Dylsex..hic...hic...

My exact feelings right now...

2011-08-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

If you can feel pain and emptiness at the same time, then it's almost as though you are paralyzed. What, if you can't blink your eyes, smile or say a word anymore and if you can't move anymore? What then becomes of you? And what if there is no one any longer to notice you? You realize you are like the man who wasn't there. You are just a phantom, just the eyes. A witness to the grand scheme. Nobody looks or smiles or says a word. No one even knows you're there.

Humour Us!

2011-07-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

Humour by it's design is indescribable. It can be concocted intelligently or can arise out of plain stupidity. What makes us laugh is very intriguing. It is an emotion that is identifiable with every human on the planet, across all ages and all cultures. And yet, what is funny in one culture, in one demographic and in one household might not be funny at all to people in the other. It is quite strange. And it is perhaps the main reason why a stand-up comedian or an actor is heralded as a great person and looked up to by a majority of the audience, due to an inherent knowing that it takes a great talent, a light-hearted mind, and a sensitive human being to make people laugh. Now, at first glimpse it looks like not everyone is capable of it, but I strongly believe that humour is something that can be inspired by being in constant association with humourous people around you. And immediately, you will realize the mantra that the way to being happy, is to change the (serious and dull) way we look at things. Once, you get a hold of this you will automatically see that you are also creative in the way you work things out, and there will be events by which you will surprise yourself. An instant realization pops up, that life is simple all along and that it is I who has been complicating it. And yes, humourous people are sensitive. Sensitive to seeing the funny side and also in being able to empathize with others in their moments of agony, misery and despair. Without being sensitive to human life and the way your humour works, there is no way you will get to generate it.

Humour also inspires confidence. A great deal of it comes when you watch people laugh. You also forget yourself, and a sense of the flowing comes through you when you are in your element cracking jokes or recounting a seemingly normal incident in a hilarious manner giving it an elevated status of an anecdote. There are lot of oddities to humour. You can bad mouth a person right in front of you, vent your irritation without blowing steam and advice the person in front of you unconsciously by using the elements of 'ridicule', 'sarcasm' and 'banter', irrespectively. There is so much power in humour that I have often found out that the best way to advice or convey your point effectively to a friend is through the use of one of those elements. Part of the skill or talent is in the method of delivery. Timing is important only when you are recounting an incident or delivering a punch.

And the best part is it can be found anywhere and anyone can be humourous if they learn to become sensitive to the dynamics of it, and get a sense of how it works. If you have a tendency to forbid your smile and are cynical in nature, then you have shot at identifying or using 'sarcasm' as the tool to deliver your humour. The best method that works though is to laugh along yourself while passing on a light-hearted comment - banter. This is how we get across to people from a culturally different background than ours that, we mean no offense and that we mean to make them laugh. 99% of the time they will laugh along with you, or at least smile. The remaining 1% are douche-bags and we can't do anything about them. If you are serious-faced person, then you can use that to your advantage and come off as extremely funny, when you recount an incident which highlights your stupidity in a way that is identifiable to the others in the group.

Self-deprecation is then one of the most dangerous tools though. You have to use it carefully in narration of the incident. When done with right mixture of laughter and seriousness in delivery, you are sure to score high. Group dynamics is one more interesting thing you'll observe when you are in your element. There will be always some very sensitive people who'll laugh for the lamest of jokes and to anything remotely funny; girls particularly. If you look carefully, even the most reluctant ones will smile in such a group. That is the power of laughter. It pulls you without your knowing to laugh or smile at the least. So, when people are in a group, there are always some smart alecs ready to take over the situation and some to just laugh. You don't have to be a smart alec (baldwin) to crack jokes or be funny. Just being natural in your delivery without calling much of attention to yourself, learning to shift into conversations that involve others will be a good mix and match and will give you a lot of confidence and presence. The reason why people are always ready to laugh is, when people get together, there is an inherent, unconscious expectation to have fun. And what better way to have fun than to laugh no matter what.

Humour propagates beyond speech. Puns, pictures, numbers and letters are all humourous. Yes numbers and letters. I have often observed that, rounded letters and numbers (ones with the curves) have a soothing effect and can inspire humour inside us. 8, 6, 2 are a few numbers that I have observed to be funny. I can't think of examples from the top of my head right now. So, let's just say they are my observations.

Finally, beyond all, humour subscribes to both truth and lies. State the most obvious fact - an undeniable and often less expressed observation that everyone can identify or see in their day to day lives or tell your story with decorating it with interesting colours, adding spices and garnishing it with your gestures or slight expression that's right, and your audience will scream or you will witness an uproar.

I continue to observe the nature of humour and how it blanks out the mind at the moment you receive it and laugh, and I can never fathom as to why we laugh, or why it all works. It is as mysterious as the concept of God for me.

Emparrassing moments....Oops!

2010-07-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

There are days you go through without absolutely no idea on how proud you ought to be for not screwing up. If that were to be the way the world functioned, mothers after gossiping with next-door mother (about the next-to-next door mother), fathers after discussing earth-shattering politics about how their colleague Ramakrishnan Pandurangan panders to their boss with your best friend's father, brothers after bullying their younger siblings, sisters after giggling with their sisters, friends after laughing at their own jokes thinking how brilliant it turned out, etc. would all keep walking about like constipated English Lords. And of course, if they'd raise their chin any higher than proud peacocks and walk about, we would have lot of footage for 'Just for laughs' on Pogo.

Now, my case is different. I have been the master of all screw-ups and lord of all idiots ever since me was a baby. I would walk about as if I had achieved a Perfect 10. For instance, there is a picture of me (age 1x), my elder brother (age 4x) and my grandmother's elder sister (Very Grand-mother) (age 600x). It looks like this -

I had no shame whatsoever. I was heartily laughing in that pic, err...with the great sigh of relief.

