hOw tO sAy hi

i shall now cr8 blasphemy.. wait that sentence is like.. all wrong. i shall now.. do blasphemy.. blasphemize?? da**it. anyways i shall now say something which is probably blasphemy to half of you out there.
i don't like FB. i did type out the whole name, but somehow i had this vision of fb cosp braking down the door in the night and carting me off to places unseen.

this is probably the nth post detailing how much i dislike fb. i mean what do you say?
you know the situation? when ur at a party talking to ppl... and suddenly everyone falls silent and is waiting for you to speak. just waiting for you to floor them with ur wit and uproarious hillariousness. speak da**it. say something funny. everyone's looking at u.. aargh the pressure is too much.
that's why i don't go to parties.
FB is something like that. everyone is right there. the most inane "hey how you doing" that you can come up with, is right there. the moment you ping someone, you have this sneaky sensation that ppl are smirking that you cant come up with funny things to say or funny cartoons of cats playing the piano at hogwarts or something slightly less banal. ok ok "I" feel it.
and its not like you can say anything else after 6 months of not loggin in and all you want to do is say hi.

what DO you say?

"hey i was just reminiscing about the good old college days and i remembered you and thought i'd say hi?"

ooooh that's a good one. let me write that down, so i can post it the next time i login. like after 4 months.


ps: i feel like i shud somehow acknowledge the nice folks who leave comments , but you know.. um... i really dunno what to tell u. so i will just walk away. and thanks for reading and not calling me a pinhead?? umm ok bye.

yuMm... sOme mOre pLs

so the cafeteria in my office does these specials.. local folks come by and sell jam, salsa , cookies, on occassion - pot... naah i'm kidding. pot might be legal in dear ol oregon, but no one sells pot at my office... that i know of.

but there was this lady on friday evening, handing out brownie samples.. and i had some. and they were awesome !! awesome and Awesome!

so, ofcourse i bought the pack and i was excited. here i cud go home and have brownies after dinner.. ofcourse i shud pace myself and not have the whole pack all at once. i really shud start that diet .. but man they were soooo goooood and goooey and delish.... and vegetarian to boot!

so i go home and K stopped by. and i showed him the pack. he wasn't very enthusiastic coz he's already started his diet. but ha! i'll start mine after this pack of brownies is o-v-e-r.

and so after dinner i go and open the pack.


wth. whats this powder? this is brownie MIX???!! when did this happen???
oMG was this, what that lady was babbling while i was tasting the brownie in the cafe???? that i had to actually Make em??? she can't talk while i'm eating awesome brownies... thats like.. cheating !!

by god i was so lost in its deliciousness i completely overlooked the fact that i have to MAKE the blasted brownies???? with APPLE sauce and vanilla yoghurt. what the heck is apple sauce and where do i get some stat?? do you think if i shook the bag a couple of times, they would appear????


aaaaw man, i was really looking fwd to a couple of them after the fab dinner.. and that's how we ended the evening. with K rolling on the floor laughing......

i ThOughT yOU sAid goOD neWs!

ugh.. all is lost. Mr T is thinking of getting P into our team!
disaster.

ofCOUrse all hell breaks loose , as soon as the indie folk hear about this.

and ofcourse you can hear all sorts of groaning and sighing from the lowlie tech coolies in the lab. ( i'm not racist..that's ME for crissake! )

what is he THINKING?? is this a test? of some strange how-long-b4-u-breakdown-and-stab-P-in-the-eye-with-ur-lunch-fork kind of test?? if so, then i do NOT want your bonus, or your help or .. or.. ok i don't know if i'll quit.
but good GOD. why HER?? i mean isn't it enough we slave fourteen... even eighteen hours a day ?? her?? HER?? her who looked at the android logo and asked me what kind of bug it was???

i think come monday morning.. you WILL see a lot of weeping , gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair.. and thats only me we're talking about. no idea how V will take it. he might quit! just plain up and leave! aah brave V. the only guy with a marketable skill set. lucky V!! how i envy you.

well folks. stock up on ur spirits. take a heavy swig. barricade the door to ur cubicle and wait for the news.

tHis iS ArT, dArNit!

aaaha! finally finished.

i can't take credit.. this was in the opening credits of miyazaki's cartoon, ponyo. while i discover that netflix is my friend...
i finished this over the weekend.

ps: you'r only allowed to say its awesome.
pps: what can i say? i really like blue?

