey, instant fame, fortune and funds ( my favorite f’s.. n for your information my favorite B’s are beaches, beer and beds [I sleep lots] )

All in all it was a decent seminar, at the end I had just one doubt I had to keep to myself due to reasons, the doubt being “Is there anyway I can end up paying more tax than what I earn?”…He left us with the caution that we should declare our investments/expenditures and then at the end of the year produce bills to support the same, being the spontaneous / at-the-moment person, I am not really sure on what I will spend my money on..so I think its really unfair of them to ask me…and thus I concluded ( in the words of Oscar Wilde) that I have nothing to declare except my genius…

Chewing is an exercise right?

2005-07-31T11:39:00.000-04:00

Yeah I started working on the 8th of this month, not so much as work as eating and drinking on the campus, well here’s how my daily routine goes ( warning, contains a lot of eating , so people on a diet, I suggest u click on one of the ‘blogs I read’ link and continue there, but for the brave heart and grumbling stomach, here goes )

6:00 Am – ( Rrrrrriiiinnngg , tring tring ) My alarm clock and my mobile go off simultaneously (not a mere coincidence I may add, I just set it that way) , my hand has accustomed to the swift motion of switching the knob of my alarm to off while that of my mobile to snooze, in less than a hundredth of a second…

6:40 Am – My poor faithful cell phone keeps reminding me to get up from my lazy butt, but the hand is faster…

6:45 Am – Finally my sweet ol doggie ( please don’t mistake words like doggie to mean small, she’s a huge great dane ) after her tiring morning walk starts her process of waking up the neighbors and their dog, and it inadvertently wakes me up too..

6:50 Am – I take the long walk upstairs to my room, I generally end up sleeping downstairs cause that’s where the TV is.

6:54 Am – Yes I am finally upstairs ( 4 min u think eh!!! U try and climb 18 stairs early morning ) , switch on my computer and on comes winamp.

7:00 Am – I start brushing, it generally takes a lot of time, mostly cause the brush doubles as my mike. And there's the daily mail check too.

8:00 Am – After a lot of hassles and major decisions like which pant goes with which shirt, or which hair gel with which perfume, I am finally ready.

8:08 Am – I put my head gear ( my mp3 player’s headphones and helmet ) and head to office it generally takes around half an hour with decent traffic. But yes I am in the process of finding the optimum route and time to start to reach just 2 min before break-fast is served in office.

8:39 Am – Just in the nick of time, the office canteen timings for breakfast are 8:20-8:45, so I generally end up hurrying through the long lawn and swipe in my card ( I have to put in 46 hours of work weekly )… I mean come on, I wont eat b-f there on ‘my’ time, now would I?

9:00 Am – After a relatively light breakfast ( generally 3 courses in my office ) and nice coffee, I am at my desk.. I switch on the computer and wait for it to boot up.

9:08 Am – Finally I press ctrl-alt-del to log on, and first thing, go to the intranet and check the menu for the day. Then I check my mail, lots of rubbish, project manager sends his specifications .blah blah… nothing cool ..

9:45 Am – Its hard work trying to look busy, but where in all I’m doing is opening a lot of programs and pressing alt-tab whenever someone walks by.

10:00 Am – I get a mail/sms from a colleague to come for coffee, its just a few meters away, a huge coffee vending machine… you have about 10 different coffee and tea options…

10:50 Am – Loads of kick from caffeine and a lots of gossip and its back to alt-tab, someone mails letting the ‘freshers’ know about some 1hr talk on some thing we couldn’t care less about, but as the manager says, its mandatory to attend, we all find our sorry asses at the designated room

12:15 Pm – That moron took longer than was speculated, so he got a bad feedback..

12: 20 Pm – Its back at the canteen, this time for a full fledged 4 course buffet meal, generally seating is hard to find so one generally ends up sitting not where one wanted to, for example I found myself sitting with senior executives who were discussing about a project I was apparently a part of, and I couldn’t relate to a word being said..

12:45 Pm – Lunch gets over pretty quick, and since there is a 2 hour lunch-break window, all of us find ourselves right across the street in the biggest shopping mall in the city..

[The author realizes that here onwards a sudden switch from first person to third person mode has taken place for no apparent reason, and since the lazy son-o-a-b that the author is, it wouldn’t be changed]

1:30 Pm – Back at the desk, its time for mail checking and hoping the person you’ve been eying for the entire week has replied to your mails, the excitement is endless, and when you find out you have received a mail from your project leader to attend another lecture.. one just wants to cry.

1:45 Pm – Seated at the conference room ( they don’t use the word classroom ) wondering what next, you hear the voice you so badly wanted to hear, ”sorry couldn’t reply, just saw your mail, figured you’d be here… is this seat taken …”
Of course it wasn’t , and a few messages (sms) go out to your colleagues (who were supposed to be seated there) that if they come near you, they would die!!!

3:00 Pm – It’s the official coffee break, where the waiters serve you coffee/tea and biscuits sometime cakes,

4:00 Pm – Lecture is still on, but you don’t mind, you’ve got great company… and mistakenly you forget your writing instrument and have to share it with 'the someone' sitting next to you, only hoping that it doesn’t fall out of the pocket where you hid it..

5:30 Pm – Its snack time at office, everyday a different menu, sometimes apple pie , sometimes plum cakes, or cookies .. We all love it anyway…

6:15 Pm – After the shutdown of the computer, its time to head home, with the headgear back at its place it’s a 45 min dash home,

7:00 Pm – A quick change into shorts and sports shoes.. its back on the roads again… this time to play badminton, ripping through traffic, only to realize that all courts are busy anyway..
patiently waiting for my turn…

10:00 Pm – The court in-charge has to literally drag us outside cause its time to close up…

10:15 Pm – On the road with smartoxymoron, deciding its coffee day (but usually a mix of bakeries, coffee places and ‘chat’vendors) this time..

10:35 Pm – Coffee finally served..glup it down…

11:00 Pm – Reach home, tired, mom realizes how tired I look, and fixes a great meal.. eat every last morsel of it..

11:15 Pm – Its TV time again..

6:00 Am - Rrrrrriiiinnngg , tring tring

For the inquisitive here’s how a general day’s menu looks like

Breakfast- MASALA UTTHAPPAM, BREAD JAM,SAMBHAR,CHUTNEY.
Lunch- KACHUMBER, PLAIN PARANTHA, CHANNA MASALA, WHITE RICE, DRUMSTICK SAMBAR, ALOO CAPSICUM, BRINJAL, MYSORE SOHN PAPDI & ELAICHI BANANA.
Snacks- VEG SANDWICH ASSORTED COOKIES

Don't worry about life; you're not going to survive it, anyway.

