cAn iT geT aNY bETtEr

when someone tells you they are just thinking aloud, and then it turns out that ahem, you'd rather they had thought silently instead.

had an 8AM meeting today.



..

..

mute.. mute... Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute. gosh dangit!!

bRead aT yoUr weDdiNg

i'm trying to make bread tonight.

mostly coz i'm curious, and the rest coz i'm bored.

bread always is such a huge mental block aint it? i mean if i could make bread, then i can probably make any of the other dozen things listed in an enid blyton book breakfast for the famous five. remember the famous five??

here u can read about the process here - bread making for dummies

sorry trifle distracted this week. what with being a lil anemic, and A getting hitched, , < hey! congrats A!! > and us deciding to make another whirlwind trip back to the south-east coast < i really hope i remember to get my paws fridge magnet > and it being a year since i got hitched < aak a year already , and its been SO quiet !! i have not even written a hundred, nay not even 50 posts !! so very quiet, so mysteriously and eerily quiet, what has marriage done to me quiet??!! aaak and i have no turned to baking bread! i mean good lord, aliens have finally mind transplanted a bread baking alien in my place and someone save me ! >

ok ahem, calm down QoD.
its only a wedding, like 4 months away and its not even yours, though just the severely repressed memories of the last trip would make anyone a bit hysterical, and you might feel completely justified in throwing a hissy diva fit when you recollect the shade of lipstick you'll be forced to wear, and then you might recollect Stockholm syndrome and mouthing tiny lil "help me" into the very very bright flash lights the very helpful photographer would be shining onto your sweaty face and all the while when your very very hungry and feel like punching the next person who comes up to you and insists its the best day of your life.
well AREN'T I GLAD I DON'T HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT AGAIN!

yes lucky i'm not the lucky bride this time. and lucky that i'll actually get breakfast and lucky that i won't be weighed down by 5 pounds of headgear and 5 pounds of .. things around my neck that i won't even be able to sit straight and won't K be lucky coz i won't have the uncontrollably urge to jab him in the ribs everytime he turns to me and tells me to smile more coz its such a happy day and it only comes once. hey i know it only comes once oy, but your the one standing around in a flimsy cotton wrap-around and a toga, while i'm buried under 15 pounds of some freakishly hot silk cloth thing thats baking you inside out.

well yes, things will be decidedly better this time round.
:D
aah yes i will.

update:
omg the bread came out perfect!!
i can't believe i can bake my own bread in 30 min. i am SO never buying artisan bread again !!




update update: hmm a lil less salt, but its AWESOME !!

jUsT anOThEr dAy

it started out normal,

7:45 wake up bleary eyed
7:47 stumble to the bathroom
7:53 switch on the shower and let it run to get hot water
8:10 fire alarm starts beeping.
8:11 i run out and start batting away like crazy at the fire alarm.

wait whaT?

yeah.. its been a normal day.

well atleast office might be peaceful right? but i have to move my desk, to another cubicle a few aisles away. and ofcourse my monitor is locked to the cubicle and i've lost the keys.
ofcourse now they've got to cut the cable, and then they've gotta have a witness < me > and i have to say "aye i give you permission to cut the gosh darn cable"

oh yeah... its just another day.

leaving in a few hours. AND i'm hungry. AND i'ts raining.

hELLiSh pLeAsUReS

note to self: nelly, just a dream

yoohooo
anyone there?

ofcourse it feels like i'm all by myself , gently floating in space.
especially that its 11:01:04 and i'm in the office.
why?

oh coz i'm having an affair with a chinese device driver developer.

is what i want to say. and seriously it would be better than the sad truth.

which is that i'm not even having an affair with a chinese device driver developer.

what i AM having. is a BIG HEADACHE. trying to duplicate stuff done , 13.5 hours away < on a good delta flight > and having to sync up with folks everyday... and having an a*hole yelling at u and making u cry in the office.

oh well.

that's the price we pay for SELLING OUR SOULS TO THE CORPORATE DEVILS.

ok mebe i shud lay off the sugar.. just thinking....

ooh i DID go to the LAME-O < now how do i do strike through? > , i mean .. ahem.. awesome diwali celebration thing we had. actually a couple of dances were good. but the singing.. umm and the oldies dancing.... oh well never mind.
far more than what i did, innit?