:)






my left eyelid is still swollen :( but i can't really give that excuse for not blogging. how about this? i was busy earning that darn promotion.. which only means more moolah.. bwuahahahahaha ;P

update: everytime i feel blue, i just look at these paintings.... see what i did there?? blue?? get it? get it??

aM i ReaLly BacK?

if the only thing i get to hear everytime i call home is how "awesome it would be" for me to bloat up to twice my size and spawn a mini-me.. then thats what you too will be forced to read for the next.. oh say i don't know.. xx years.

so i thought my life had got boring.. now that i was hitched , and ppl ( my family ) finally left me in peace... but oh no! its just a short termed break i got. little do i know that folks are just gathering their breath for the next tidal wave of barraging.

so now... where is my escape plan and emergency runaway kit again? oh! here they are! we're all set and the only thing left to do is book the airline tickets to siberia or alaska.
i think i'll take my chances with russians/polar bears rather than listen to more of this right now..

hellooooo...... ppl...... i am not ready.... what part of that is so difficult to understand???
i would rather stick a fork in my eye.....difficult to grasp????... should i stick it and show you????

suRviVaL sKiLLs

going home for a visit is a serious test of your immunity, system, digestion.

with all the well meaning folks who insist you eat the special halwa, peda, khara, jalebi "they" made. it's not like they make normal quantities either. for some twisted reason, they make the same quantity you would have eaten if you lived there and then wait for you to finish it.
ofcourse then you have the offended moms/aunties if your unable to stuff your face full of awesome jamuns.

"omg, how could you not eat it. i spent 3 days making this stuff"
"maa'am you are better off, just giving me curd rice for 10 days, because my system is revolting so hard that its pushing all the stuff back the way it came.. through my easophagus."

i only have one response. "please pack it."

whatever you got. make them non perishable and pack them.

please i cannot eat it. 4 years of cereal and toast has made my system extremely sensitive to sugar and oil and fat.
one jamun is all i can take.
i can think about the jalebi .. the week after.
no no not eat it. i said "think" it.

now it turns out, i was the only one who made it through this trip with just some minor cough. the rest had fever, fever, jetlagged induced cold , vomiting , yada yada yada.
what? am i the only one with the constitution of an ox??

perhaps its all the conditioning trips i've had to india.

actually there is a secret. eat only idlis , dosas. yup for 10 days straight. eat only idlis and sambar.

tHerE's a GoOd reAsOn.. i kNow iT

there's a very good reason i don't call home often. i just KNEW there was.

i thought things were supposed to get BETTER ppl.. not WORSE :-/

sorry about the resolution and the stick figuredness. but i use paint. and you got the point didn't you... just click on the image. you'll be able to read it without having to gouge your eyes out... excuse me! there's no need for that kind of language !

wHy sO mAny S@!%#y dAYs?

everyone seems to be in a foul mood in the office.

everyone lives with their own set of prejudices about what would work, what is easy, what is hard and what they just don't wanna do.

and sometimes even the most amiable of characters turn into complete morons and start snapping back at you when all you do is ask them for a serial to USB cable.

aaah the ides of march.

what DO I do, when P asks me.. "what is that BUG?? is it the symbol for android???"

:O

< crickets chirping >

< appalled silence >

"uhh, sorry? what did you say? sorry the voices in my head were too busy laughing out loud in derision at your s****** for me to hear what you said"

finally sent off the h/w guy.. poor slob was crying that the s/w was too complex. and it was just too messed up. well welcome to our world buddy.

btw the word up there could be smelly.. well it COULD!

bAttLE cOnTiNUes

what ! you dare enter my lair??? [ ok my cube ]

why P, you have grown more bold and daring in the last few hours since i have declared war!!

this deed shall not go unanswered.

you enter my cubicle, i curse you with rotten tomatoes. < where all your tomatoes will rot 2x faster than normal in your fridge.. yes i'm devious >

grrrr....

coming in to my cube and saying i'm watching a movie! when all i'm doing is listening to some songs.

and you! YOU! you who were snoring in the meeting yesterday. i had the good grace not to poke you in the face while you were sitting next to me and snoring away to glory.

you.. YOU who was constantly harping about cookies and coffee when all you had to do was walk to the vending machine , put a dollar in and buy your own darn cookies!

grrrr ... how i hate thee , my arch nemesis and the curses of a thousand locusts on you.