2005-07-16T14:40:00.000-04:00

I started blogging not for reporting my daily activities, but to spread the word... to make people think outside the ‘box’… to make people realize that the best feeling one can get is not when one receive their pay checks on first of each month, but when they wake up early morning, living their dream... everyone has a dream... some just forget their goals.. or they live someone else’s!!
Choices are many, the safe choices are few… an engineering degree + a software job is the safest of them all… go early morning at 9 and come back at 6, for the rest of your life… many people don’t care, they get $ at the end of the day, and that’s all that drives many…then there is the arranged marriage at 25,26 to someone who is “fair” and “educated”… Kids at 28 and 31… and kids follow up.
What I don’t understand is why people are afraid to think big! Is it so hard to have a dream…what happened to the voice inside you.. what happened to the countless days gone by when u sat thinking … how cool would it be to be singing on stage with million fans screaming your name… what happened to the announcement you were planning to make… “please fasten your seatbelts, this is your captain here” … what happened to the million practices of “ I dedicate this award to my family…” what happened?.. Can you honestly tell me that you actually dreamt of a 9-5 job? Don’t tell me, I know the answer.. you don’t.. so tell yourself, ask yourself… go to a mirror somewhere close by, (and in case u aren’t in the vicinity of one, increase the brightness of your monitor till it starts reflecting)… and repeat after me… “I wanted a nine to five job” & “I am happy with my job” … repeat now closing your eyes… tough right?
Failure is a part of life.. some brave men say, failure is life… there are countless setbacks in each of our lives, but sitting and mourning about it wont help anyone’s causes..

Everything happens for a reason, every event has a purpose and every setback its
lesson… failure, both professional and personal are essential for personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of rewards… never regret your
past, rather embrace it as the teacher that it is…

Believe me there are practically no differences between you and people like Diana, Gandhi, Mother T, Mandela, or the heroes who laid their lifes for their countries..the only difference is that they had a dream, and had a passion...what is your passion?
Just don’t do something ‘cause your parents think u should do so, they just want best for their kids, and what do they now what drives you? Maybe hiking in the Himalayas , or river-rafting in ganges would be the best thing for you… but they don’t know it.. only you do.. having a roof above your head and food to eat are the bare essentials of life. ( clothes to wear doesn’t fit in, cause many “costumes” I see in clubs/parties can be made out of single handkerchiefs and they don’t cost a thing )
You cant blame anyone for your misfortunes, failures… you cant say u are this because ( insert parents/uncles/friends ) forced me to.. you are, what you allow yourself to become…
Take a risk, and by that I don’t mean put all your money on “rising moonshine” ( that was the winner of the Bangalore derby ( horse races ) sometime back . ) no one can stop you from doing something u love… probably the only person who can do so, is you… Just do something that you usually wouldn’t do on a Monday morning, maybe surf in the chilling waters of the ocean, maybe go-carting , maybe a new career… just do something, if not for yourself, at least do it for the person you were 10 years ago…maybe 20… when u used to dream.. when u used to imagine..
Many shirts i've seen say that ‘tomorrow is the beginning of the rest of your life’, do you believe that? Or is tomorrow just another day? Do you dare follow your passions… do you dare live a dream? Do you dare reach your destiny as it was meant to be? Do you dare believe that you can? Do you dare explore yourself? Do You?

In today's world, anyone who is not confused just isn't thinking straight.

2005-07-07T10:38:00.000-04:00

I got placed here through college, i finally want to have a career in this field. i got an offer from here, though i rejected it... i got another offer from here, this time for a better post... i accepted it, but in the end i want to end up here. but for the timebeing i am working here, though these people think i will join training in august, and these people think i will work to complete the bond period...
Though i got an offer from here , which is quite related to this. i don't know what to do...i think i will wait and watch!!!
Oh lastly i work ( or atleast eat the canteen food, free. ) here.

ESCHEW OBFUSCATION

If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown too?

2005-06-24T18:42:00.000-04:00

If you watch WWF, you know what a 'Tag' is. She gave me a list of five questions. So I'll do my best to answer them as honestly as possible (Truth? You want the truth? I can't handle the truth! ) and since 5 are far too less, I'll try to make some up on the way and answer them with the same honesty. Also since I love "Whose line is it anyway" this post goes as a dedication to that show, and I'll make it a point to answer every question with another…(the 'questions only' round in case you are wondering)... So here goes nothing…

1. What is your name?

- If A is D, B is E, C is Z, X is Y, what is GREAT?

2. What have you done in life?

- Does drinking 6 glasses of water everyday count?

3. Are you educated?

- Is glass transparent?

4. Do you have a better half?

- Are you single?

5. Have you been in a serious relationship ever?

- Are you single?

6. Do you have the 'hots' for anyone?

- Does M.J love children?

7. What are the two things you want to include in your sex life?

- Are you implying anything?

8. Describe your most erotic fantasy.

- Do the words, hill, stars, and solitaire mean anything to you?

9. Which your favorite restaurant?

- Isn't one like the rest?

10. Would you get a plastic surgery for kicks?

- What makes you think I will like that?

11. Have you thought about your future?

- Is the circus in town?

12. Do you have bath everyday?

- Do I look like I need to?

13. Do you like pizza?

- Does a camel like igloos?

14. Have you ever tried underwear belonging to the opposite sex?

- Is Paris Hilton a virgin?

15. Would you prefer dining with friends or family?

- Would Bill rather be with Hillary or Monica?

16. Can you cook?

- Did the delivery guy die?

17. If you wanted to vomit in public, where exactly would you do it?

- Why do I always have to decide?

18. Would you rather be rich or in love?

- Can I love money?

19. Mom or Girl-friends?

- Hotmail or Gmail?

20. Comment about "love at first sight"

- What do you think about the phrase "survival of the fittest"?

21. Favorite TV serial?

- Didn't I already mention that?

22. Favorite soft drink?

- Can't we all get along?

23. What soap do you use?

- Why do people bathe?

24. Thoughts about hairy noses?

- Do you really need to know?

25. You listen to music?

- Does the pope like the bible?

26. When do you sleep?

- When does the sun rise?

27. Are you bored answering this questionnaire?

- Yes!

English - Who needs that? I'm never going to England! Or am I?

2005-06-18T14:51:00.001-04:00

I am writin (note that there is no 'g' at the end, so that makes me "Cool, hip 'n' happening") this post not because I want to, but 'cause I have to! My online blogent suggested that I am losing readership cause of my sad and rarely updated posts. In case you are looking up 'blogent' in the dictionary, I suggest you don't, I just made it up. I'll explain.

You see, I was clicking on the top 'navigation-bar' to go to random blogs so that I can read new stuff ~~and figure out whether I would be caught if I copied some posts directly~~ and spend time on the internet in a constructive manner, most of the blogs that I came across had fonts not found on my computer and I never "Install additional fonts", and those which I could actually read had so many unfamiliar words. I was pretty bored with nothing to do and so I copied the entire texts onto word to find synonyms of god-knows-what-they-mean words. I noticed one thing, none had the red underlining, meaning not one spelling mistake. So I concluded that all the bloggers first write in word, use thesaurus as they please, then copy paste it to their blog. I then realized that blogger gives a free spell check utility, so sweet of them. Anyway, needless to say that half an hour wasted. But that's ok, we have 48 half hours daily.