11:25:34 and i'm still stuck here. situation has gone from bad to worse.
the sd card had a file system corruption and i had to repartition and reformat. and it still doesnt work.

my life is officially hell.

LazY rOoMies iS to tRAsh

it's easier to take out the trash, when you're fueled by the righteous anger of the fully justified.
don't know what i mean?

have you ever had that annoying roommate who always made a mess, and who never cleaned up after themselves and lets the trash bags just pile up in the middle of the room?

and do you remember huffing to yourself on the simple laziness of your roommate and flouncing to the nearest trash disposal unit in ur appt complex carrying 2-3 trash bags and each step a step in protest of your roommates deficiencies and a symbol of ur self-martyrdom in putting up with the possibly worst roommate in the whole wide world!

and yet,

when ur living by yourself, it's so easy to justify that

it's too cold today.
there's just one bag, thats not efficient. let me wait for a couple of bags.
the bag isn't even full yet! < not even enough trash ! >
its raining
just don't feel like it

i say, lazy roommates help you throw out trash.

fiNd oF tHe dAy

look what i found stumbling.
ladies , gents and all those folks in between, here's pogo, an australian DJ.

ahhh sunday morn.. cereal, cartoons - a match made in heaven.

good tidings on the way, will tell u all about it later.

you should stumble, if you aren't already. something interesting to read on a rainy sunday afternoon -
Photo of the day

and meanwhile you can listen to this on a rainy sunday afternoon -
8 track - stay in bed

update: for those who are confused about the video, tis guy who takes movie clips and makes music out of them. pretyy clever don't u think? don't forget to check out other videos too!

pUNcH in YouR'e tiMe cARdS

would you believe if i said i have seen the calendar of my boss and calculated the number of hours he is in a meeting?

here is the stats:
me : 20 hours in a week spent in meetings which is 50% of the time if you consider a 40 hour workweek. if you think in terms of how many hours i actually work, its more like 44.4%.
my boss : 30 hours in meetings which is 75% of the week but if u consider the actual number of hours that he probably works, more like 50%.

so it looks like the time spent in meetings just increases the total number of hours u spend at office coz we try to maintain a 50% cutoff and compensate by working more.
ok i don't want that promotion. thank you very much.

one of the main things that worry me, is that i see ppl who joined a yr before me, 2 yrs before me and they give a very good indication of where i'll be in mebe 2-3 yrs from now. < ok mebe i can drag my feet and move along a lil more slowly, but i still gotta move > and then i see the kind of lives they lead. one guy has become just plain 'chubby' and the girl looks like a walking zombie and lives on cereal.

oh well. i can always wear bamboo clothes and go back to raising chickens in some remote village forest near my house back home.
oh but i'd miss "House" so much.

pAPpaRAZzi sHOts

when folks , ur friends or families send you pics of their vacations.
and u feel that mild twinge of envy < or indigestion .. oh whatever..... u took ur pick > when u wish you were on that vacation instead.

but sometimes u get a situation where ur faced with 300 pics of ppl. patel snaps we call it, and its just pic after pic of ur friend posing in front of some of the most amazing scenery and essentially blocking ur view. < hey!! i wasn't lucky enough to go there myself and mebe u cud let me live vicariously through u, u douchey << ok now i'm just making up words >> >
but what if they are not only standing in front of plain ol awesomeness, but standing with their awesome dolce gabana glasses. i mean its bad enough that u block my view, then on reams and reams of pics, u force my eye to be drawn to ur crazy sunglasses that after the 145th pic , just make u look blind.

