Maktub!

Links galore in this post..

Just 2 posts below I had written how Sanjay Dutt has been sent behind bars and Salman Khan is still free. Now, the former has got bail and the latter has been sent behind bars. But it won’t be surprising that by the time I publish this post the latter one would also be on bail.

I would like to say sorry to Paulo Coelho and all fans of his book ‘The Alchemist’ for taking the ‘creative liberty’ and turning the wonderful book into a double entendre. Niraj and I were bored one day and while chatting the discussion on the book took an ugly turn (pun unintended) and at the end of the chat session the whole meaning of the book was turned over and we were laughing our assess off. As a penance, I would be picking up Paulo’s few books and read them like a fan of his and maybe his fans will say Paulo, forgive them, for they know not what they did. Sick jokes apart, I had given up reading this book after the third page, the first time I had picked it up but then took it up again after a couple of months. I liked it though the last few pages are quite debatable one coz of personal interpretations. Any suggestions for his books (or any other author for that matter) are most welcome. I have heard about his Eleven Minutes and The Zahir. I got myself Robert Ludlum’s The Bancroft Strategy last week but haven’t been able to get past the cover page. By the way, here is a video on YouTube wishing Paulo on his 60th birthday.

During breaks many of us here play Text-Twister game and I love solving anagrams. Whenever I find time in office I check out word lists and the origins of words and at home too I always have a dictionary within reach. I realized that I know many words but can recollect meanings of very few of them and rarely use them. Anyways that didn’t decrease my word-appetite and a few days back I found this site and I have been hooked to it. Also I found out a very hilarious raunchy tale here on the phrase ‘the whole nine yards’.

I sometimes wonder how will I die.. well could not think on how I was to be born so this is one thing I can think over, right? So if I don’t die a natural death I am quite sure that I will be murdered by people on whom I am belting non-stop sarcastic comments. One message from unexpected quarters last week made me realize this and I died a thousand deaths in just a few days sulking out of it. So now I remind myself that Words and knives can have the same effect; use both of them carefully. By the way I always thought that having a few good friends is better than being a public figure. But people want you to be ever-smiling for them, wishing them good morning daily and chatting with them in their cubicles like best buddies. If you care for them it is not enough.. you have to show it. I am trying to learn this new art and it is difficult even than the Permutations and Combinations chapter in maths which had tossed up my brain for a while. I had a wonderful home-made chocolate cake today so I am happy even after a very hectic working day.

One evening during a discussion on movies I got almost killed by my team-mates just because I hadn’t watched Sholay, Lagaan and Swades (3 blockbuster Bollywood movies). So last week luckily 2 of the movies were shown on TV and now only Swades remains in the list to be watched to save my life. I was searching for 3 of my all time favourite oldie tracks and luckily found them. One of them, Jaaneman Jaaneman from Chhoti si Baat, is playing on the mp3 widget on the right sidebar. You can hear the second one Aawaz di hai from Aitbaar here on eSnips and 3rd one is (hopefully) embedded here below. Thanks to my 2 cousins, who are here nowadays, I have to watch all those stupid singing competitions. I was of the opinion that whoever sings better than me is a good singer (unfortunately that accounts to almost 98% of the population) but I am sure Indian Idol sucks.. big time.. those kids sing songs which doesn’t suit their voice (the guy with French beard sings good though). Instead watch Voice of India on Star coz the contestants are 100 times better than what other channels have on their shows. And what’s wrong with the judges everywhere.. I mean everyone is being Anu Malik on these shows.

Damn.. that video was giving me some wonderful errors in html so here is the link on YouTube :.