Remembering this site I saw with this irc conversation regarding time, spending another 1/48 ^th of a day finding it…read on.

<zillion> Dammit. there needs to be more hours in a day. I was thinking.. And it seems to me, that it's possible to make more hours in a day
<zillion> slow down the earths rotational period by making an array of HUGE weights, on elevator like objects, around the entire world, and raising them & lowering them as we see fit.
<zillion> kinda stupid idea.. but it might work.
* RideR slaps zillion silly
<zillion> no really! stand on something that spins. Hold weights in your hands, and start spinning. As you spin, bring your hands into your chest, and see what happens.
<mrdata--> you spin faster
<zillion> You spin almost 2x faster.. seriously.. i might be onto something here.
<mrdata--> I think the figure skaters figured this out already
<RideR> zillion, yeah but do you realize how much rotational inertia the earth has...
<zillion> yeah. but none of them figured out how to make the earth spin faster, now, did they? :>
<RideR> zillion, that would just control how much light we received a day, you would still have to sleep ya know
<zillion> hehe.. then drop the bastiches ;)
<zillion> rider: yes, only an average of 8 hours.
<zillion> we could have longer work days.
<zillion> and add a day to our weeks.
<zillion> have shorter years.
<zillion> age slower
<zillion> longer days = longer nights.
<zillion> but a down side... if we slow earth's rotation down too much, we'd spiral closer into the sun.
<mrdata--> zillion: don't do it! :)
<zillion> I want to talk to someone about implementing such an idea.
<mrdata--> hehe
<zillion> laugh at me will you?! I'll throw this planet into the sun!
<mrdata--> if you do it.. make an X screensaver out of the model ;)
<zillion> hahaha
<zillion> rule.
<zillion> oh man. If I time it right, we could make it so earth colides with venus. then a third planet would probably be formed from the debris.
<zillion> and evolution would have to start all over. but wouldn't have enough time (only ~4.5 million yrs) until the sun becomes a red giant.
<zillion> and we'd all die. earth would be no more.
<zillion> whoa.. I just made a diabolical plan, worthy of any James bond movie! ;)
<zillion> you know! if we time it right, we could swing earth down past Venus.. like, 1 or 2 days before intersection, and slow it down enough, so we could have 2 planets collide with the sun!.. or not. :o

Being one among the smarter (if not the smartest) people on blogspot, I figured it was up to me to come up with new, improved words suitable (or not) for the English language. This is when I came up with blogent.

Blogent – noun

1. A person who acts on behalf of bloggers.

2. A person who manages business, financial or contractual matters for a blogger

3. A person who takes active participation in spreading the word around relating blog stuff.

Plural – Doesn't exist, 'cause no blogger can be represented by more than one blogent.

There you go, my first word!

Deviating a little off topic, did you hear Rita Coolidge's version of words? I am listening to it right now. Did you hear that the lyrics for that song came from her grandmother's uncle's gardener, (uncle as in father's brother and not any elderly unknown person as we use it in India)… it was passed on from generations in the family, then Rita's mom's cook was humming this tune, that's how Rita got the song, she had a lyrics (given to her on her 18 ^th birthday) and a tune. You haven't heard this? Well neither have I, so I guess it's not true.

Also my blogent suggested that I have a more personalized blog, using a personalized menu/template. After hours ( exactly 14min ) of searching, I downloaded a few templates and spent the better half of my day ( that is evening, I like it better than morning, its too bright in the morning ) trying to fix it up. Only succeeded to accomplish it on my Photo-Blog, the tables somehow are allergic to my posts here. Then I spent the remaining part of the evening watching TV.

Cable TV rocks, I have so many channels, few Japanese ( maybe Chinese I don't know ), I don't generally watch channels out of my comfort zone ( BBC,CNN,STAR World, ZEE Café, Travel n[notice the 'cool'ness] living, discovery, history, sports etc ) but sometimes when the net is down, I switch to Japanese (maybe Chinese I don't know ) just to get away from it all.

Since I didn't get the template up as I wanted, I convinced myself that it's the posts that define me and not the look of the blog! Yeah that's it, I don't like grapes, they are generally sour…

Such parting break the heart they fondly hope to heal.

2005-06-12T14:29:00.000-04:00

A message from a friend,
“I’m off to the airport, kinda sad, kinda depressed. Am leaving behind a family, a family of friends, you’ve been a great friend, Thanks for the great years I’ve had. Thank you.”

Well got me into thinking, why people share such strong bonds, why is parting so difficult, why is goodbye such a hard word to say, why isn’t it see you later, why is it goodbye? Why?

Got a shock from another friend,
“Hey, I’m leaving Bangalore for good, this month end… I hope you’ll come to Hyderabad to visit me… we’ll meet when you come for a holiday”

Yeah I’ll meet you, I don’t let go so easily… have moved so often my entire life, dad being in the army… I was always the kid who was leaving, I was always the one sitting in the car,waving, hoping that I’ll meet new friends, hoping I’ll meet new hearts. Never thinking how those people I was waving to,felt, never wondering how many souls I managed to touch… a few weeks back, I was chatting with this person I knew from so long back, we were recalling our past, she remembered one evening when it was raining heavily, I ran up to her and shared my umbrella, dropped her till her house… I mean it was pretty logical to me, friend in need thing… but after 8 years she still remembers… her house was a little off my route, but I guess these small gestures really matter…

One of my friends told me,
“Hey, guess what, my tickets to Australia have been booked, I’m leaving first week of July”

It’s hard to leave something behind, wondering if you’ll ever see it again, it’s hard to leave something behind, wondering if you’ll ever feel it again…I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again, the world’s not that small a place, I just don’t know. At least one thing is good, everyone’s future is made, all of them know where they are heading, no one is playing with their future like me, for me, I just have to wait and watch.

One of my friends while graduation told the college,
“When I was leaving school, I was almost in tears. My teacher took me to this painting and asked what I saw, I said that I could see a few ships at a harbor. He then asked what I felt was wrong with the painting, I said nothing, cause they really wasn’t anything wrong, the painting was perfect. My teacher then told me, the ship doesn’t belong there, it belongs to the sea… the sea is hard, it is rough, it is scary, the harbor is where the ship is the safest…but the sea is where it belongs”

School was safe for me, college was safer, I don’t know what the world has to offer, but I’ll take what it gives me…
When I was leaving school, it wasn’t too hard, ‘cause I knew, I’ll meet most of my friends time and again, now I just am not too sure… have a few parties the next few days… after that.. everyone’s going here and there, but hey, life starts after college right?( or was it life begins at 30? ) But one thing’s for sure, when I need them, I just got to close my eyes and they will be with me, whenever I need them, I just reach out my hand, and they’ll be here… We only part to meet again...