have u looked at ppl wearing sunglasses?? have you looked at 300+ pics of the same 2/4/6/x ppl with sunglasses? do they or do they not look like blind ppl ?? and slightly ________. < i'm too polite to fill it >

why do ppl assume it makes them look cool?
ok ok i'm guilty of doing that too. i too have a couple of pics somewhere in which i'm wearing my sunglasses and i think i look awesome. but i have 2.
not THREE HUNDRED.
are u frikin kidding me??
ur singlehandedly ruining my favorite vacation spots.


i did not mean to spell out 'ho' out there.

sLeeP oF iNnoCenSe

if you can't sleep

click here to fall asleep :P

LaTe reSpOnsE

big oooops

i had a meeting at 8 today.

a staff meeting where everyone meets and you need to be present in person.

and i woke up at 8.

i didn't even remember the meeting till i came to my desk and switched on my laptop.

i'd put a sad smiley out there if i wasn't so busy laughing at the comedy of it.

can u imagine telling grownups that you missed the meeting coz u slept in ?

it's hillarious!!!!! and sad!!! i don't know if i shud be :( or hahahaha

oh god. < groan >

****************************

now the reason i wasn't able to get up, is coz i was dreaming of a revolution in personal transportation. the whole city to be connected by these tubes, and u get into one and say the gate number and just get whisked away to ur location.

also before that, i dreamt i was caught in a burning building.
not very pleasant, except for the fact that i think there was a ghost and i was ghost hunting after the building burnt down.


****************************

aDviCe oN tHE inTErNeT

just a dream, Nelly

the other day i was searching some old forums .. for shucks i dunno.. something and then i happened on someone describing this brand new thing. buy a tiny "webcam" and hook it up to your computer and then u can actually see the person ur chatting with using this new brand new s/w like yahoo chat!!
ok thats when i checked the date, and saw it was 2002.


ha!
well that explains it. poor fools who didn't know how far the world would come in just a decade. but wait .. weren't we some of those poor fools? and wait didn't ppl in every decade say it of their predecessors?
still its pretty ridiculous to read those old posts.

then i was looking at some other posts and came upon this religious lady's site.. wait let me try to remember it...
had some junk about .. oh ya. she was advising this other dame, that she shouldn't get a job even though her husband lost his job and things were getting tough at home. "oh no! don't get a job dearie, u'd hurt ur husband's self esteem. it's his job to provide for the family and u getting a job might suggest that u think he's not upto snuff. < so what if ur kids don't have ice cream o sunday? > a good wife knows how to make do with less and the only way u shud help him is to provide a better life at home with the meager things you have around < like home grown cabbage and potatoes?? >. and that's the best you can support your husband through these trying times. by being kind and doing ur job !! < that is taking care of the house.. > and the good lord will take care of you. the end."

oh good lord! i swear i cudn't make this stuff up. this is exactly what was written on the site. i still have a bitter taste in my mouth from throwing up after reading that.... pile of cow.. no wait horse dung. < ok that's the kindest thing i can say >.

i swear i think i found the place where stupid came to die.

aLL CAPS dAmmiT

recently i had to make a presentation to my boss.
did i tell u this story already? perhaps i did ...

so you know, me trying to be clever made this clever presentation where i had the title of each slide was in all small letters. and kind of started with a small letter.
now I THOUGHT it looked cool, ok?

but my boss takes one look at it, gives me this wierd look and says, yeah the presentation is fine, but pls make all the title start with CAPS. and now i'm grimacing coz how do i tell him, dude u need to be buried before we can bring back cool. but then he reads my face < i have been told my face gives my thoughts away awfully easily > and then says , yes i know you kids think its very casual and cool nowadays , but it won't work here. we are professionals. we need to make professional slides.

