i'M coVeRed. wiTh fLouR.

so it looks like i might be moving. to boston.

this raises a whole lot of different questions.

like what do i do with the 5 pounds of baking flour in my kitchen?? [ what the heck was i thinking?? ] and the numerous pounds of daal and rice and stuff. just stuff. everywhere i look in the house i see hideous amounts of stuff. good lord what happened to me and why did i buy so much stuff??

so in an effort to not throw away groceries, i tried to make some dosa. seems simple huh. i got urad daal and i got rice , plenty of it..

so i even have them soaked. only thing is , when i go to grind it, i can't really remember the propertions. well lets try it on instinct, whatever... i finish grinding and it looks ok....so anyways i finish up and clean and it takes me the better part of an hour. ofcourse all through that hour i have the nagging feeling that i'm doing something wrong and i should have checked the recipe...

so here i am 2-3 hours later. i stop in the middle of reading my book. let me fire up the ol' rusty internet and check the recipe and after all how bad can it be. for god's sake its just two ingredients. rice and urad daal.

..

..

oooohhh kaaaay.

big. effing. mistake.

it's 3 cups rice to 1 cup daal.. and not 1:3 of rice and daal....

ooooops.

$%#&^@. i'm screwed.


DON'T you understand yet???????
if i have to make this right, i have to eat this dosas for the next 4 months.....


time to host a dosa dinner party. jeez man, no one is gonna want to eat this. ^$%%^#$%

whY tO wriTe AnD hOw

one needs to have thoughts to write. thoughts that your willing to commit to paper [ not those that might put me in jail or send me straight to hell ] , thoughts that will not majorly offend those you know are reading this junk the next day, also thoughts that are not just plain stupid or boring. [ do YOU want to read about how my ear is itchy today??? or how i can't find the pair of a sick i mean sock???. if yes, by god why???!!?? there's facebook and a million idiots for that ]

one also needs time to put those random thoughts into sentences and then time to open the blogger website and type those sentences. but the most important part is having those thoughts. [ the thoughts that won't put you in jail or hell... ]

both H and D gave me 25 bucks each for .. i don't really know why. mebe being a good sport and helping their teams? so in all i did have some fun in beijing and worked a lot and sightsee'd [ wat? ] a bit. is it sightsee'd sightsawed? oh watever. [ you get the point and i gotta throw a few bones at the grammar police. how else will i earn their undying love/hate?? ]

aaah i'm gonna miss you short funny ppl working in the beijing office.
i guess i'm gonna miss a whole lot of things when i leave portland. [ yes i have made my peace; i will leave, with or without I ]

yaawn. can't really sleep and beginning to feel hungry. there's nothing useful in the fridge except some peas and.... argh i swore i'd never talk about my food issues... oh no i'm turning into a facebook clone!!

hOw cAn i sLeeP whEn mY brAiN is aBuzZZ

Gawd it was a nightmare of a flight back. First of all , for some strange reason everyone and their mother was travelling today back to the US. Second , there was this squawling, screaming brat of a kid who couldn't or wouldn't shutup through the whole 15 hour duration of the flight. Actually that's not true , she did give us a brief respite a couple of hours in between when she fell into an exhausted stupor. At first of course I pitied the parents, what could they do?? But then I heard them ofefring her a cookie, and o-m-g are you crazy? Are you giving her sugar???!!! Why don't you stab that fork in my eye while your at it. Your so effin insane you unfit sob's. pardon my french but a few dozen hours without sleep, is like sharp needles being driven into my brain.

Hmm she actually stopped crying to eat the cookie. In-flight attendent, please bring the whole darn box of food you have at the back. We need to keep feeding this baby till we land!

I can't tell you how much I missed google while I was in beijing. It was horrible. I had seperation anxiety and kept trying to refresh my chrome browser page and it kept kicking me out of my connected state. Oh cruel google, how you have made me dependent on you…
Though I did finally finish shantaram. Yes I admit. It was awesome. Yes I was wrong to say he's too preachy.. [ Though I still feel that about the first 150-200 pages. ] But then his experiences are awesome and allowances must be made. And after all that he's gone through, I guess a lot of allowances must be made. The book is well written , and he does have a way of telling a story. It is primarily his point of view and I have to admit I have a hard time sympathizing with him fraternizing so much with the m's.
But what strikes you the most is the amazing life experiences he's gone through and a guy who can write ! Yes go read the book. And yes he HAS captured our indian spirit very well. All things that make us tick [ food and movies and song and dance ] , all things that make us stupid … yup he's pat on.
I just don't agree with some of his sentences.. Or wisdom that he throws out. Hope dies when you stop dreaming.. Or something like that. They're scattered across the book in plenty and … oh well allowances must be made.