A forward was being circulated around my college,
“Those late night coffee’s, those nightouts, those internals, those begging for marks, those horrible teachers, those 58 pathetic exams, that tension before results, those boring hours in class, those smses that we all enjoyed during class, those bunking classes, the awful labs, the many fests, the enjoyment… its all gone! Now you’re an engineer. “

Just don’t know how to let go...just don’t know if I want to let go...

The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic diagram.

2005-06-04T12:40:00.000-04:00

Finally it’s done, four years have gone by, its left barely a smile, ending a huge chapter of my life wouldn’t be easy… but it has to happen. Everybody fears change, it’s not always a bad thing… at least I hope so…
Four years have been good, great I would say, I have kept my scores up, got placed … you couldn’t have asked for more out of a B.E degree… but letting go is always so tough, you need something to hold on to… I almost went up to my teacher and asked if I could come back in case I had doubts, which I don’t generally do, ‘cause trust me, that saying “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach” isn’t a joke…

I did say that engineering would have been great, but last few months have been miserable in college… the juniors having so many tiffs with my classmates, so much so that those guys are breaking a 60 odd year old tradition by not giving us a farewell party…One thing they don’t realize is that they will be working under us in the companies that they join ( *evil laugh* )… apart from that, the constant battles with the X, its become a daily affair now… kinda like the daily routine, brush, bathe, argue…
Things escalated to such an extent today that I swore I won’t see that face again, ever! What else could I have given as a birthday present?? Eternal peace! The best gift I could possibly give…

Well technically speaking college is not yet over, I still have my project presentation, and there are high possibilities that I might have to give today’s paper again ( yeah, I didn’t do very well )… but that’s a small possibility… the college is giving a farewell to the outgoing batch, lunch included, but the several lunches I’ve had (for free) from the college was just a small quantity of bisi bele bath and curd rice… but still stealing that one sweet from my classmates plates was always a good challenge ( Oh, and did I mention that we cant take seconds? )… you can always take a new plate and start over again but that behavior results in glares from teachers and often resulted in a decrease in your internal assessment marks… For those of you interested I was(am) doing my Electrical and Electronics Engineering from M.S Ramaiah Institute of Technology…
The Party is on the 8th, but I wont be going, at least I don’t think I want to face you know who there, oh and those interested again, the X is(was) my classmate…and we dated for 2 years, well 1 year and 11 months for those keeping score…

But small issues aside college life was fun, no beer, drugs for me though… first semester was full of “wow check that out” , “ I heard she’s sleeping with him” , “I heard last night he got so drunk that he puked on himself”… second semester was more like “wow check that..who gives a shit” and that drawing subject( I hated that drafter)… third semester involved a lot of basket ball and bunking… fourth semester was Table Tennis / badminton time… fifth semester was the “getting hooked on to the relationship mode” _________________________________ memory lapse. Jokes aside, the journey was bumpy and rocky but what path isn’t … we had lots of fights, lots of tears shed…but somehow the good times, however few they might have been, always outshone the bad ones… there were some really bad times, but we pulled through it… but never once I heard the words “You’ve ruined my life” … I guess it was time to move on, countless apologies later, the dent is still there… I don’t know how I have done so, but…

Few memories of my college days will travel with me to my grave…those last minute assignments, bunking classes, canteen food, trips we took, those power station visits, the countless jokes that ran around, smsing in class, food court, winking games, uno, that last minute studying, complete nightouts, fests, the crowd… well the list is long, but you know what I realized… its not just a few memories I’ll carry with me, its those four years…

It just Goes On

2005-05-07T14:42:00.000-04:00

Life has its own strange ways, it pounds you down when you cant stand
straight, it tips you over, when you are about to fall, but one has to be
strong…one has to carry on…
We all need a reason to live… a reason to
believe, we need something to hold on to… someone to hold on to… The Feelings
are so strong that it draws you closer… you could be a million miles always, but
you would feel the hug, you will feel the kiss… one touch of love takes away all your
pain, all the sorrows… fills your heart with bliss…

Days gone by
staring at the empty road below, eternity passed thinking, what if…wondering,
why not… We all have to go separate ways, change is a part of life, change is
life, but we have to carry on the faith, we have to carry on the belief, that
one day we’ll meet again…that one day we’ll love
again…someday.

Time does not wait for you or for me, days pass and
years pass by, you lose your loved ones, you move away from them, your life
changes, friends change, society changes!! But your heart has those precious
moments etched in it, whether you want it or not. It is there! Making you happy
at times when your heart is low, makes it painful at times where you can bear no
more. Your heart has those moments in that corner where no one else can see, no
one else knows what you are feeling…no one knows what you are thinking… They ask
looking at your blank face…and you… you just smile…saying “Nah, Nothing” …

Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.

2005-05-05T17:24:00.000-04:00

I've been listening/learning/playing this song, Yaroon, it's a Hindi song, took about one hour to search and download. It was worth every millisecond. The wordings are simply amazing (the guitar cords simple, I like songs like these), I wish I could play the song for you all, but my voice is not the canary-filled it used to be, am down with throat infection again. It’s the kind of song one can so well relate to. The kind of song which brings back so many memories, like the time I caught my first fish back in Shillong, wanted to show off my “catch” so badly that I forgot to reel it in properly and it somehow got unhooked and got away, and nobody would believe me that I caught one. They still don’t. Yet another ‘it got away’ tale apparently… The time when I got my first bike, it was a mountain terrain model, boy! me and my brother rode it till the rubber wore off. The time I climbed on to a horse, rode off into the sunset, the beautiful evenings playing cricket, the time we all went boating when it was snowing. It was so so so cold, but nobody seemed to care, the beautiful Himalayas seemingly took the cold away. I remembered my numerous attempts to be a success at rock climbing, who could have guessed that defying gravity could be so hard.
I was sitting here thinking about my childhood, the setting was so perfect to do so, slight rain, hot coffee, amazing music. I found a wallpaper on google, that I used to have on my comp 6 years back. All my history with this computer returned, the numerous websites I created, the failed attempts trying to get my friends passwords (irrespective of what may be said elsewhere, I don’t do that anymore), the thousands of formats, we’ve come a long way. I have upgraded it a few times in case you are wondering what I am doing with a 6 year old comp.
This song “Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits was one of the songs I could relate to so well… I always pictured myself singing this song to my ‘going to be fiancé’ just before the proposal ( that way it would be so hard to refuse ) … the wordings fit so well “I cant do the talks, like they talk on TV, and I cant do a love song, like the way its meant to be, I cant do everything, but I’ll do anything for you…………. All I do is kiss you , through the bars or a rhyme “ … yeah the plan was so superb, till this day when a friend of mine told me that this song was about a prostitute, v had so many arguments about this, no general conclusions could be made, but the charm of the song was gone… if anyone can clarify, please, please do so…
I never realized this, but I loved my past, wouldn’t change a thing about it… hmmm come to think of it, I might just want to be a little extra careful with the fish.