$%@#!! oh ya? i don't see what CAPS has anything to do with professional.
uh uh but i DO NOT.

today he mails me his leadership feedback form. muahahahahahahaha.... < very resident evil laughter fading into the background >

tReaSuRe huNt & oThErS

its unbelievably hard to find a song when you don't know the singer, the lyrics, the album, the title...
ultimately the only way is to comb through the billboard charts and listen to the top 100 songs one song at a time ... not a bad way to pass time though :P



note to self : OneRepublic - secrets

:D

*******************************

spoke to A the other day. her wedding's fixed!! well then congrats A!! ofcourse A's a lil ahead of the times and i can just imagine everyone in the remote town of Trichi when she walks in wearing a houte couture designer gown.. a really slinky one and then i can imaging some poor grandma with her eyes almost popping out of her sockets at the audacity. hehehehehehe < semi-evil laughter > :D
good fun! shocking the establishment. i say u go for it A. and if possible carry a tiny live webcam so that the rest of us can roll of the sofa laughing our heads off.

*******************************

now, as you all might know, a close friend has been taken hostage by a tiny lil alien living inside her and the day when its gonna rip her < ouch > and get out is getting closer and closer. as you know, i am terrified of these tiny delicate looking creatures who have the power to bring fully grown adults to the edge of sanity. but i am steeling myself to the possibility of looking the tiny alien in the eye and not running; screaming like a lil girl < puh-lease lil girls have nothing on me, when i encounter the strange mystic aliens >

another colleague is considering voluntarily giving up her job so she can move to NY next yr and host another one of these < how many more will you take darn it! > and that's truly sad, coz she's my only lunch buddy right now. and if she goes away to gah! > be an incubation machine, then who will i have lunch with ? < hey... come ON!! look at the big picture !! >

:D

********************************

god knows where my head is at, nowadays. i right slept through a 7 AM meeting. infact i had this really wierd dream, where i had gone into a shoe shop and another senior lady colleague was there trying to buy boots and i thought to myself "aaha! my nemesis. i too should buy a shoe to defeat her" and then next thing i know its 7:44 and i wake up to open my laptop < yes i open my laptop as soon as i can open my eyelids every morning > and then i am kindly informed by my helpful outlook i am 44 minutes overdue to a meeting. < gaaaaaaaaaaah! darn you my arch nemesis. ur the reason i was late!! trying to outdo ur shoe selection!! >

i demand satisfaction madam.

ok calm down and listen to this song instead



note to self: OneRepublic - apologize

sAYiNg iT tHe riGHt wAY

OOOOOOOOOOOooops

i really shud back off a bit.

u know the last post, i was raving a bit ? mostly becoz i was having a really bad day at the office??

well my.. ahem friend caught be red handed or u cud say red-lettered.
yeah !! oops!! u cud say THAT again!!

now while he was gracious enough to laugh it off.. umm haha... others who have caught me red-lettered might not find it so funny.

well... i shud really start getting more and more vague-r if i plan to take 'inspiration' from life.

well.. ahem... i'm sorry... errr...

anyhooooo
now on another note, u know how sometimes in life ur forced to deal with the government? like the post office or the driving license folks. and u wish you could rather poke urself in the eye with a fork than deal with those guys. coz really if someone was the living definition of moronic or dodoish then it wud be the beurocracy guys. ok so the DMV in this country is marginally better than the post office, but boy do the PO guys take the cake.
trust me, if u try to get them on the phone, u can't even call ur local PO! u get routed to some random HQ where they ask u for ur zipcode and tell u they cant find the PO next to ur house.
yup.. enough to make u want to pull ur hair out.

sigh.

feeling a it restless tonight. must be the meds.
tell me one thing, how many females in ur office who have .. say 10+ yrs of experience and aren't ... wierd.
ok just say how many are normal and competent.
then think of the rest. i swear my group has only preggers who look like their going crazy coz of the hormones, young females including me < hey i'm young... sort of > who run around like chickens with their heads cut off and then the small elite group of older females who are insane. i mean literally insane.
a couple i suspect are just menopausal but the moment i mentioned that to my colleague, all she said was "eeeew what's wrong with you" to which i replied, "what, its a normal human thing. i really think J's menopausal u know. there can be no other explanation for her behavior."