She & Me – Part II

Let me tell you one characteristic of this ‘Me’ character. He has what he likes to call ‘photographic memory disease’ and can remember 8 out of 10 randomly already seen faces but sometimes will fail to recollect names of people he works with everyday. In his defense he says he is so fascinated with names that it is difficult to remember them. Well I never denied that ‘Me’ was a hell boring character! ‘Me’ has had many instances where he has remembered faces of people and smiled but the people couldn’t recollect his face (or at least pretended not to :D) and many many instances where the people recognized him but he couldn’t recollect their names even though their faces seemed similar. So he had decided not to smile first and wait for people to smile at him (note that is smile not laugh :D) and not to ask anyone ‘Hey were you in such-n-such college/school’ or ‘I think I have seen you before’ for the fear of being labeled as an opening line for the opposite sex. But one evening he accidentally broke the rule..


A few days back ‘Me’ entered the class which was almost packed with a few seats at the back and a few in the first row vacant. Being a back-bencher all his life he didn’t even think of sitting right under the teacher’s nose and settled down in a chair in the last but one row. Glancing through the corner of his eyes he spotted 2 girls on his right giggling over some conversation and one girl on the left chair reading some book. He hoped he was in the right class because none of the faces seemed from his batch (2-3 batches were clubbed for revision). After a few minutes:
Girl on left (She): *says something*
Me: Err.. Sorry?
She: Are you a student?
Me: *thinks that her face is similar* Well in this class yes but otherwise I am working since last 2 years.
She: Ok! It is good to see some professional because my batch had all students and they..
Me: *interrupts* Hey you were sitting in the first row in the Test Room 14 during the test on last Sunday, right?
She: *smiles uneasily*
Me: *Damn!! Looks around to find Sayesha’s rolled-up hypothetical newspaper to whack his own head*
She: Yes..
Me: I .. err.. I just recollected seeing your face. *shit*
-silence-
Me: *another person who thinks I am a stalker.. Welcome to the club*
She: Where do you work?
Me: *relieved that she is talking again* X company
She: Software?
Me: Well kind of.. what about you?
She: blah blah..


Fortunately for ‘Me’ the conversation for the next 20 odd minutes was not odd. She turned out to be a consultant in stocks and shares and luckily ‘Me’ was a bit aware of current stock market trends so the discussion was interesting. She even suggested some names of companies that ‘Me’ should get shares of for long term investment. And as Yashita wrote that it is a ‘liberating experience’ to talk to people from a different profession ‘Me’ was also happy that ‘She’ didn’t ask which platform or which domain do you work on coz ‘Me’ is fed up of software engineers asking the same thing and probably the only thing. Frankly speaking ‘Me’ neither works on any domain nor begs on any platform.. old boring joke yeah! Many a times I remember people from blogs while coming across something related to their old posts and mail them that ‘Hey look what I found or I thought of you that time when I saw/did something-something’. And after hitting the send button I always wonder that whether the person will think I am stalking them or trying to get too close to their private lives in real. Even in this post I made reference of old posts of two blogger friends.. but they have already labelled me a stalker lol.. kidding. So if I remind you something next time then please remind me to say ‘Welcome to the club’ to you :)

She & Me - Part I

My current assignment includes making calls to Presidents / Founders / Managers of companies working in CAD/CAM domain in Europe.

On a conference line between ‘Me’ somewhere in Pune (India) and ‘She’ somewhere in Parma (Italy):
Me: Good morning! I am calling from India. Can I speak to Mr. A please?
She: *something in Italian*
Me: *thinks there is disturbance in the line* Good Morning! *looks back to the clock to check whether it is morning or afternoon in Italy*
She: *again in Italian*
Me: *decides to be very simple* English?
She: No English
Me: Anyone English?
She: *something again in Italian for a long time*

Me: *hopes she isn’t swearing at me* Ok! Bye!

On a conference line between ‘Me’ same place in Pune (India) and ‘She’ somewhere in Aviles (Spain):
Me: Good morning! I am calling from India. Can I speak to Mr. B please?
She: Goooood morning! He is on holidays till 15th August.
Me: *wow what a sweet voice* Ok! Can you please take down a message for him?
She: Aahhaaaa.. yes
Me: *smiling* I am calling from X company and blah blah blah. I will call back after 15th.
She: Yes
Me: Bye! Have a nice day ahead!
She: Ooohhh thanks! You too have a nice day *giggles follow*

Me: *drools* Thanks!