A Love Struck Romeo

I believe the Internet is an information source, not a lifestyle choice.

2005-04-22T17:25:00.000-04:00

Here is the deal… I was dead bored today… the boredom continues… a heavy dinner, 3mini pizzas, huge bowl of ice cream and a heavy doze of caffeine (mixed with a little coffee) to keep me awake, for studying, for the test I have to take tomorrow morning…wait… today morning… in 6 hours… I cant sleep, neither can I concentrate on studies… I mean who the hell is going to use the process of inverse Z transform ever?? Not like anyone is going to use Z transform, but at least it was easier… nevertheless I slept on my bed thinking I will get up early and study… that was 2 hours ago… now… I am like a walking zombie who is sitting in front of the computer…

So I was thinking on how to better utilize my time… I have like an hour before I was supposed to “get up”… so I figured I’ll use the time to improve my website… I logged on, only to realize that when I made it last… it was perfect… no other improvements could possibly be made… unfortunately due to my anonymous stance I cant tell you the url… but… take my word for it… It Rocks!

So I decided to come up with many wonderful wacky witty wone (that’s one) liners.. sort of like bumper stickers, only longer.. these are things on the top of my head… might be that I may have heard them elsewhere before… so if you’re placing a claim on anyone of these, then write a detailed description of how/where/what/when you came up with it…the circumstances that led you to that line… any evidence…and no your moms testimony wouldn’t count…and then print the document and throw it in the trash…anyway here goes my attempt to be ever so funny…

1. Mr. Humpty D was pushed…government conspiracy!

2. Nobody dies… everyone is buried/burnt alive!

3. I am not fat! I try my best to fit into my rather large clothes.

4. It was actually a banana which fell on Newton’s’ head!! But the apple farmers had better ideas… they used their marketing skills…

5. There are just 6 colours…anyone (women generally) who thinks otherwise … well they are plain ol stupid…

6. When a milk carton says 25% extra, it means u have 25% more water !

7. When an edible item is mentioned as fat free… it’s indeed correct… they give u fat, absolutely free with it…

8. When a used car sales representative says, “This is the best car in the universe”… before buying it… consider why he does not own it.

9. When buying a new mobile which can store 1000 txt messages…consider this… do u know enough people who’ll send you so many sms’s.

10. Well that’s all I got actually.. But a round figure would bring me peace.. so long folks… wish me luck for the test I have to go through tomorrow… my bench-mates are counting on me… lucky for me they don’t know what I am upto... But that’s just our little secret, shhhhh….

Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are.

2005-04-13T15:41:00.000-04:00

A simple line by “ Houssaye “ , I don’t know who he is… I do not know when he said it… but when I read the quote… I just sat there… thinking… thinking whom I love…rather what I love…
What am I passionate about? What do I want from this world? I sat there thinking, just one thing I really love… the one thing that would make me complete… no, it is not the “perfect love” . I really don’t know…
Would money make me happy? Maybe, I would never know…If yes how much…( To actually test it, wire donations to visa account no E-39410 ).. a man is never satisfied… I just read my own wish list… the one on the right side menu… I bragged about having “perfect friends” … the “perfect lover” … and you know what… nothing… the love was gone… the friends turned their backs… the two things on the very top of my list… gone … as sunshine on a rainy day… at least my cell was fine ( for people worried about it with regards to my previous post, she handled it well ) … but as I quoted “upgrade my cell” … I couldn’t believe what I wanted… I was so ashamed about what I wanted ( my wish list ) that I immediately took it down.
Awesome marriage, perfect job… now what is perfect? Does a perfect job mean a really good salary? Something you love doing? Something that will put bread on the table? Something that you are passionate about? I wonder how many people can look me in the eye and say “yeah! I love doing what I do… cause that’s my passion… that’s what I was born to do” … I really want to hear that…it might give me some hope. Enough hope that I could say those same words one day to a really confused kid…
I hate people telling me that I work here, I work there, I get paid this much, I am so happy with my new job… it really saddens me ( not because I don’t want them to be happy, but)… these people grabbed the first opportunity they had…never gave their dreams a chance…Could you honestly look into a mirror and say “Yes, this is what I wanted” … I bet you couldn’t. Everybody when they were kids used to say… I want to be a doctor, save people… I want to join the army, protect my country, I want to be an astronaut, see the world from outside, I want to be a pilot,fly into the clouds... How many did follow their dreams? Yeah how many?
I don’t want to be one of them… I want to follow my dreams… I don’t want to play it safe, taking a pathetic 9 to 5 job sitting behind a stupid computer… I really don’t.
I want to give my dreams, my passion, another chance, and then another one after that…

And I sat there wondering what I love so much…the voice inside me reminded me…yeah… I love the sea… I just don’t know why… the first time I saw it ( back when I was 10 on a family vacation ) I just fell in love with it… I couldn’t care less about the pony back rides or the cotton candy or the delicious chaat places that bordered the beach…I just kept gazing at the waters…
It has been quite a few years since I’ve seen the coastline… but the smell of the ocean air… as strong as if it were just following me everywhere… I am not a poet else I would have engraved countless lines about the ocean on a hard wood… poets write so many verses about the sun, the moon, the rain, etc etc… making full use of thesaurus ( :P, I assume )… but not me… if I love something… there is no way a few lines could describe how I feel… no matter how beautifully fabricated it might be.

As the saying goes, “Those who wish to sing always find a song.”… I have a song! I just need somebody to listen… My dreams is to work close to the ocean… as close as it can be… maybe I will… maybe I wont.. However, the truth is… I will keep trying…cause you know…I am not a dreamer.. I just dream………