much as i'd like not to perpetuate negative stereotypes, sometimes it just can't be helped... this female P.. she's crazy man.
the other day she pings me out of the blue and asks me
P: "hey, is the camera working on ur board"
me: "ummm YA?? " < come ON lady its been working for a yr and u've seen it. you CANNOT be serious. >

i mean really?? how would u like it if i came to u and asked u, hey is gcc working.
ugly man. office politics is just plain ugly. luckily i'm not caught up with it. but then turf wars, and ppl blaming the tools for random measurements, taking credit for other ppl's work and just plain ol nastiness... i miss the dolphins. they're highly more civilized.

lot of thrash in the office. as u can see from the sparsity of the posts.. just too much thrash in the office.

hoW tO spELL tMi

you know how on ur chat list, sometimes you have people you kind of know, but don't really know.. i mean, you've spoken to them a couple of times and yet they're vague aquaintances at best bound to you by some random commonality like college classmate or high school classmate or something.

and i know with me atleast its a daily ritual to open my laptop and login to gmail and look at the gmail chat list and then get on with work.
ok these ppl are in today. these are not. its not like i'd chat with 20 ppl on my list everyday, but its like a virtual.... coffeehouse?? and ur just strangely comforted by the thought, that these ppl are accessible within nanoseconds incase a serial killer crept up behind you and tried to strangle you.
"heeeelp, call 911. i'm being stranmgled"

but then all such warm thoughts vanish when u spy this said vague aquaintance with a seemingly incongrous status message but makes u so uncomfortable , that u want to barf.
"i never knew how to pray, until i learnt how to love"

what? i mean here i am mentally strolling through my daily ritual and this brings everything to a screeching halt. before it starts again. just the momentary stall is enough to irk me.
dude what??
i get funny status messages. i LIKE funny. but i don't do ... ugh sends a shiver down my spine...

rEaL LivE chiCkEn

watching some corny movie right now, but the music is pretty good.

anyhoo...have u ever noticed, how deathly afraid we are of making choices. personally i hate making choices, even of what kind of soap or cereal i buy. always imagining me making the worst possible choice and that moment cascading to a minor disaster of nuclear proportions leading to the end of the universe as we know it.

trust me, every little choice i have to make, black or blue, pink or green, buy dress or not, leads to long internal debates carefully weighing the pros and cons till all possible outcomes of the choices are debated and deemed safe for the future of the world, and then i feel i can commit to something.
that's why most times i feel infinitely better if someone else makes the choice for me, or if i dither long enough the universe finally gets fed up of waiting and says, "hey! i'll take care of this one, u get the next."

but i think everyone is a little afraid of making the wrong choice. what if this was the decision that ended up as the turning point in ur life, and everything went downhill after that and then u ended up homeless, living out of a box?
sounds ridiculous doesn't it?? but let me ask you, how many times have u decided you'd rather stay where you are at a deadlock, simply spinning in one spot than go left or right down the path to wherever u cud be heading?

how many times do we chicken out and say no, when we're too afraid of taking the risk to say yes? or vice versa...
how many times would we rather maintain the status quo than ... than take a leap of faith and just go for it.

ugh! too serious a topic for saturday night isn't it?



note to self: song title, love the way u lie

oFfiCe mEsS

gaah ! its terrible.

just look at my track record this year!

just 33 posts !! ok 34 and counting! somehow in my head i had a whole lot more writing done.

i wonder how many posts i can post about my lack of posts.

gaah! never mind.

today i realized that i really do have a pointy haired boss.


gaaah!

tUrTLeS swiMmiNG

note to myself: neon trees, animal

boy have i searched for this song. it's the ad song for bones. you know the tv show. though i don't watch the show myself. i did happen to stumble on this when channel surfing.