And then, as I grew up, I have enquired about pregnancy to my mom in front of all relatives, asked my dad about the meaning of a word he used when he was having a heated argument with my mom, sung in high-pitched lilted voice when my dad, mom and her in-laws where cutting vegetables silently, bed-wetted till about age 9 until my mom yelled at me in front of couple of other aunties, cried at a barber shop mumbling sad invectives at the barber with my dad looking helplessly in his best possible way to show that he had nothing to do with that crying kid, misspelled my principal Shanmugham's name as 'Shunmonkey' (EPIC FAIL!) with absolute confidence in front of my social science teacher, rushed to the school lavatory holding my pee (literally), stared at cleavages realizing much later that I'm being stared at angrily, mispronounced 'popcorn' with the p's and c's interchanged, etc.

I have done quite well for myself and people around me to provide them with enough material to repent on why they were associated with me. Some people even light diyas to this date at temples praying that they are spared of the stigma due to the mark left (like a "well left" by Rahul Dravid in Indian cricket) by the embarrassing moments.

Today, I added a couple of more to my list. Do you ever blank out when you are in the process of making a point or reporting something very important. My voicemail went something like this "Hey Joe, I have been working on installing this bullshit in this fricking computer which is the 8810 model you had specified, and when doing so I saw that this process was not moving forward due to..S...tick tick 1..I...tick tick 2..L..tick tick 3..E..tick tick 4..N..tick tick 5..C..tick tick 6..E..tick tick 7...ahhh..ahhbb....the...RAM not getting detected by the blah blah blah". I got no call back for the rest of the day. "Damn, shit, sucks" are some of the words that went immediately through my wonder-brain. I went blank, abso-fucking-lute-lee-kicking-ass!

Next, to wash it off, I went to the restroom, for well...shall we say, just like that, for general cleanup. When you go with such a notion, you start to notice different things you need to do when all along it never caught your attention. It's like going into a shopping mall and ending up buying a pair of gym gloves, when it would have never crossed your mind otherwise, cos you don't realize that it's for people who lift weights like on a regular basis and build actual muscles that are the equivalent of Ds or probably DDs. Anyway, I went in and started noticing that there are particles hanging in the inside of my nose. Now don't go "Gross!!" or "EWWWWW...". Nose is a nose and it has particles. Fact of life. Deal with it. I started cleaning up the old attic, which is when John Doe walked in stopped, stared at me for like 2 seconds, and walked to do his job. I froze frame in the meanwhile, washed my hands and walked the hell out of there. I mean, what's so wrong with the world? It's a restroom! People embarrass themselves all the time there, talk about whistling to unsuccessfully cover-up the loud noise your body produced or when you laugh like a hyena over the phone with your buddy while taking the dump which is just when your silent partner in crime sitting next door, unknown to you till then clicks his tongue tschk in total disapproval.

There is only so much you can do for the society and yourself. I am pretty sure I will be a part of many more embarrassing incidents, both for 1. me and 2. the ones around me. If I can still laugh heartily like 'mini-me' (above), I can safely pass it all to category 2. One day my kid will be asked to spell his school's principal 'Hemprasad' and he will make me....'embarrassed', maybe? I see a hand going up...yes?

On one hand...

2008-03-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain

I have an increasing feeling of loneliness nowadays. I have a feeling no one can rightly understand things around me the way I look at them. I say this not out of arrogance. I say this out of helplessness. I've begin to love life more than ever before, and I feel I should be telling the world about it. I don't fear death. I feel helpless. I feel life is slipping away every moment. I can't seem to capture everything. My passion to blog stems from this underlying feeling. I'm not depressed or anything. I feel these things. I've developed an eye for photography these days. People call it creativity, or by other names. I know from where it comes. It comes from a genuine feeling to capture the true beauty of life. I'm loving life. I want to accomplish certain things before anything happens:

1) Learn to dance the tango and salsa
2) Shoot great pictures with the Cannon SLR 30D with lenses
3) Hitchhike. Be among the mountains
4) Learn to play the saxophone
5) Tell a woman how beautiful she is
6) Bury my face in her hair
7) Write a script
8) Write a beautiful short story
9) Learn Spanish
10) Enter the Ad world
11) Get an MPhil in Sanskrit
12) Visit New York
13) Ride a convertible Merc SL250/BMW 3 series by the Pacific
14) Visit Fort Hancock, Texas
15) Visit Bath, England
16) Euro Trip
17) Drink beer with "zee" Germans
18) Go to Caltech. Study.
19) Princeton - Meet Dr. John Nash
20) Learn to sketch
21) Startup a brilliant idea
22) Be by the Pacific

Testing Times

2007-12-22T16:41:00.000-08:00

A long, long time ago in the computer age, people thronged to know the body and mind of a computer - feeling the mouse, typing junk with the keyboard, connecting it with the internet, with hopes of spying into the next door neighbhour Pankajam's bedroom and henceforth seeing the entire world. Instead, we slowly learned that we could create email addresses, and consider ourselves important by including it in our visiting cards, and substituting it instead of our postal address in application forms. This forced others to include a separate field for email address in forms...anyway it got too technical.

Now people needed to do something with computers. Since there was already a thing called 'hardware', coming up with 'software' struck some people as a brilliant idea.

Now they couldn't develop software just like that. They needed people to also to test it, whether or not there existed a customer base. And so, it came to be that the entire bunch of people who were recruited, now had to be given something to do. The managers thought and came up with a brilliant idea - split them into 2 groups - 'developers' and 'testers'. I think they were made to stand in a line and were asked to call out numbers, and like even numbers were made developers and odd numbers were made testers or something like that.

Developers were at the heart of a software. I can give you a fair definition of a developer - n. /~develop-er(rors)~/ - 1. One who develops errors, and in turn develops a particular contempt (expressed with a constipated look) for people who find them. 2. One who often comes up with something less surprising as "This is a known issue!" to the tester.

So now that we have a fair idea of what a developer is, the definition of a 'tester' is obvious to the reader and further ambiguity about the term can be clarified by having an animated discussion with your 2nd standard/grade English teacher.