3 Strikes and you're out! Atleast if you're playing baseball..

2005-04-11T11:59:00.000-04:00

Today -
1. Got up at 9:25 when i was supposed to meet my friends at 10 Am
2. Slept for another 30 min figuring that if i am late anyway, let me make most use of my time. :P
3. Took almost an hour to get ready. ( skipped breakfast, the most important meal of the day )
4. Took the longest route possible ( Taking account the fact that it might be less crowded )
5. I was wrong!
6. Reached college only by 11:30
7. Lied to my friends that i was given wrong information.
8. They didn't buy it.
9. Went to a place where they offered unlimited food at dirt cheap rates.
10. Ate a lot. ( what else did ya expect )
11. After that went to this really amazing newly opened coffee shop. The waiters were wearing really expensive clothes.
12. After looking at the menu, i figured that i was somehow paying for them.
13. Drank a lot. ( well this i don't think you expected ) . Played the word building game. Came fourth ( wow clap-clap ) . There were only 6 of us.
14. All this with my 'X' and friends
15. Went 3.5 hours early for my doctors appointment, asked them if they could advance it. ( i wont use the word prepone as it doesn't exist )
16. They didn't. Waited for 1.5 hours for a period of 4 min with my doctor.
17. Came back home and changed and went for my workout ( i needed that ) .
18. Went to sister's house, she recently came back from a trip to Singapore.
19. Who would have guessed she likes chocolates too.
20. Collected all the goodies she got for me.( Food included.. chocolates i mean.. )
21. Spent exactly 2 min on the treadmill. Maybe 3. Didn't time it. Lost 4 Calories.
22. Came back home. Switched on my Computer.E-mailed 'X' . :-) . It was due.
23. Stomach Ache and bad Cold.
24. Heavy doses of 'Pheniramine Maleate'.
25. My Mobile Chat buddy lost her cell.. Can't message her now.
26. Ended up chatting with 'X' .
27. Dropped my cell on the floor. She ( i consider that ) is fine though.Little bruised. But she is a strong girl, she'll get over it.
28. Am Blogging neglecting the fact that i have loads of work to do.
29. Somehow its gonna effect me in the long run.But hey who cares.. Got to keep the fan(s) happy.
30. Its still 9:30........

Each morning as I awaken you're the reason I smile, You're the reason I love.

2005-04-09T10:58:00.000-04:00

Today was one of the hardest day of my life... I had to send the following three messages ( mobile text messages ) to all my friends..

" Hey all, Sad news... ***** and me have decided to call it quits.. Not because the love has diminished or something..but..these things happen...We have enjoyed our journey together, and will cherish it all our life. Though we aren't BF-GF anymore, we have decided nothing would change with regards to our friendship..we were and will always be best friends. We both hope that you continue to shower us with your love and support, cause we really need it during this rough time... "

" Though the reality of the situation has not hit us yet.. and we still act like a couple .. heh heh..its tough for a two year learning process to be unlearned in a day.. The people who should know about this breakup have already been told so via sms.. We would really like it if the word doesn't leak out... and also if we don't talk about it when we are together..maybe in the future if situations are ok..we might give it another shot, but we'll have to wait and watch "

" The reason for the breakup is a pretty personal thing.. atleast as far as ***** is concerned.. so we'll share it with you guys sometime when both of us are comfortable with it..till then we both hope you all understand and trust our judgment on this matter.. Henry D once said "For those who love.. time is eternity.." so both of us will wait.. See what the future has in store for us.. Until then.. the memories of our times together will always accompany us.. always giving us hope... "

The worst part is that we were supposed to celebrate our anniversary today..irony always has a funny way of showing itself...But the support our friends showed us was dazzling (More than 100msgs and counting...and several calls)... Anyway here's hoping for the best.. all good things must come to an end...La Bruyere once said "At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone"... but no we are not alone...we never will...

Due to budget cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel will be out.

2005-04-05T15:41:00.000-04:00

Yeah its here.. Value Added Tax.. Don’t really know what it means, or how/If it will affect me… but as long as fuel prices remain the same, who cares. ( One third of population cares I guess, cause they are on strike )
I really don’t understand how this taxing system works.. all I know is u get Rs X as your pay (on paper).. you get Rs X/2 cash. Now that’s what I don’t like.. I mean what am I paying for actually? The stupid, corrupt, government officials? Those people want yearly tax on roads ( now its once and for all when you buy a vehicle ) I mean with the pathetic condition of the roads, you (government, not Blog reader) should actually pay me to ride in such conditions.. Now they are going to charge me on every transaction I make with my credit card? What rubbish is that.. I get charged to use my Rs X/2..hey atleast I save up money on parking, I mean now that the government ( full credit to mayor ) decided to scrap parking fees( the Burglar special ) , hey atleast we all can ride on our unicycle.. There was this time, they were going to tax people for having generators, Morons can’t provide 24/7 power supply and for those people who want it, their reply TAX. And here’s the best thing you’ll ever hear, I ( my family ) got penalized for using less water, so they charged 20 Rs. for low usage of water.. that’s not tax, yet its too pissing off.It's not the money,but, the fact that they can charge us for something like that.
But these electricity officials ought to go jump in a well… I’ll dig it personally… or better yet, let them just walk on one of our roads.. one of the million( no exaggeration here ) potholes will take care of them.
You got to hand it to our city officials, the all nighters they pull when a foreign dignitary comes is worth applauding… As long as we are killing people, next in line are bus drivers, they not only should be killed, but after death their bodies should be burned ! ( Don’t they do that already? ) … You will never see more reckless driving. And who can forget the sweet ol Auto ( taxi ) drivers… their bodies should be suffocated … in like a air tight chamber..

I don’t know what I am cribbing about… I am not earning… I don’t pay tax.. but seeing people suffering, that I cannot take.Or maybe it’s the fact that I am just pissed..Maybe they'll remove tax by the time i start earning...

Anyone can give up smoking, but it takes a real man to face cancer.

2005-04-05T12:40:00.000-04:00

Recently at a party I had been to I tried my hand at smoking, not because I had a craving for nicotine or something, its just that everyone was, hot guys, hot girls, semi hot guys, semi hot girls, you get the point right? I did the most logical thing to do, my effort to fit right in, I asked my brother to give me the cigarette he was smoking, for half a minute I just held it between my fingers, didn’t know what to do, how to smoke, nobody had tutored me that, my conscience fighting a losing battle.
Finally I moistened the tip, took a deep one in, my body wanted to do the most rational thing. I wanted to cough. I never wanted to do anything more in my life at that moment, I just wanted to let out the smoke that filled my lungs… but that would be so “uncool”… I kept it in… exhaled slowly… tried to make a ring of smoke ( that’s the cool part about smoking by the way )… least I should say, that it’s the effort that counts.
Half the cigarette was over… with only one actual contact with my lips. My brother who was quietly observing my facial reactions passed me water ( so sweet of him ), but my friend this ego guy, wouldn't let me…
A few years back I wouldn’t let go my principles no matter what, I never would succumb to the pressure of the outside “cool” world… I would never smoke come what may! But hey, times change, I still don’t know what made me do it, I still don’t know why I did it… but the bottom line is that I smoked…
How disappointed my better half would be when I tell… so I decided not to … made my bro take a oath that he would carry it to his grave or mine whichever came first… but that night before I said "goodnight, I love you", the general routine… it came out… “Honey, I smoked… but just once”… a long silence later… “Its ok honey… just promise you wont do I again… swear on me”… so I did… and hey I pledge to my blog readers “as long as there is oxygen in my lungs I promise not to smoke a cigarette again”
Now cigars and pipes … that’s a totally different thing.

Your mouse has moved. Windows has to reboot for changes to take effect.