Moral of the story post: I want a hot Spanish secretary with that sexy oomph in her voice.. fine I don’t own a company but still I want one. Applicants can send in a request to me for my mobile number for sending their vocal resume :D

The buck doesn’t stop here..

it dies a silent death at the hands of #%#*@ like Salman Khan

Media circus will soon descend on the city after a long time.. after the Brangelina episode I guess. This time the reason is, perhaps the ‘most famous and most talked’ about accused of the 1993 Bombay blasts case, film star Sanjay Dutt. He has been shifted to a jail here, which is just a few kms from my office, from Mumbai for security reasons. My mom and I were having a debatable discussion whether the punishment meted out to him (6 yrs RI) was correct. Mom was of the opinion that he should have been released on probation for his exemplary behaviour while I said that it was a good judgement which would set a high standard for the judiciary. Here is my take on the whole fracas over his imprisonment..

Rarely do Bollywood stars get punished for their crimes (note that I am not calling all Bollywood stars criminals but you are mature enough to get the hint) and this seems to have made the stars comfortable to go on committing ‘mistakes’ and go unpunished like many politicians & influential people and their kith and kin. Sanjay Dutt has confessed to having friendship with some of the big names of the underworld mafia and possessing gun/s so it would have been very unfair to all those who are convicted and sentenced & especially the victims of the blasts and their families, to let him go scot-free even after the confessions. Regarding the point that the 6 years punishment is huge, yes I agree that it does seem big when you compare it to other movie stars like Salman Khan (running his vehicle over people on road while driving in an inebriated condition and shooting endangered species of black buck) and Fardeen Khan (possessing drugs in person) who were simply let off or the case is still pending? The masses are defending Sanjay Dutt saying he is a messiah of peace and goodwill now after his on-screen character Munnabhai has topped charts and he is spreading Mahatma Gandhi’s message of non-violence across the world with his movies. Excuse me but he was paid for enacting that character and a reel character is different from a real person so one cannot pardon him for his good roles. I believe that it is appropriate that he got sentenced for the crime he committed.. regarding the term of imprisonment I am not a lawyer to know intricacies of how long a convict should serve for the crimes so won’t comment on that.

Today I got my hands on the CAT (the exam which I would be giving for admission to MBA course) form after a frantic run from branch to branch of UTI bank. For the last 3 days not a single employee of the bank (they have the rights to sell the forms) was aware when the new set of forms would be available after the earlier stock got exhausted. Last year the form was available online but this year they don’t even have it online. What a shame that the premier management institutions which are compared with the Stanfords’ and Harvards’ don’t have the basic form online. I had to wait for almost one and half hour in a queue to get the form which I think sucks especially when last time I had filled it online. In the last few days I saw hundreds of students waiting for the forms and no one to give an answer as when they will be available. Who is to be held responsible?

I had a fight with the seniors (management) in the company when they expelled 8 junior people for ‘non-performance’ even after their team leads had rated them well in their performance. The HR person and my project manager said that they couldn’t do anything for them and can’t do anything either coz it is not in their hands to argue with the top rungs of the hierarchy. Then why the hell are you in that position? If you can’t fight for your people then what a wasted life you are living. I had a meeting with the senior project manager where I got a letter of promotion and he asked what suggestions I would like to give. I told him that I am really disappointed with the administration and I won’t be giving any suggestions coz they are never considered and just for formality we are being asked about those. Why I am still in this company.. I have some reasons to stay back but the fiscal year 2007-08 would be my last here is a sure thing. I hate people who can only accept appreciation and not digest criticism and accept blame.

Mr. Truman, sorry but the buck doesn’t stop anywhere.