Anyway, in the battle that ensued between these two sexes, testers decided to 'develop' a test plan called 'Time Tested Techniques' :

1. Ask for the device.
2. Get the device.
3. Make sure you have the device. This is called 'unit testing'.
4. Check mail.
5. You must be hungry by now. Start thinking about lunch.
6. Repeat step 3.
7. Its high time you think more about lunch.
8. Repeat step 4.
9. You better go for lunch now!
10. Its only human to feel sleepy.
11. Further your ambitions, by looking at the device with head bent about 47 degrees downwards, with your hand bolstering the head. You know what to do next!
12. You're now in the 'evening' of the software life cycle. Wake up when you realize this.
13. Are you bored?
14. Repeat step 8.
15. You're now on a mission to find the bugs. Its natural to think about the bed bugs that bit you last night. Whatever!
16. So what if you found the same bug?
17. Do yourself and others a favour. Leave for home now!

And that is how, testers went through such testing times and became more and more indispensable to the software industry, and started reserving their brain cells for thinking about finer aspects of life such as lunch, email and sleep.

Alright, I hope a new generation of 'odd numbers' are inspired now!

Vis-a-Vis with Visa

2007-06-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

It was the summer of '93, in Chennai - a town where everything was late and lazy. A enlightening instance would be when I'd wake up to the heat of the noon and would hold my abdomen in a certain position and with certain grip - a grip of determination in not letting my emotions of watching TV hinder with my first calls of nature to the loo. I'd remain seated in that cushiony old couch an hour atleast, before I'd finally attend the call. Thats how late and lazy, the city was.

Anyways, my point of such a thrilling start on one such day saw me shout, spit and despise....myself standing on the other side of the mirror, patiently bearing the insult. Everything seemed hazy, maybe because I was both brushing and doing the spitting and despising on myself on the other side all at the same time. It was too much to handle. And so, I finally decided to clean the mirror and let go of myself for one last time.

There was a pivotal reason hanging in the air for why I did all that. It was because my visa interview was just an hour later. It was not unreasonable to be angry with myself. I expected some kind of reasonable discipline from myself. I mean, who would sleep at 5 in the morning on the day of one's visa interview, after say, 4 attempts (or was it 5?) at the interview and as a result not being able to confirm the air ticket.

My second reason for limping, was that I had claws (nails) on my toes, the first reason being I tried to kick the table in a futile attempt to show frustration for my iron box not having that gift of heating up quickly. The iron box was now fuming, and I was fretting on the other side. It was as if both of us were going to grapple each other's neck and wrestle until one of us would feel the satisfaction of tom getting jerry. Before anything, I took down the iron box by its handle and pressed him hard against my Rs. 450/-, sparkling white, full-sleeves, unlucky shirt. The steam released, upon polarizing with the water-laden sleeve. I maintained my pressure and strictness in movement of the iron, until it finally gave up with all the steam gone and the light switching off due to the thermostat. My shirt was crisp on the crease, and I felt victorious. I had championed the fight that had been ensuing through time.

Rajalakshmi, a 26-year old female, had given birth to the man who'd always follow up on his only child, right from his brushing of teeth to tying shoelaces after a mirror-shine polish. Anyways, she was now standing all wrinkled beside me, watching my battle with the iron. After the win, I turned and beamed at her. She was trying to hand me something. It was a glass of milk. My beaming reduced to a frown in under 1 second. She turned slowly about, and proceeded to make the coffee.

With things proceeding smoothly, I ran quick thoughts on my head, as to how to roll my Rs and make a good I'll-fit-in-there-perfectly impression. I had my coffee, took my grandma's blessings, and went out.

Out was hot. Out was not where I wanted to be. In under 45 minutes, I'd be going face-to-face with some visa officer whose main job was to relish to see you standing there nervous, answering and tossing a coin in his mind on whether he/she wanted to let you through or not. The thought of them getting paid for their sadistic expertise and the sweltering sun beating its rays of glory on me, made me feel both frustrated and uncomfortable. Uncomfortable because the girls sitting on the bus, were giggling and whispering trivialities of how the shape of undergarments made a Nostradamus-like revelation of the shape of my butt. I immediately also noticed the famous circular patch of my ever-scentful sweat on my armpit area. Their giggles didn't stop for no reason.

It struck me that my battle with my iron box was a colossal waste of time and effort. Had I known that two fat men would have that ironing effect on my shirt in the standing area, I would have worked on holding my creases. The bearded man with his childbearing potbelly - the cushion-board, was working in conjunction with the massive, bald man on the other side - the iron showing his massivity with his back pressed against my ribs. One was providing heat with his open mouth, and the other...well, with his back. Odor was the word of the day. Before I was gassed out in the holocaust, my stop came by and saved me. I struggled myself out of the caravan of heat producing exhausts and breathed fresh air after years of choking; I felt so.

The sight of the visa office, now made some connection with my bowel movement. It brought me the unsavory memories of how I missed out on the interviews as I overslept. Now I said to myself, "Well, Vivek, now all that matters is that you're here. So go ahead and step up your accent!"

I went to the watchman and stepped up my accent, rolled my Rs, swallowed syllables as much as possible and came up with, "I'm hezhe fozh the visa intezhview..." and was wondezhing, I mean wondering to myself about how I was the first person there to go through the queue. The watchman gathered what I was saying in like 3 seconds and succinctly summed it up with a "Sunday, Sir!"

Dark Matter

2007-05-24T01:59:00.001-07:00

Sex is a very important part of life.

Now that I have your attention I guess I can delve into the psyche of the stock broker, which is the actual material of this post. Was just kidding...Anyways, I was thinking yesterday morning during shower about how the youth of India survive despite the absence of strip clubs, nude beaches and women in bikinis.