2005-03-26T11:41:00.000-05:00

Okay… For all those who didn’t comprehend the topic… it simply means that I formatted my comp again… yes… this must be the third time this month… any particular reasons one might ask… well not really, I just love formatting my comp ( Lots of sarcasm intended )… well for those who are technically sound with windows, I had to format cause that stupid thing( Microsoft Windows) simply doesn’t work… I downloaded this file … and it says requires Win98 and above to run… and I was most definitely running Win98…
Hasn’t anyone noticed? It took the computing power of a P5, 16 MB ram and a 1 GB harddisk to run Win95, while it took the computing power of 3 commodore 64 to fly to the Moon. Something is wrong here, and it wasn't the Apollo. Never heard this one before… don’t work neither had I, that is until I received this FWD from one of my friends…Some windows users are simply too funny, one of my close friends runs two copies of windows… when asked why? I am faced with the question why not? Last I heard, that friend wanted Win-2000 too... better networking apparently…
So Coming back to my formatting skills … hey I am actually getting pretty good at this thing… from old Win to new Win in less that 40 min… together with all the drivers… impressive eh!! Hope Microsoft recognizes my talents… they need more people like me into their staff…The worst part about formatting is not the “handling another Windows setup”, but ya know what really bugs me… it’s the fact that all stored Passwords aren’t stored anymore( so much for the computer whiz)… so much so that I couldn’t log on to blogger.com for a long long time…
Hey Today was a Grand Festival in India… called HOLI… it’s a season of colors… for more details go to google.com and search for Holi … you might get more information…
Anyway Back to Windows… it really isn’t a joke that there are more we-make-fun-of-windows websites/forums then the number of Windows CD sold… but hey not taking too much credit away from Microsoft, piracy is also a major factor… I would really point and laugh at someone who pays 200$ for a windows license… Recollecting the major disasters of the last century my FWDed mail quoted “Hiroshima '45 - Tschernobyl '86 - Windows '95”… Some may ask why not shift to some other OS… god no .. I am happy with windows… its actually really good… it does make my P3 seem like a P2 but then … beggars cant be choosers…
The same Friend of mine was pretty confused one day…called her computer savvy friend and said that something was wrong with the floppy drive… apparently the floppies weren’t going in… It said "Insert Disk #3", but only two will fit!... heh heh… kidding people, not that dumb my friend was. Is! So as I leave you all today, I just have one small query… If Old McDonald had a comp, would it Eee-aye-eee I/O? ( Sorry for the lack of humor in this post… am too tired after re-installing Windows )
Oh yeah about this friend ...Honestly to be fair… they really should put “This side in” stickers on all floppies…

I don't care who you are, Fatso. Get the reindeer off my roof !

2005-03-21T16:45:00.000-05:00

Today, after a spell of about a fortnight, I finally mustered the courage to do something I’ve been putting off for a really long time now…So I removed my shoes and my heavy clothing…and took that final step… here I was…all alone…standing on my weighing scale… after a lot of circulations of the analog scale, in a span of time which seemed like eternity… it finally came to rest…I slowly opened my eyes… a chill ran down my spine… No today wasn’t that day… it wasn’t the day when I cross the 200 pound mark! No not today…
So in my glory of happiness I stepped down…as though I was stepping down from the top step of the podium when my F1 car finishes first… the same feeling a Toyota Car Feels lapping a Ferrari…As you would have figured I watched the race this weekend… being a Ferrari fan myself it was pretty bad I must say... but on the brighter side, hey some new faces on the podium, some different names up on the top list… I already love this season…
So I got down from my moment frozen in time… for the first time gravity didn’t dampen my spirits… and here I was wondering how to celebrate… when the call came “Dinner is ready”… I knew what had to be done…”No. I am not hungry”… I think all the cells in my stomach which require energy for existence screamed in unison… cause I could hear this loud sound… have u ever heard a volcano erupt? After a lot of convincing myself that food wasn’t that necessary for life ( hey!! compare it to oxygen )… and about a gallon of water…the brain had spoken… it will help me in the long run…After an eternity of dieting ( 24 hours to be exact ) … I hadn’t lost anything… I heard that would happen…but still…
So around two in the morning I went to my kitchen … got me some biscuits…kept them in front of me… Still debating … the pro’s and cons…
The pro’s of loosing a ton of weight are plentiful… think about it… have u seen an overweight dude, get a model as a wife?? Well unless you’re rich..really rich.. Trump’s lucky that way… Since I am not rich! Well that leaves me with no choice, now, does it…
Another advantage is that fat people are hard to kidnap… haven’t u noticed??
The con’s of loosing weight aren’t much… unless there’s a time when fat is beautiful… there might be a time soon… but before that I am sure we will have the ‘bald is beautiful’ stage… that should be fun don’t ya think?
So after long hungry hours… sitting and staring at my stomach…wondering if it had gone in by an inch or so… I knew something had to be done…So here’s my advice to all you people out there… if you’re on a diet and can’t keep your mind off grub… then I suggest blogging is the best remedy… I haven’t thought about food for the entire duration I’ve been writing this post…( hey G.W!! Isn't the post about food )
So here I was all done with the post just about to publish it, sitting in front of an empty packet of biscuits… god!! I wonder who ate them …

Life is 5% what you make it and 95% how you take it.

2005-03-18T16:35:00.000-05:00

Have you ever thought that life was unfair? Like the way that you never get what you want … or the way that you can’t seem to figure out where you’re heading in life… and everyone around you has their future laid out for them… Did it ever happen to you that everyone around you were discussing their 50th birthday party plans, or deciding which continent to go for a vacation, and you were still trying to figure what to wear the next day...or where you’ll eat ( Food is very important you see, and it wont hurt if u went fully dressed to a restaurant , research shows that the service improves by 36.8% if you are wearing clothes )

How many of you stay up all night long thinking what or where you’ll be 5 years from now… will u be with someone, or will u be facing the cruel world all alone… Does loneliness scare you so much so, that you pick up the phone at 3 in the morning to call your better half just to say ‘I love you’…

Its been said that you make your own future…someone please tell me, how do I go about it? How do I start? Is there a magazine, a book or something…”The Dummies guide to making your own future” someone write it.. its gonna be a best seller, take my word for it. Hey maybe I’ll write it one day… yeah I can be a writer… great.. that was easy!! Or maybe I’ll be a astronaut… they pay you really well ya know… but I don’t get it.. why would anyone leave everything behind and go somewhere .. don’t know when you’ll be back, or if you will..
Many of my friends and colleagues plan to go abroad, study and settle there.. I still don’t know why people have to though?? I mean… I really don’t think I can leave 2 decades of my life behind and start all over again… Probably never see the friends you grew up with again… never see your first crush again…never see your loved one… cant even look at the moon and think “miles apart and yet we gaze at the same thing”… Wait a minute!!! Sorry the moon thing you still can do I guess…
But after all that. Then what?? After all life’s a terminal disease…Wish I could live like I was 18..maybe 20 for the rest of my life.. I really don’t want to 60 thinking… if…only if!!