fiGHtiNg tHe gOoD bAtTLe

aaaaaha! P! i am hereforth and henceforth declaring you as my arch nemesis of the workplace.

you have shown urself to be worthy of this title , through your dastardly deeds and twisting of basic facts of life and physics.

evil madam!! we are now at war! you are advised to stay to your side of the darkest abyss which is the second floor of our office and i shall defend my side of this hellish abyss.

ha! better beware P... i am fully cognizant of your manipulations and trickery. and also pure stupidity which is by far the most dangerous of the dark arts you practice.
but behold! i hold the axe of truth and physics and laws of nature with which i shall cleave your wicked arguments into a million pieces and render them useless!!

now begone! flee from the bright light of logic and reasonableness, run away and hide in your hidey hole...

au revoir
until our next battle.

< bows and exits meeting room >

[ wish i could suddenly stand up in the middle of a meeting, say this and leave in a hurry. expressions would be priceless ]

gOdS gEt aNGry , sO doN't diSs tHEm

ha ha it was funny yesterday.

i had to walk this dude through some s/w setup.

so now , Dude .. and i mean literally a hippie looking kind of dude, walks up to me and says he needs my help to install this s/w right..
since he was gonna help me fix my problems somehow, i was like "sure man, no prob. lets get started", and i grab by SD card.

now he spends atleast a good 15 minutes ranting about how linux is so messed up, and you have to do everything so manually. omg formatting the drive... so hard. < ofcourse i learnt how to do it, just a week ago. so now i can act all high and superior in front of the ignorant h/w folks >

so he says he's a h/w genius and a s/w idiot. hmmm well ur some kind of idiot.
and he rants about how they're team thought they would save a feq bucks by outsourcing to india, and its been such a waste, coz they didnt get any good results of moving part of the team there.
and how everybody is so effed up and no work is getting done.. and blah and blah and blah.

so i was briefly flummoxed about how to move an 8GB OS to a 4GB card, when he declared everything was useless. he had this awesome s/w on windows to copy/write any GB OS to any GB filesystem as long as the actual data was within the limits of the smaller filesystem. and lo and behold! he produced the s/w. installed it. and tada! did his magic.

unfortunately, it didn't work.

unfortunately due to some incorrect settings , he formatted his office laptop and lost his entire HDD.


ouch!

well that shows you should never anger the linux s/w gods. retribution is swift!!!

aVoiD cAtChiNg sTuPidiTy

have you every really pondered the big questions in life?? i mean like the serious one's ??

like

"dude ... why are my hands so red today??"

or

"am i allergic to soy sauce and stupidity??"

i think i'm allergic to soy sauce. just ate some soy sauce soaked veggies last night and today i was like half an ounce bloated. < are you crazy if you notice half an ounce of bloating in your overly reddish hands?? >
i'm definitely allergic to stupidity.

have i said that before???

some ppl are stupid. and the rest are just plain messed up. but its the stupid you gotta look out for..

they're dangerous man.

its like they have some radar in their brains man.. that... that kind of forces them to go headlong into every pothole in their way. and if your not careful they'll just drag you along with them man....

how do you tell if your allergic to stupidity ??? you start sneezing when infected ppl come near?? hey! i sneezed just now, and A just walked by.. hmmm... must monitor A for more signs of infection.

no? how about if they come up to you and speak complete random c**** ??
and your face turns an interesting shade of purple that isn't found in nature??

whatever it is, we better figure it out. fast. coz pssst, they're increasing in numbers man.. and soon they're gonna be everywhere..

shhhh.... P just walked by.

quick.

hide under the desk before she sees you.

iT's toO bRiGhT anD i MiSs mY bEsT fRiENd

ack.

its snowing.

heavily.

means i'm not going to office. also means i'm brewing myself a cup of hot hot tea.. maybe some pakodas... some music... and sleep in.

did you SEE , how many posts i have on the weather??? it's not natural i tell you.. just not natural.


**********

life is tough without my TV. i think i miss it more than...anything :P
how did my brain get stimulated before? without the constant influx of flashing images on the electronic tube ?? < i'm sure some smartass is gonna point out how incredible inaccurate i am... the tv is not an electronic tube.. its a cuboid !! ok ok i get it jeez >

Sigh… I miss my HGFNHC and ABHDC

Its interesting to be in a room full of people , trying to have an all day or couple of days meeting.
You have the constantly-tell-you-how-much-they-work ppl, the doing-anything-is-pointless ppl, the oh-just-relax ppl, the clueless ppl < these are like locusts and termites. They are everywhere > , the omg-sky-is-falling ppl and the how-do-I-get-credit-for-doing-nothing ppl.. Just to name a few.

