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!! >

sUd oFf

you think you know how to work a stupid dishwasher.
you think all you gotta do , is put in a lil dihwashing powder, ok so you don't have the powder, maybe you can use some of the dishwashing liquid. its the same innit?
soap is soap.
and you switch it on, to the light wash.

and


whoa, why is the dishwasher foaming and spewing out soap spuds and foam!!!


make it stop.. make it STOP!!

aaargh... its spreading across the kitchen. just ... too ... much... foam.

aAaaHa nOw i GeT it

that's it! i figured it out.

my writing is fuelled by me being pissed off at you.

oh jeez , and if i'm not royally pissed at some douchebag like the one 2 posts ago... i got nothing to write.

uh oh bad news. i really shudn't have got married. it's just too non-anger inducing!

probably the best compliment i can give K or maybe the worst.

"happy anniversary, it's been a very non-angry calm 10 years"

"happy b'day. you never piss me off"

"happy new year, here's to another year not getting mad at the world"

quick. anonymous. say something stupid and pointless.
i'm sure i'll rant about it.

sO wHAt?

oh thanks.

for pointing out how glaringly boring my life has become. between 12-14 hour workdays and sleep, the only excitement i have is .. opening a new box of cereal.

the only exciting ppl i meet is , at office.

a new taiwanese tech who cracks random jokes i don't understand, a chinese s/w developer who'd like some red robin food parceled from the US, an indian in blore who's happy that he got my boss to send me there for 2 weeks, a lab tech who actually did a jiggy when he heard i'd be gone for 2 weeks ( oh well, i'll bug him even more when i get back ), a pregnant lady who complains of nothing but food and her stomach and finally my boss. the ultimate clueless one. i think thats a good name for him.

yes i have nothing to write about.

well the ultimate clueless one is a good topic.

but then he's away in europe for a couple of weeks and won't bug me. yaay!

***

i've been watching too many stalker movies recently.
have you ever come home and found a red balloon tied to your door ? what would you do , if you did ? well first i thought it could be K, but then i think naaah it couldn't be K. he doesnt do balloons.
ofcourse i looked around before i opened the door, and ofcourse i checked the whole house to make sure no one was inside waiting for me. i'm glad i live in a 1 bhk appt. imagine if i lived in a huge house.. i'd be forever doing security rounds of the house.

ok now i'm tired. so buzz off. i want to sleep.

ps: my bro won a couple of awards last week. so hey bro! congrats !! great job shutting up the losers who ever doubted you!

reTurN oF tHe miNionS

its hard to return to office after a prolonged break. its harder to watch everyone stumbling around blinking their eyes at the neon light.
and its even MORE harder ( yes i make it a word ) when you have a FLAT TIRE.
aaargh. stupid tire. like i didn't have enough problems today.

well , happy new yr to me.

cheers

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

looking back i think i have a wonderful relationship with all my tires. i've had 4-5 flats so far including both my trusty scooter and then the car. its complicated this relationship. i think the one i love the most is the spare tire. so humble, so lowly , so handicapped and yet my unsung hero, the knight in shining armor. and then there's the tire i hate the most... the one around my midsection. it's like some ugly and unwanted relative who just won't leave. ( ok now that's a bit harsh and my midsection tire is just feeling hurt by that )

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.