So here’s me… yet another 3 am… still thinking, guess I’m going to wear jeans tomorrow… and yes, I am eating Italian for sure… there Decided!! .. Yeah… think I’ll be a fighter pilot…astronaut still sounds good…maybe join the FBI… hey I can be a captain of a ship…yeah a captain of my ship!!!

Everything inspires. But some things more than others.

2005-03-10T05:03:00.000-05:00

The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

We all want to fall in love. Why? Because that experience makes us feel completely alive. Where every sense is heightened, every emotion is magnified, our everyday reality is shattered and we are flying into the heavens. It may only last a moment, an hour, an afternoon. But that doesn't diminish its value. Because we are left with memories that we treasure for the rest of our lives.

If You Lived in your car, You'd Be Home by now

2005-03-05T13:10:00.000-05:00

It took me about 1:21 hours (81 minutes) to get from college to home today! And it never used to take more than 30 min about a year back.. The traffic situation is maddening, the number of traffic lights seem to have quadrupled.. the number of one-ways doubled..where is this heading??They say, this city wasn't built for such expansion (Fact-700 new vehicles are added each day to our roads).. I mean fine..it wasn’t build for that..but still comeon.. is a pothole free road too much to ask for? With the temperature scorching and the waits at the signals nearing the 5 minute maximum limit, set by the “I-will-go-insane-if-I-don’t-get-out-of-here” confederation, people’s blood pressure is rising.. road rage is escalating.. I could see that today.. but I learned a few techniques to keep me smiling all through the trip, and I think it would be helpful to you all.. If u develop the right attitude.. u can find humor everywhere.. Riders screaming on their cell phones, after finding out that their spouse is cheating on them, while this poor soul is stuck in traffic.. Someone picking their nose is always a delight to watch aint it?? To entertain your traffic mates.. u can scream loudly, point at that person and laugh.. HEY what’s the worst that can happen?? You can always blame the heat if you end up in a mental asylum, now cant u??
If your hearing is awesome u can almost listen that constant prayer emanating from the crowd (God, Please let me reach office on time, if you cant do that, make sure my boss reaches after me.).. or was it the constant abuse directed towards the traffic cop, who cant seem to do anything right..but the day u forget to take your license with you, they emerge, slapping you with a 100 Re (that’s around 2.2$ for my Friends in U.S and as for my European friends, sorry, I dont know the current conversion rates) fine.. But if aren’t so gutsy enough, and stuck in yet another jam, look around.. you might find a familiar face. Look at your neighboring vehicle, Catch up on what that person’s up to (makeup, cell, music, talking to themselves… is all I got today), if your eyes meet, drop in a smile.. and if he/she ‘s very cute, drop in a bigger smile, they surely would smile back, sighing at the helplessness of the situation… and try your best to get the phone number of the cell sitting on the dashboard… and if you tried and failed hey the cell’s all yours (the flick and run offer)… if love cant keep you happy, a new cell surely would…

If you getting really really bored... I mean REALLY bored, then come up with witty, funny, weird, stupid, dumb excuses as to why you are late, or why you didn’t complete the assignment…and NO, my dog ran away with it, is no longer an excuse… But “This guy came home, he asked for my brother, when I said he wasn’t home… he got so disappointed that he banged his head on the wall several times, before collapsing… when he did wake up he’d lost his memory… then I spend whole afternoon trying to revive it to no avail… then I hooked him up to the parallel port of my pc, wrote a complex c program to send high frequency sinusoidal waves with specified magnitude and phase to his brains… after the first shock... he asked... “is your brother there” so I knew it was working.. after 3 hours of extensive sine-wave treatment...he was fully functional again, at which time I became aware of the fact that the chip for power control of my parallel port had burned out… so I couldn’t take print outs of the assignment” definitely qualifies as one …
Singing also really helps... a good song can take off about half the time at a jam...If you dont have a voice box of a canary...then i suggest keeping the visors and windows rolled down… if you are blessed with a I-will-make-it-big-one-day voice then hey, sing !! you never know which music director is at the same signal??Waiting for the next singing sensation! Another fun thing to do is translate songs... if you know two or more languages pretty well, then translate a song in one language to another keeping the same tune, try it, its sooo much fun. I use English-Hindi and vice-versa… think Beethoven turned in his grave once!!
Thinking of good bumper stickers is also a good idea.. stuff like "There are only three types of people in this world, those who can count and those who cant" "Rehab is for quitters" " Despite the cost of living, have u noticed how popular it is" really put a smile on my face...

So my fellow sufferers, head my advice, if you aren’t that lucky enough to see a upturned truck in the middle of the road… or catch up on a good fist fight… then do give a try at the humor thing. Lots of energy saved, and hey its better than honking at the guy in front of you, and definitely better than the questions you ask yourself “If only I left a little earlier...i woudnt be stuck here..” trust me… I was there before you,, and the situation was much worse!!!

Fact :- 3 weeks of your life is how long you will be waiting for the light to turn green.

P.S And hey do reply with things you do or end up doing when stuck in traffic… or things you think are vital for traffic improvement!

Don't confuse me with facts, my mind's already made up!

2005-03-01T17:44:00.000-05:00

Doesn't it bother you that people keep confusing u with their advice,when u actually dont need it? As one of my favorite 'Get-your-acts-together-and-start-thinking-about-your-future' songs "The Sunscreen Speech" correctly asserts,be carefull with whose advice you buy...but be patient with those who supply it.. so u can generally catch me in a crowd..nodding my head , but dont mistake it for head banging or any metal related thing for that matter.. it would be just that i would be taking in some advice..this thing varies, from the best possible route you can take to college...or when you should get married and sometimes why.. and everything in between..and when i say everything i really do mean it!!! I am yet to meet someone who says ' Take my advice, I don't use it anyway '!...They say 'your choices are half chances' ... now what's that supposed to mean??, what choices? what chances? i really wont understand..
Then they say Money cant buy you happiness.. i wish i could reply.. Happiness can't buy you money either pal!.. and who really believes in this shit anyway?? if i have money,i am happy, Period.
This thing someone told me during one of my nodding sessions 'No matter how much trouble you'r in..no matter how dark the tunnel is, you always have to see the light at the end of the tunnel..and work ..work your way..the light will shine brighter.' i assure you, he ended.. this time i couldnt take it.. i whispered to my friend,"he couldnt figure out it was a railway tunnel... the train is comming..PEOPLE RUN for your lifes"
And sometimes when i retire for the night.. i actually wonder..was today really necessary?? and as i say goodbye i will leave you with another piece of advice.... "Remember",he says,"Everything U've ever done your entire life has prepared you for this moment" oohhh i wasnt scared enough!!! {Song on my comp "From this moment on" Shania Twain}