During the mid '70s vintage porn began to do its rounds amongst the circle of gangsters (who'd wear bell-bottoms, have long hair (on head, oiled up) and look somewhat closer to telugu heroes), for it was the big bad guys that could satisfy their need for women through videos in the form of projector-on-canvas types or black-rectangular-2 kilo-cassettes. However, the sense of pleasure that people derived in voyeur prior to this must have been by peeping through keyholes, watching women take bath through bathroom windows from a nearby terrace or by plainly having memories of certain key aspects of the opposite sex and working industriously on the imagination. Whatever it was people needed a way to break out with their pent up sexual energy. Here in the US, people could have an intercourse with one another like middle-aged women gossiping about their in-laws in India. With beginning of the '80s, the bollywood saw the plight of the sex-starved Indian youth and started a new wave of films known to be 'blue' for some blue reason. The phrase 'blue film' caught up so well among the youth circles, so much so that I myself have watched one during the '90s, when I couldn't handle much of the tension. Anyways, I didn't blow up or anything, just for your curiosity. Bollywood began to come up with more tasty rape scenes, so much so that people used to watch reruns of 'Maine uske taange dekha..aur phir..', and still used to go home and work wildly on their fantasies.

Finally, during the late '90s the US scientists, decided to release the CD technology. With the Internet boom, 'sex' was only a click away, and with the CD-Writer coming up, the copying, distribution, broadcasting, and all other copyright violations began to be exploited. Since college girls were still all covered up and no match to fulfill the appetite of the now-weakened guys, coining a word for the much tabooed word 'sex', had to be done immediately. Somewhere in Tamil Nadu, Muthu, a young, aspiring, lingually-talented tutorial student, came up with the word when he secretly asked his friend Selva in hush-hush over the phone - "Matter CDaa?" Selva picked up the idea immediately, and started loving the word 'Matter' for its easiness of pronunciation, clarity in exposition of intent, the coolness of its sounding and the fun of saying it for the heck of it.

Bollywood by now started making more of matter movies or normal movies with Mallika Sherawat in it. Every now and then Emran Hashmi, with his kisser-instinct would show up on screen and chew the lips of the hot female co-star like rabbits, regardless of whether she was on the villain's side or the good people's side or one of the passerbys in the scene. Indian youth started taking so much interest in such kind of movies, and it looked like it matter-ed more to them than the non-linearity in the story. I know of an incident wherein girls in the adjacent, I heard, congregated at one of their girl-friend's place and watched Murder - the movie in which Mallika took off to stardom, besides her clothes, and where Emran Hashmi proved he could act naturally only while doing stuff with his mouth. Some elite Indian youth, however, started seeing such movies-in-theatres with their girlfriends as an opportunity to repeat the performance given by Emran Kissme, off the screen. Conservatives would resort to controlling their feelings in theatres, go home, fantasize, and come out well in the end (depends where).

With Airtel slashing the rates of broadband, most college-goers, and I presume even some school-goers, convinced their parents, by showing them ads of Intel-pentium processors, that they could see their sons/daughters become engineers and doctors that matter the most. Online matter, was then the trend. Multiple tabs in Mozilla Firefox (and later on IE 7), only eased the shift between Wikipedia Homepage to show parents that they were gaining more online than on the other tab of an innocuous looking name of Masalaboard, Indianceleb or Debonairblog. The Indian youth wafted and waded through the heroines of the yesteryears from the bulky cabaret dancers like Jayamalini to the more bulkier character artists like Shakila. Flesh and passion, were all that were required to light up the youth of our nation. Our fathers remembered their youth only too well, to tell their sons not to do their undercover operation. Mothers, on the other hand, hoped everyday their sons would gain more knowledge than Grandmaster on Vijay TV, to be the US Rajesh Krishnamurthy, amongst the neighbhours or second cousins they idolized. The problem is Indian kids are smart, only that they don't know where to show it, when and how.

These smart kids then got married and revised all-night before the marriage on how to make a successful and matterialistic conversation to the bride. Nightfall came, the young, coy, fair-and-lovely, bathed-in-scent, newly wed wife, Rajakumari enters with a glass of milk. She sits gently like a dove on the bed besides young and ever-expectant Arvind. He begins to deliver the first lines of his 4-and-half page essay on life. Somewhere in the middle he melows his tone and comes up with a simple question on life that seems very complex like the multiple database queries that Arvind comes up with at CompuSys Inc., "How do you think we can spice up our lives?" Shy-faced, with eyes fluttering up and down, she manages to come up with "Amma said, only on weekends."

Arvind switches off the light, closes his eyes and confines himself to the fantasy-world of Dark Matter!

"Imagined experience is superior to reality." - John Keats

LOSER

2007-05-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

I got a C in Random Processes, slated to be one of the toughest in my core subjects. I haven't told mom as yet. I have to repeat the course this summer. Things are looking really bad. No intern as yet. After all, I want to see my parents happy. I just wish 2 years sped by. Wouldn't. Have to live through all this. Wrecks my confidence. I have to stand still through the storm. I pray I come through this.

Yours,

Me.

On a beautiful morning...

2007-03-13T05:38:00.000-07:00

The alarm bell in my cute little 'ORPAT' clock, the one with a sticker saying - "Rs.120/-", kept ringing for quite some time; it seemed. I woke up, bleary eyed, after a 3 hour sleep slowly noticing that something is ringing. I kept looking. Then 2 minutes later I realized it was my clock. Then a minute later I switched it off. Syed Masthan and Kurrinchi were both staring at me. I looked at Syed and told him "I'm really sorry!", realizing that it had woken him up some time back, and that he was there in the hall, looking at me, with a hope-against-all-hopes mindset that I'd turn it off. We exchanged a few words and laughed, as with most of our conversations. I set the alarm to "7:00" and started to sleep. Only that I couldn't.

The thought "slave of sleep" kept running in my mind. It was because I woke up yesterday at 7:15 P.M. for a class that started 15 minutes earlier. I was really dejected (yes, dejected!) on my way to the class. So this morning, that thought crossed my mind and I didn't feel the pleasure of covering head-to-toe with the lovely bedsheet and going back to business.

I got up, and went slowly into my toilet and started brushing my teeth really slowly. I was reminded of one of dad's "piece on life". As a young boy, (the type of young when I used to be at school and when I used to fuss a lot for waking up) my dad used to tell me to wake up and do things slowly. He'd tell me that in a way that there is no hurry or a reason why you should be doing it, but just that you do it slowly and leisurely at your own pace, just like that. I never understood the beauty of what he meant till today.