Ofcourse it's 3AM, I have been awake and staring at the ceiling for the last 2 hours. Just landed back yesterday and my boss tells me , moving to boston isn't going to be possible within the group.. So I'll likely have to change my job within or without I.
Sigh… I hate change. Its so much work! [ yes I'm just lazy ]
One thing I don't like about being an adult is how much work it is. You gotta remember so many things! Pay the bills, pay the rent, pay the tickets, get the money, pay the money.. Cook the food. Eat it. [ far worse than cooking the food, trust me ]
Remember ur bags, don't forget this and don't forge that.
So .. Much.. Work. Can I just hire a nanny ??

daY N

It's the nth day. I've been eating peanuts and apples all week. With an occasional pasta .. But mostly my diet is congee or rice noodles with some "pickle"
Everytime I put a morsel in my mouth , I sniff it, ask the waiter numerous times , "is this rice boiled in water?"; " are you sure sure, or just guessing…". Even then , I highly doubt I'm being true to my "origins" and eating only "kosher" .. What's with all the double quotes today? mebe it’s the congee….
And even if the waiter politely assures me that indeed, its just water and powder and I can tell from the tasteless smell, that really they have added no beef or chicken, its just some bland stuff.. Yet I glare at him balefully and with a gloomy thought in my head, that my dear ol' granny is probably turning in her grave at this very moment while I eat the noodles.
Oh well.

I thought guys in india were bad. Traffic and all that, but today I saw a guy just blatantly break atleast 4 traffic laws within the space of a minute. He rips on the platform, takes and illegal left turn from the platform on the right side of the road, enters the left road when the signal was red and does all this at breakneck speed.

Its amazing! These guys are worse than us!!

Whoa! I'm suddenly feeling thankful for home. Darn it, I just realized I probably I'm having so many browser issues becoz I'm using chrome!!

Tomorrow I plan to go to an indian restaurant. Wish me luck!!

The next day…

It was awesome. I had gobi manchurian. I know it wasn't half as good as it should have been, and I should have taken something more traidtional.. But there were just too many items on the menu and I went a little crazy. It's two days later and I still have biryani in my fridge in the hotel!!
Yumm..

Went shopping this weeekend and to the temple of heaven. Went a little crazy in the shops too. Shopped a LOT. And I won't tell my awesome find. It’s a fake bag of a certain ahem brand.. And I don't want to get arrested, so until I'm home safe… mum's the word.

The temple of heaven was pretty nice. I liked it. nothing like the summer palace or the forbidden city though. They were a-mazing.

I'm pretty proud of myself, went in the subway station all the way. To and back. Lucky the chinese are pretty organized and all the stations are written in english. I even changed routes and switched train lines. Awesome ! Chinese kids are cute, and funny and cry a lot when taking the subway. Ofcourse that could also be due to the indignity of having your bare ass exposed to complete strangers. I'm pretty sure anyone would be very very upset when put in that kind of sitch.
I think it's all thanks to the olympics that they had to put so many dual , triple language signs around. Makes it a lot easier for folks like us to travel on our own. Ha! I'm not paying an underqualified, over zealous tour guide kid fresh out of college to take me around and bug me about where my boyfriend is.
I can take the subway !

I saw another interesting thing today. a tree growing in the middle of another tree. From far it looks like the same tree has two very different kinds of leaves. The pagoda and something else. Juniper? Its pretty funny.

The ancient chinese were a pagan gruesome lot. Praying to the heavens, wind and sun, sacrificing animals , pushing them into big pits of fire and finally feasting on them. Btw eating vegetables is like fasting to them. wow! they must consider us a nation of starving sods..

dAy zeRo

Ofcourse, It is interesting to travel to a place like the south east or far east. It is most interesting to keep track of all the different kind of visitors that are going to the same place as you, and know what kind of wierdos are entering the country on that day.
To a place like china? Yeah you have some variety. You can say that.

There are the whites, the folks so enamoured with the orient and so desperate to show their adoration. The ladies end up wearing all sorts of junk on their person. You know the baubles.. And yes they do kinda clash with ur gucci and reebok maa'am. There are the men, who show their preference of all things oriental by turning into some unshaven monkey clones and letting their hair go. Literally.

There are the business travellers like moi, who are only noteworthy for their lack of anything colorful and their exeptionally drab outfits.
And in the end you have the strange little natives.
Such as that little man, standing in the middle of the corridor, wearing red headphones and doing this strange little exercise dance and looking so ridiculous that I can't resist snapping out my laptop, getting it out of blissful hibernation and whipping up a paragraph.
Hey, you. Strange little man. Did you know those snappy hip movements would get you arrested in my home country ? Just saying.
Oh god I look over and a full 20 min later, he's still making those little forward and backward hip movements. I must be careful not to stare with fascinated horror.

The general chinese public are not very much unlike the indians. Little regard for queues, and impatience to get where their going and absolute no care for conventional ideas of public decorum. Though to be fair they are far more well behaved in public than any indian back in india could every hope to be.

Have you ever noticed that are chinky cousins < if I may be so politically incorrect > , ok strike that, our northern cousins so resemble fish ? I often wonder, is it their fishy diet? That over eons they have stoppped looking like monkeys , like the rest of us and start resembling catfish?
That is one thing I notice most when I go there. Especially the ugly men. Ok , once again backing away from the political incorrectness, the not-attractive men.

Finally the funny little man has stopped dancing and gyrating his hips and is standing in the queue. Wait I am supposed to be in that queue. Ok toodles.

cHinKy Fu

just so happens i find i'm on a plane to beijing on monday.

well!

now that was quick. especially considering i don't have my passport back from the visa office yet.

oh, wait. that's why i have disaster somewhere in my name don't i? apparently they have an option, where they would meet you at the airport with the visa and passport.
you know when your reeeeaaaallly in a hurry and can't wait for the post office to get its act together, or fedex.

that's cutting it reeeaally close isn't it?

so... off i am for 2 weeks.

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 ...