I'm sure I can think of more categories if I put my mind to it, but I got too much to do and the sky is falling. My boss is clueless and my partner tells me to oh, just relax coz doing anything is pointless anyways…

aLl dAy LoNg

working in I****, teaches you two things.

how to multi-multi-infy-multi-task.. which is listen to some BS on the side, keep blogging, spy on P playing some local office politics, working, chatting, etc etc

how to .. ok, i forgot...

man these day long meetings are boring.. almost brain deadening.

and man some folks play a lot of stupid local politics in the office. including have multiple meetings on the side with individual folks ...

*****

ok perhaps this is beyond boring if we are discussing the egg yolk color between Europe and US chickens.

people over here are so not listening to this meeting...

******

ok nothing else of interest to report. except for the fact that P is acting weird again.. what is Wrong with THAT woman??? neither do i understand your random jokes and nor do i care that your going to india for only 2 days. first of all, i don't understand what it is that you do ... and second of all this hopping between continents is not really working for us.... perhaps you can stay in one.. the one far away from me. far far faaaar away from where i live.

thanks

now shooo go away.


oh my god! i just found out, P the crazy lady has ordered glasses exactly like my new one's. :O that's bad.. that's very very bad. dude, she's nuts and she's like ... FORTY.

ugh ...

hOw diFfiCuLt iS it tO saY No?

its takes a lot of kahunas (kahonas?) to ditch it all and walk away.

a friend of mine finally sent a lengthy goodbye email. R's gonna work her way through S. America volunteering and working in remote villages. its gonna take her 4 months and she'll land in india much the wiser.

kudos!! i think thats simply awesome !

ofcourse i wish i was going too.. ofcourse ... for sure..

but when i read her email, i remember the bygone days when i really really was even considering that. and researching/figuring out how i could do that.

turned out i was too much of a cheapo to pay my way across latin america. and then i heard the kidnapping stories. someone in our company sent out an email about being kidnapped and held hostage for money to be wired from the US.
:O

ooookaaaay...

ofcourse another thing about the virtuous is the de-facto superiority they(we?) feel on being so virtous. by god was i ever that pompous and deluded with the sense of my grandiosity?? ha! must have been nice....


aaah peru, machu pichu and argentina.. when will i ever live amid your awesome mountains and think to myself how blessed i am??

neEd.....sLeeEeeeP

some ppl would probably call me a terrible host.

just.. so... tired last night.

bro and sis came to the room to check it out, and what do i do? i fall asleep in the middle of a sentence.

i vaguely remember getting up to lock the door. but more than that i remember nothing.

i don't think i had dinner at all.

wHat wAs i sAyiNg? i fOrGet..

staying at the leela, its good. pretty good. well i wouldn't break out the awesome yet.
after couple of keycards not working, lift keys not working, random service engineers entering my room in the middle of the night to fix a lightblb...having tough time with external cabs entering the place and getting notice about it.
i think i'd say its pretty good. mebe not awesome.

i guess this projects making me worse absent minded than before. well what would you say if i told you i accidently locked myself out of the room in my bathrobe and slippers?? or that i forgot my entire hand purse in the cafe and didn't realize until i had to book a cab???

luckily i got my purse back with all contents intact.

and i only had to stand in the corridor for 5 min before the guy came running with a keycard... u know.. the guy with the turban who stands at the doorway.

maybe that's why they have phones outside every door linked to the front desk. perhaps i'm not the first... ha! i can only hope.

dOn'T tALk To stRAnGerS

i met this funny old man on the flight yest. well he wasn't old old, just about my dad's age.
we struck up a conversation while waiting for the customs in a snake like queue and i was as usual getting a lil bored and so having a conversation with myself..
i think the funniest thing he said was, "are you born between dec 23rd and jan 23rd."
and smack, out of nowhere, everything i was saying or about to say flew straight out of my head.

this is FASCINATING. someone who can tell your b'day month just by looking at you?? now THAT's interesting. but apparently he only guessed that coz he was asking me a lot of questions and i asked him back a few questions coz u know.. didn't want to seem rude there. and he thought "aaha! someone who is as curious as me.. must be a capricorn.."