I made a beautiful coffee, switched on my slow desktop, folded my bedsheet, and went into the veranda for a sight of a beautiful, priceless, lightly foggy morning. It was not cold, and I sat there in the veranda on a chair and sipped my hot coffee, admiring the beauty of this moment - birds chirping, lightly foggy, not cold and the wonderful onset of spring. You got to see Spring right in front of your eyes, only here. The trees come back to life, when I first wondered during November, as to how the hell that barren, naked tree would ever look beautiful again. Magic. It did. I very clearly remember that thought running in my head that day. Anyways, easily the most beautiful morning.

The sound of the huge air cnditioner machines outside the apartments made me nostalgic, of my first morning here in Dallas, in Waterview Apartments, in Tanay's place. I woke up early the same way and found the sound odd. It was not loud, but just that you never got used to it being from a place that was so simple, though crawling towards modernity.

And here I am writing.

Anyways some things have changed since the last post. Craig never returned the call. Maybe he was there out somewhere with his kids for the Spring break, or probably he rejected his candidate upon hearing a pathetic voice message. It so happened that last monday, I got a call from Caroline, the kitchen manager of THE PUB saying that they would be pleased to hire me if I was still interested. I took up the job. Finally, I got an on-campus job to take care of my living. Rather, to save my face. I immediately called up my dad; I hadn't spoken to him for about 2-3 months now, saying that I got this at least. I had made a vow in my mind that I wouldn't call him up until I started at least taking care of my living. Now, after about 7 months, God gave me an opportunity to call up dad. It gave me a great feeling to tell him that "I wanted to tell you about this, first!". He was thrilled. $7.5/ hour the pay. I made it, maybe, but not quite.

The Pursuit of...

2007-03-03T02:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Diary,

I don't feel that odd addressing you now. Its pretty ok with me. Anyways, I got overwhelmed day before, when I got a call from Cisco for an Intern in the Knowledge Management Group. The call was from Austin. The twist in the story, is that I was not present at home to receive the call. My roomie Syed, attended the call and told him that yours truly was not there, and took down the details. The guy's name is Craig Tobias. It seems he had asked me to call him back the next day. So yesterday, I kept trying his number, and everytime I reached his voice mail. I also had an interview yesterday for an on-campus job in The Pub - a place on campus, where they don't serve alcohol, ironically. So after the interview, I came home and left Mr.Tobias a voice message. Then I slept, and woke up at about 4:45 P.M. to leave him another voice message. Anyways, I'm writing all this with the expectation that Mr.tobias by some chance while googling his name gets to see this cribbing post, feels sad for the poor boy and calls me again to schedule an interview.

I'm actually an asshole, if you see technically. What I mean is, I, a very normal student, got this call by a great stroke of luck, and it was my frickin mistake not to be present there, and here I am cribbing. Hence proved.

I hope the society becomes crazy and considers things like what I'm going to describe as great credentials. For instance, what if, I put on my resume under - Calls Received for Intern - a section for what it states, Knowledge Managment Group, Cisco Systems Inc. So the employer can keep his palm on his mouth, and give me the job, blindly, without any interview. Unfortunately the world is not crazy. Sometimes normalcy drives you crazy.

The thing is I haven't told about this to my mom, for she will really feel bad about this. I haven't told this to my close friends either. However, some people here at UTD know about all this. They feel I was foolish in not having a cell phone. Sadly, they are right. But, what I'm thinking now is, what if I buy a cell phone and never get another intern call; by the magic of Murphy. Then I'd begin to hate the cell phone. Oh forget it, its getting too complicated.

I believe in one thing. If something has to happen, it will. I have seen this happen for me - the day I got a job in HCL Comnet. Perhaps I should have worked there. I could have avoided this disappointment.

Anyways, I managed to find something about my prospective manager. He is the manager, first of all. I read a case study and guide by him. Damn me. I'm still trying to impress him, relying on a probability.

I'd like to believe in a probability that he returns the call after hearing my voicemail, and schedules me an interview. You must have an attempt. You can fail. No problem. But you shouldn't fail without giving your best. I hope it happens.

Regards,

Me.

Sobering...

2007-01-21T05:23:00.000-08:00

Dear Diary,

I feel awkward writing this as I am addressing this to you for the first time. But you know why people begin writing in their diaries with the "Dear Diary" addressing??...Guess!...ya baby you got it right. Its because you're a good listener. Deep down inside every man (and I don't know about women) wants to be listened to. Not understood, unlike women. ;)

Anyways I saw a movie - Catch Me If You Can - for the 3rd time. There is a mellowed sadness associated with it. Frank (Leonardo Di Caprio), feels a certain sense of regret and dejection upon seeing his mom married to his dad's friend and that they have a 4-year old daughter. This comes at the end of the movie. So here's it I spoiled it for you. Actually I haven't. Go, watch it if you haven't. Anyways, Speilberg (the director of this movie) shows the scenes of his dad dancing along with his mom, as Frank is reminded of it, when he sees his mom through a window without her noticing him. The scenes of the past as a mini montage with the mellow music that makes you feel right inside Frank's shoes. You'll know it if you've ever seen your mom and dad fight and know that they just live together for you kids..... It made me feel sad.

You know what....I fought with my mom. I must say it was legitimate on my side but that it was wrong I did it. When you stay in your home and see your mom/dad everyday and say you picked on some issue, then the next day you'd talk with her/him and she/he would talk with you as though it was such a routine thing. You'd never even know you'd been through it the previous day. But things are a bit different when you're abroad, on a loan, for your studies, and when you talk with your mom/dad. You got to be extra considerate and generous in granting them that feeling that they've won an argument. Just grant it. Give it. Because if you didn't, you'd hear your mom cry, shout so loud over the phone that, your roomies walk past you with a giggles on how you're getting blasted on saturday morning when you're still on your bed. You gotta give in at times in life to gain somewhere. You must grow up sometimes. I just feel I don't have a choice, but to grow up. I am foolish, immature, confused, chaotic, crazy, humourous, amorous and a tyranosaurus. I became 22 last week, exactly. You can't help it. Even your age tells you, that, please at least now, stop being foolish. You got to stop being a kid and start being an adult at some time in life. Sometimes, you feel bad that, that 'some time' is 'high time' now.