ok adding the hawaii pics. just a teeny tiny subset.









lava flowing into the ocean


this house is trapped after lava flowed all around it! but hey! it survived dinnit?

nice pics aren't they?? HEY I TOOK THEM. everyone stop giving credit to K!! just coz he carries a huge camera around !! and he hasn't even posted those pics yet!

oPpoSinG pOLeS oN fAcEboOk

i know that everyone says opposites attract, but have you actually looked around you to observe it? is it true that opposites attract or do we just tune ourselves to oppose everything our.. umm 'better halves' say and do :P

think about it , right?
on the one hand we have K who's easy going, social, friendly, likes ppl, likes coffee, mebe not necessarily in that order; and on the other hand we have me, who's neurotic, paranoid and actively dislikes ppl AND coffee and prefers the company of dolphins instead.
add to all that narcissistic, egoistical and lazy and can we say hello-big-disaster-here?

its the same case, right. with R and her .. ummmm...."better half" < no seriously this has to be in double quotes. its the highest kind of euphemism to call her partner the better half... >
she's uber friendly and extrovertish and outgoing and he's umm... basically a more paranoid freak version of me.

makes one wonder. were we like this before we met our halves or did we just digress to this opposite points on the scale so that things could be in balance??? like some mystical yin yang thing??

K: "here, try some coffee. its amazing"
me: "i'd rather not thanks."
K: "but it's really good"
me: "no i don't want it"
K: "but it's really reaaaeaally good"
me: "i'd rather throw up" < that shud quiet you, you coffee pusher >

K: "you have to call ppl. keep in touch with them. login to facebook once in a while.."
me: "i hate facebook, i hate it. infact i abhor it. no, i actually loathe it. and while ur at it, i hate ppl too" < good, that should be enough to discourage any more talk about facebook. do you think that's enough? mebe i shud throw in a few more adjectives while i'm at it.. >

i find that, often with ppl, it's useful to NOT stop at politely declining a helpful suggestion. one has to smash it beyond all hope and grind it to dust to prevent it from ever being resurrected in the future again. or else you'll just end up saying "no, thank you" over and over and over again, and that too at the same suggestion. ha! as if 10 minutes later i'll find the idea of facebook appealing.

< now i better stop before i go on a complete bender and an entire 4 pages worth of facebook-hate-rant. No!! i do NOT wish to know how good your lunch break was. thank you very much my-highschool-classmate. and i absolutely do NOT wish to throw a cow at you. stop sending me requests, it confuses my poor brain as i don't know if i'm supposed to remember you and i've forgotten or if your some random psycho stalker >

dOLphiNs pLayiNG iN bLuE wATeRs

so ... i've been a away for a while ... hmmm well u know.. how it goes.. ummm... its not like i forgot you or anything. i mean.. i swear!! i totally remembered you.. like.. yesterday itself. when i was .. umm... buttering my toast. i mean ... i meant to write, but u know it was work, and then vacation.. and then...
yeah.. i know i know.. excuses excuses :P

so. here's the latest.
just got back from vacation. went to hawaiiii. oh it was awesome. the best part?
mebe its the red glow of the volcano, or the green sand beach or the manta ray. omg the manta RAY!! i snorkelled and came up close to this GIGANTIC MANTA RAY!! and in the pacific ocean!! and in the night!! and next to a japanese guy who kept squealing "manta is coming, manta is coming"!!

oh it was awesome. i loved snorkelling. i plan to do more of it. ok mebe not in portland. but somewhere, some day.
hawaii is pretty neat. everyone shud go there atleast once.

yaawn. i'm jet lagged. K is nice , took care of the whole trip. ok K is not only nice, he deserves a "K is Awesome!!"

will post some pics soon. mebe of the Maaaaaaaanta Raaaaaaay!! woooohooooo
< ok no more mai tais for me >