and apparenlty he tells me, if you google curiosity and capricorn, you'll get quite a few google hits. now that's fun-Nn-ni-er coz now i'm imaginging this lil old man sitting and typing away all sorts of characterisitics along with the workd capricorn into the google search box and poring over the results.

maye someone should tell him that just coz its on the internet, it aint necessarily true. but then as one of the few guys who actually helped build the internet back in those days.. i guess he probably knows more about that.

apparently he works for siemens, in seattle. and i never caught his name. though he did ask mine, and he found out where i was from, and how old i was. ( yes i have finally fallen into the trap of admitting to be few yrs younger than i actually am, but when someone says "now.. lets see... you say you have 2 years of experience, so you must be 25." i'm not gonna counter that with , "oh no, actually i'm almost hitting 30, coz... ". helloooo ofcourse not.

he did mention another thing that was interesting. i asked him where he was from in Andhra, and his wife asked "why", which is when i mumbled , " umm nothing. just curious" < hey i thought i was being polite and asking questions was the thing. heck they asked me where i stayed and how many roomies i had >
which is when he jumped in to tell me, "curiousity is good, never let anyone tell you it isn't" and its peculiar that he would say that, at that moment.
coz you know.. always been yelled at, for asking too many questions when i was a kid. and then intel tells me to always start and end at a question. and then here comes another guy to reinforce that message. funny. huh.

anyways. he was an interesting kind of eccentric man. and his wife had this half smile , sort of like.. "thank you for humoring my eccentric husband, but i really needed the break." and even though we ended up talking about gaming theory and how it was related to the swimming patterns of fish or the disaster area evacuation patterns of cockroaches, i'd say it was a not-unpleasant 15 minutes. and i wouldn't mind going through that again.

high compliment indeed sir. high indeed.


****
the flights were ok. not so impressed with cathay pacific. food was .. uhhh at best.
did watch 3 movies and god, i think i even watched 20 min of dabang by mistake. why salman khan decides to stop and do his pelvic thrusting dance in the middle of chasing a goon , i will never understand. but apparently that's the appeal.

aaah back in blore. and this time i'm in the nicer-er part of town! 04-05: i always wondered if i'd ever stay here every time i passed this way on my way to office. glad to see that it only took a mere 5-6 years to get to it.
i can't wait to go eat in a dhaba !!

^_^

fLyiNg oN a bRoOm

the hong kong airport, not so great actually. just another blatant imitation of the west. there's a McD and there, right round the corner is guess, or is it coach. all these handbags are beginning to look alike now.
and there's the perfume section.. aah big brands, and then they gotta hire a couple of pretty folk to wear suites and just stand around making sure no one steals them.
that must be a little stupid. just stand around all day chatting and making sure 12 handbags artfully placed in lil cubby holes are not stolen.
i mean you could atleast make it a lil challenging. maybe some fiery arrow shooting in the passages, giant swinging axes or a bed os sharp spike ala indiana jones.
but 12 bags? come ON.

the fight so far was uneventful. i got kicked, well actually my seat got kicked by the brat sitting behind me for half the duration of the flight. the other half i was dead to the world.
why does it seem, i always have bratty kids near me in these things?

saw 3 movies. the next segment is not so bad. only 6 hours. i can handle that.

as we get closer to blore, my hearing can pick out more and more ppl around me speaking in kannad. i have mixed feelings about that. while i'm really glad to hear some kannad, most of these folks are fugly man. i mean count me the last person to prejudice against you... but then man ..... i forgot how fugly most of us are.

ok gtg now. this has got to be an interesting two weeks.

rEd mOrNinGs

we have one of our usual staff meetings today.

i saunter in all happy as you please since i missed the last one due to a flat tire..

and i see that only our dear dragon lady is in the room. well... looks like i'm early, but that's ok. so i enter the room after a brief second of hesitation and i sit down.

immediately J the dragon lady smiles at me, and i smile back warily.

J: morning
me: morning!

J: i'm in a really bad mood this week. i feel like screaming or crying.
me: < uh oh >

J: i really am in a funk, i could bite someone's head off.
me: < oh god i don't want to be alone with the dragon lady. please someone enter. pls pls pls. i'm too young to die!! >

< Oh boy am i glad you walked in Ken. Ken my friend!! do come in and give me company!! >