Its hard to let your loved ones know that they're wrong. At some point in life, their crazy ol' ego sat down too fast with its fat butt on their heads. And then it refused to grant that he/she with a power of acceptance, repentence, humility and most of all good ol' power/mind to listen. As a direct consequence, when you go and tell mommy that "you've erred here!", you get anger, curses and bucket full of emotion pouring forth and rushing towards you. You can choose to run, but anyways its going to eat you up or drown you. Drown you too. I'm going to grant her one thing as a result. The illusion that whatever she does remains justful, correct, legitimate and oh by the way, perfect. As a good son, I wanted to save her from that illusion. But boy, she wants it too badly. I'll tell you what, if people persist on being in state of not accepting advise, its good for you. Don't waste your time on it. Just keep cruising life. And another piece of advise to you. If someone is advising you, be it right or wrong as it may first appear to your mind, just don't jump at them. They do it cos they love you, and don't want you to do something; something that they think is wrong. They may be wrong, they also can be right. Just don't jump. Listen. It always makes the person at the other end at least feel that you're buying his/her advice. You buy it or you don't. That's your headache, and your life. But at least listen. And if you have a mind, you will at least think about what the person advised you on. If you're so damn sure that you're not wrong, thats it, don't buy that piece of shit and be as you are. But if you feel, and since you have a conscience, you definitely will know if you've erred or not. If you feel you were wrong and the person gave you the right advice, you can secretly know that they love you. I say secretly, because, you can still choose not to change and remain that way, and know that the other person was right in his/her point.

I've always encountered situations, in my life, while debating on some issue with friends, the enthusiasm to make others see your point. You do it on a continuous basis of debating back and forth only on listening to what the other person says, thinking on how good is your side as against that point put forth by him/her, and then firing your counter for that point. But at some point during the debate, one side, the losing side, refuses to accept the other side, even though it knows its wrong and that it has a flaw or that its theory breaks down. Due to lack of humility, I'd like to say that in most cases, when I've lost a debate I've gracefully accepted the other person's PoV (but note that I've said "...in most cases..."). You know why I didn't accept in those few cases? It was because I either genuinely believed I was right, or because of the fat @$$ ego sitting on my head. Randists must forgive me here, because I hereby state that most of the trouble in this world is due to you guys and your attitude.

Anyways, whatever, just remember, that listening is a virtue.

Regards,

Me.

And miles to go before I sleep...

2006-12-05T05:59:00.000-08:00

Robert Frost's famous poem 'Stopping by the woods' reminds us of the famous last two lines "...and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.", a glaring reality and a thought that struck me as I was sitting in the aeroplane gripped by the excitement of the take-off and by the uncertainity I was to face in the next four months.

Four months later, here I'm right now, with a realizations that spawn one after another everytime I encounter some mode of reality. A sample of that is one such - "one must be self-motivated in life, to have a sense of achievement, if not anything else." Of course that quote by me(*pride*) is copylefted, and I have no means, sadly, of checking where all you use it and pretend that its your own, for the want of something silly - recognition.

When I first stepped in to this country and was driven (by a very nice person named 'Ajay') to the university I didn't think much of this place, except that at some sights overwhelmed me and at some places I was too tired to feel it. I landed in the home of the ISA - the president, Tanay Shaha's place. The room, filled with luggages, a couple of guys sitting in and around, a "hi" from someone I don't remember, an unexpected greeting from myself, dazed is the least I can say to describe my feeling in there. It wasn't too long before I began to notice that these guys were doing so much - great planning, wonderful organization, and beyond all an impeccable cooperation within one another to pick up the freshies, accomodate them and be courteous. Books strewn here and there, with an occasional laptop surfacing from some corner, a couch, a wonderful view to the sacred poolside activities through the window, cooker with some leftovers, a fridge stocked mostly with ice tea, beds on ground, tons of people and single bathroom with toilet rolls and a basket to hold them. All of it made me feel dazed, and even more. "Gosh!This is graduate life!", I thought for a while. Bewildered at the new and calm in that place, I stopped to think for a while. Only later, would I know and realise, how better off they were all and how unorganised I could get. My time there was really peaceful, to say the least. I didn't think about courses, about how much the university extends to, or about the finest of babes(American) it held as its students.

Luckily for the lack of thoughts, which I should have had, the ISA then organized what is known as a briefing session for each major, on helping the newly arrived ones with what to choose and why. I wonder what I would have done had they not organised that useful session. Thanks to Tanay, et.al., I managed to figure out what to take, and be clear about the choice. The orientation of 14th of August, left be a bit disoriented. Tons of people, white people, chinkys, Indians, foreign accent, horrible vegetable sandwich, confusion on hot to get the holds cleared, how to waive off pre-reqs, anxiety, anticipation, tension on when my chance would come to go to the prof and get my choice of courses - all that I witnessed.

Sometime later I realized that I had to stay off-campus for real to startoff with. A kingsize two-bedroom, duplex apartment, was nowhere in my mind, but maybe my subconscious held space for such a wonder-ful living. A bike (folks here call a 'bicycle' a 'bike'...so what do they call a bike?...think..think..) had to be purchased, for you couldn't get to the campus otherwise in less than 15 minutes. Added to that was the total inexperience to cooking, leave alone living together with 5 other bachelors (who were here for their master's :P). I could tell you much more, but it wouldn't make sense to you and nor would it give me excitement in writing it all.

So here I am, sitting in front of a computer, typing away all that passes by this mind, the next day to when the semester is over. You can imagine.

Here's a view of mine that I'm stating so that I remember it long enough, and that maybe its useful for you someday. I've taken a view to doing an M.S., that is most rightly described by this analogy of my travel to the campus.

One evening, I had a pretty strange headache, a light lingering one, and I felt that I would sleep it off. I woke up and in about half-an-hour I had to attend a class. It was a good class, and the prof was going to begin with a new chapter. But the lingering headache made me feel that I should give it up and sleep. I even asked a roomie of mine as to whether I should venture, to which he'd say "If its bothering you too much then chuck it...". I asked myself as to whether I was bothered much by it, and as usual my mind didn't answer me back that well. I felt the 'what-the-heck' feeling and went to sleep. 15 minutes later, I woke up, and thought "now come on!..I can manage this with a tablet and I'm sure I'd feel better at the end of the class. And I wouldn't miss valuable lessons either." That single thought, threw me out of my sleep, made me have that tablet, bike in less than 10 minutes and land up in that class. In class, I forgot about the fact that I was supposed to have a lingering headache and be bothered by it. I enjoyed the class that day and understood very well all that was lectured. When I was returning home, my thought went back to that decision I had made in a split second, that changed a whole new lot of things and thought to myself "Maybe, maybe, this is what doing an M.S. is all about."

Scrapboy - (S)crap Instantly!

2006-06-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you wish certain things were never invented in this world - TV, Internet and Women. If you could add a sub list to each of the above( of which Internet and Women alone would be meaningful! ), I would list Orkut and now lately Scrapboy!

If you've not known Orkut, you're a very reserved person or a scientist or an ascetic or a very sensible and should we say, time-conscious person.

Lets assume you're not time-conscious.

If you orkut(verb) too often you might have noticed that you turn green too often because Pankajam, sitting next to you in class, having less of friends, and talking even lesser than thou somehow ends up having more scraps than you. Your problem is that you're not able to scrap easily as your broadband offers a break-neck 12 kbps connection when you believe you've taken a 128 kbps connection. Ain't it? Are your scraps still in 100s? Do you feel you might never be able to get to 1000s and talk about it proudly with your friends? Do you feel low as your scrap count shows how lowly you are to Pankajam?

Don't worry! No need of calling up your service provider and abusing the call-center girl! No need to turn green! Dylsex...hic...hic...^© kinda proudly presents, Scrapboy! (Scrapboy is not a product by us! We only present.), a messenger-ish tool that helps you orkut(verb) more. As and when you get a (s)crap, Scrapboy notifies you immediately of it and you respond to the scrap by right-clicking on the person on your listbox and selecting 'write a scrap'.(Somehow the makers of Scrapboy didn't dissect the two words etymologically to find out what 'writing a scrap' means.)

It also has an interesting feature, wherein it informs you if any of your friends have got a new scrap, provided you right click on xyz'z name in the list and select 'unblock xyz'z scrapbook'.

So next time when Pankajam gets a scrap, you can get to know it and scrap to all your Malas and Saraswathis and Manimeghalais and pray that your scrap count beats that of Pankajam. So go and get Scrapboy and show that holier-than-thou attitude!! And beat your friend today!!!

PSBB: No money back guarantee. Software is free.

My place at the back...

2006-06-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

Wait a minute...aren't you...Dennis Rodman?

2006-06-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

How many times do you come across people who have a semblance to someone you know very well, say, like Madhuri Dixit and also like Sharukh Khan? In case you're wondering as to whom I'm talking about, its none other than the great......me.

I can see that you're still wondering, just that its on lines of whether you're wasting your time. Trust me, everybody does! So don't worry, read on, waste some time, but I'm sure you'll not regret it unless your net connection is through a dial-up modem.

Myheritage.com is a site that contains a database of 3200 celebrities from around the world. Here's what you get to do in it.

1. Register yourself in the site.

2. Upload your picture. One in which your face is more prominent than anything else of course.

3. Click on the 'Run Face recognition' button and wait.

The face recognition software compares specific features of your face in the uploaded picture for verisimilitude with 3200 celebrities it has in its database and gives you a list of celebrities with whom your face bears any likelihood and the percentage of it.

Its nice fun to sit and watch you being compared with the celebrities.

I tried uploading 3 of my wonderful pictures and got the following results, which at some places left me agape and at some places ROTFLing.

Below is a list of celebrities and the percentage of my likelihood in appearance to them.

Elvis Presley - 50

Will Smith - 52

Jaquin Phoenix - 50

Nicholas Cage - 45

Rajiv Gandhi - 61

Martin Luther King Jr - 59

Madhuri Dixit - 54

Chris Tucker - 50

Norah Jones - 57

Dennis Rodman - 52

Sharukh - 59

Denise Richards - 55

Eric Bana - 54

Don't believe it? Neither did I at first. But after staring at myself in the mirror for some hours and some deep thinking, I got convinced. So people, I could be a singer, actor, politician, sportsperson or a sexy model.

However, there is just one thing that shocks me. How the hell am I looking 52% like Dennis Rodman??

In case you haven't seen it yet...I don't give a f*ck!

2006-06-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.nailmaster.ru/fuck.html

(Y)en Route No. 7

2006-06-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

Till recently, I used to travel in a bus - Route No. 7, one of the most wonderful buses this blogger has ever seen, in my life and times at SSN, not because we used to party everyday in it or have interesting females to gawk at, but beacuse of its sleep-inducing cushioned seats - a rare privilege enjoyed by few students in the entire population at SSN.

My sweet spot in the bus used to be a two-seater, mostly occupied by me, during first two years there. It was midway, amongst all the two-seaters. I used to feel that I had my own place in that bus. I used to feel happy. I could read any book, lech at pretty girls, if any, outside, hum a tune, and most of all sleep, without anyone nudging me and giving me vibrations in addition to those produced by the bus, thanks to the shocking shock-absorbers it had.

Seniors were a pivotal part of my college-bus-life. I must say, I had the most wonderful of the lot in my bus for four years. Fourth year, I was a senior. But that apart, I had a great time vibing well with most of them. The most significant part of a person's college life, I believe, is to have a great rapport with his/her seniors. Its a really good feeling to know them, the things they tell you, their perspectives, and experiences, despite the fact that you yourself will be a senior one day. But that is not the heart of the matter. I just can't say enough. If you haven't known your seniors, atleast some of them, during your college life, you really missed something, and didn't live through the experience fully. Thats my opinion, atleast.

There used to be a time when I used to be so 'in' their circle, that I even used to rile one or two among them and get beaten up(in a friendly manner). Gawdd, I miss those times!

Our college is located at the far end of humanity, so long, so apart, that you cannot help but sleep. The thing with sleeping inside the bus is that, even though you might hear horns honk, and girls giggle, if you have a silent partner(sadly I had only males sit beside me) beside you, and if they aren't too bony, you can rest your head on their shoulders and slumber comfortably. Head & Shoulders!

I'm reminded of a really hilarious incident that happened way back in my first year. Wouldn't seem so funny if told. You had to be there to laugh your guts out. Anyways, there was our bus going through Nelson Manickam road, as always. It stopped at this usual bus stand, that was opposite Food World. Immediately, a very old paati climbed up the stairs and found a seat besides one of the students in a three seater. Driver says - "Hayyo !!" and hits his head in despair. Just then everyone realises what happened and we all burst into laughter. Driver to cleaner - "Dei, atha erakki vidu da" ("Get that out of the bus"). We must have laughed nonstop for atleast five minutes.

One other feature of every other bus, leave alone Route No. 7, was 'Bus Day'. Its one of those days wherein you find an excuse to have fun, throwing colours at one another, and whatnot resulting in colossal wastage of pepsi, chips and cake, all by pouring and smearing over each others face. Damn! One of the reason why I didn't take much to it. Its orchestrated entirely with the help of juniors, with contribution of money and whatnots in this way:

1st Years - 60% :((
2nd Years - 30% :(
3rd Years - 10% or 0% ;)
4th Years - Middle finger! :))

It is the general policy of 3rd years to collect money from the other juniors and appropriate appropriate amounts from it and use the rest to run the show. Sadly, I never got to be the collector when I was in 3rd year. Bad math and management skills, I guess.

All that is now over and long gone.

- Posted in the nostalgia of all those wonderful seniors and juniors that I've jostled alongwith en Route No. 7 . You ROCK guys!

Aru - 18 Mos - 72

2006-06-19T12:06:00.000-07:00

Its that time of the year when everyone seems to know something about football, catching up with the World Cup 2006 mania thats happening as I write this, in Germany. In fact, I heard somewhere that special arrangements have been made to facilitate the visitors/fans to have safe sex.

But 86866688.72 miles apart there is a poor soul who's sitting in front of his computer and hitting mosquitos by the minute. (Infact I just smudged one onto the monitor)

Rules:

The rules of the game are slighlty different though, and there appears to be only -

Rule 1 - Players are allowed to use only hands. However, at no point of the game is it to be named 'handball', as it gives it a feminine touch to it.

Rule 2 - Touching one another will not be considered a goal, hitting or biting, whichever is possible will be considered duly as one.

Rule 3 - You can have the half-time when you're lucky to be without one another.

Rule 4 - Red card shown to refree forever. So, no refree.

Rule 5 - As far as time limit is concerned, you can either run out of the venue or fall asleep to reach full time.

I'm pretty sure every Indian plays this game in his/her household daily from......err.. depends as to until when such time they're awake. The following are some of the tactics you can follow.

Tactics:

If you're opponents are the Mosquitos, you can cleverly turn on the local mosquito repellent or 'All Out'.
Don't hit them while they're on your face. You don't need me to tell you how wonderful you feel when you look at yourself in the mirror every morning.
Whenever you hear a sound that goes something like this - 'goynnnnnnneeewaaaazzzzznnn', you better turn towards that ear and face the mosquito eye to eye. Though it won't scare them, you can get some time to size up your opponent.
If your hands are wet chances are that you feel you have been playing squash. However, it is you who must get things cleared up, if you know what I mean.
Listening to the commentary can be a bit demoralising. For instance when the commentary goes something like - "Goyyneee in the midfield....Wyynnee....Zzznnneee...Oh and Zzzznnneee strikes it...strikes it hard...AND ITS A GOAL!!!....Straight on to the face of the goalkeeper...."
Reading any more tactics will confuse you. So, concentrate!

I guess I have provided you with enough details to keep you playing the game. And currently the scores are -

Aru - 18
Mos - 72

Now once, the game is over, goynnnnnnneeewaaaazzzzznnn..........Shit!

Close encounters of the 14th kind

2006-06-19T03:28:00.000-07:00

Well, Close encounters of the 14th kind refers to a breed of bloggers who scribble something in one blog, create another blog, start posting there with a promise of continuing, stop abruptly after a whopping 1 post and create another blog and start music again.

I'm one amongst that breed - wavering, bored, cute and single, altogether in a single body.

I was suffering from writer's block and still do think I suffer from it as nothing interesting seems to come out, and that too I've been writing this literary piece for around 15 minutes now. So I think its chronic.

I'm currently thinking of using this particular blog as a diary and record whatever that comes to my mind from time to time. Besides, I'm known to change my mind from time to time.

I don't feel I should introduce myself or say what I'm doing and all.

For starters, my name can be looked up from my profile on the right column of this page. I've completed my B.E. - thats Breaking & Entering for you. That apart I feel a little bit hazy thinking about my aggregate. It gets me worried and thoughtless. I'm currently pouting and smiling sheepishly. If you'd want to die of a heart-attack, imagine my face.

By the way, why don't birds take off from ground vertically?

My think, its the same reason why we don't walk backwards. And, by the way 'methinks' is a very old, antiqutaed form of usage invented by Sir Walter Graham Neuville. So......use it if you want to....and I guess 'my think' is very much the in thing. It was invented by Count de Monet( aka Koundamani - the thalai of tamil comedy).

Alright, before you scratch your head and before your eyeballs move towards that little 'x' button on the top right corner, here's me stopping. Over. (Roger that)

PS: If you found this post a little bit boring, its purely because of my handwriting.