She & Me – Part III

‘Me’ is considering suing me since I am not publicizing his brushes with the ‘She’ category on this blog. I hope a trilogy would suffice since the so-called brushes are quite rare, but ‘Me’ is expecting a at least a seven-post series on lines of Harry Potter and wants me to carry it further as well. Duh!! Well I was talking with ‘Me’ yesterday and I spotted a red rash on his left arm. On enquiring ‘Me’ said it was a ‘love bite’. Sheesh! I was very much sure that it was a bite but definitely not a love bite. Prodding a bit ‘Me’ revealed this incident, which reminds me of some wafers advertisement (I forgot the product name).


She: *smiling* Hi
Me: *smiling* Hey! Did you know Sania Mirza is jealous of you?
She: What?
Me: Yeah, a bit. I had... what happened to your hand? *pointing at the bandaged hand*
She: A bee sting
Me: Bee??
She: I was in our garden with P when…
Me: Ohh! So you girls were talking about the birds and the bees in the garden *smirk*
She: *throws something* Very funny! Actually we were talking about you.
Me: *avoiding that something* Hmm… So a bee got jealous and poked you.
She: Oh God! I was working in the garden.
Me: Well bees are always attracted towards flowers *wink*
She: *blushing*
Me: That’s why I am wondering why on earth it came and stung you *sarcastic grin*
She: *frowning* Let me show you how it felt after that bite
Me: It was a joke… aaaaaaaaaggghhhh!!!


Girls won’t take sarcastic comments and boys will be boys. And thus prince charMEng stayed single.

ScaryHairy encounter on a date!

10-01-2008 and 16-01-2008

I think these are two dates (dates as in calendar dates) which I won’t forget for quite a long, long time. In fact if I say my whole life, it won’t be an exaggeration. Hmm… yeah I won’t forget them till the last moment. Some days you just want to hold on to the hands of the clock and not let them tick along and might be try dragging them back so that the day doesn’t turn into night and then night into dawn. Let me give it a try. Damn it! I broke my wrist-watch and it is digital. Ok sad attempts at humour aside, I am going through a B-phase right now… Sean’s famous B-phase. I sincerely hope that he doesn’t come around and comment on this part but for others B is for bald. Yes Sean, let’s say it as bald ;-). Sean had shaved off his head completely and I am thinking of doing the same in spite of the fact that if I wait for a few days… ok few months it will automatically be a barren land :D. This thought did not come into my mind due to the exam results, which have started pouring in but by seeing a colleague. This guy just passed from here when I was typing the initial lines. He has this weird curly hair (of course curly hair on his head, you and your dirty mind :D) and the first thing I want to do, if permitted, is to take a razor and shave off that Medusa-kind look he carries. Some girls here have nicknamed him ‘Wazz the program?’ from the Lays wafers advertisement. I really dislike curly hair esp. on cute looking girls; I mean natural curls at the end of locks looks good but totally frizzy hair like the actress Kangana Ranaut is a total turn-off for me. Rohit and I were leaving the XAT exam test centre last Sunday and spotted a girl coming out of the St. Xaviers Church (quite an X-factor coincidence) and she had this all curly hair and for the first time in my life I was like ‘Wow!! Her curly hair is so amazing’. We guys were so besotted by her beauty that we hardly took off our eyes away from her while discussing the essay topic “Consequences of Gender Imbalance – Third World War”. Talking about turn-offs, wet hair sure turns me on :). It is not those Bollywood rain-dance-wet-bodies scenes I am pointing to, but only wet hair. Hmm now girls know what they should try next time :p. By the way, did you know that Medusa was a beautiful nymph before she was turned into a snaky-haired monster? Now I wonder how beautiful she must have looked with long flowing wet hair.

The only problem I am facing in the B-phase is open discussion or not even discussion but free flow of my own thoughts. Sean could post it easily and asked for suggestions and opinions probably because he uses a pseudonym. Blogging with a real name is sometimes a huge problem. Every line in the post is broken into pieces and read between lines and then the worst part is the barrage of questions. Day before yesterday one of my colleagues walked up to me and said “I heard you wrote a nice article on Taare Zameen Par on your blog.” I replied “Review, yes but nice I am not sure. But how do you know that I blog and who told you about my blog?” It is a bit intimidating when you don’t want people to know a few things but still want to post about it. Though it always amazes me that I don’t have qualms on sharing this with the people I have never met… the virtual friends. Might be coz I can choose to ignore when they play the curious cat which sadly the people in real life don’t seem to gauge when to stay away and what not to ask. Well as someone quoted 'One has to pay a huge price for being a celebrity'. Ha ha… I am next to Narcissus, ain’t I? :-)

Last month, one evening I was sitting with a friend on a bench near a college and we had such a great conversation as if we were best friends knowing each other for many years. Just a couple of hours of the talk with him and we both confessed that it felt great to vent out all the thoughts and seeking an opinion of someone and plain discussion on things which mattered and hardly mattered to us. Though I think it was the environment that made it better… I can’t remember the last time I had idly sat on a star-lit night not thinking about client interactions and work deadlines. For a change we both talked on say 50 topics and didn’t touch the work aspect. He later laughed and commented, “You digress a lot. Look what we had started talking on and where we are ending this conversation with.” I don’t know why people keep saying that to me often. Take this post for example… I started it with 2 dates and I am ending it with them :D. Happy weekend folks!

10th Jan 08 and 16th Jan 08!

Mhen the stars bescenbeb…

Quite a long time since my last Bollywood love-hate relationship post was written on this space. Actually been busy with classes and exams on weekends so hardly had been catching up with movies. The last movie I had seen till a few days back was Jab We Met and that too forcibly. I mean watching a Kareena Kapoor movie in a theatre is blasphemous. But trust me when I say that I loved watching Kareena for the first time in a movie (and in general as well). I had gone to the movie just for the sake of accompanying and was expecting crap but what I got in return was one wonderful movie and a very melodious track which I can’t stop playing now and then. I thank the people who forced me to join them :D. Last week I saw Taare Zameen Par and I was floored. Not watching Aamir Khan’s movie in a theatre is blasphemy :D. For the second time in my life I cried in public and I was not the only one who was shedding tears because literally everyone in the theatre was sniffling. A dyslexic child of just 8 years is labeled as a duffer by his parents, teachers and peers. He fights a lone battle with each and everyone until he finds a saviour in his arts teacher. This movie doesn’t preach and doesn’t have those long boring sermons in the end and yet it convincingly delivers what it wants to. Darsheel Zafary, who plays the role of the child, is sweet and has quite an expressive face even when in one scene he is blankly staring down in the void from his school terrace. In another scene when his elder brother in the movie asks him how he dared to roam on a busy street all alone he replies Bindhaas with a grin laced with confidence and the no-worries attitude of childhood. Aamir Khan who essays the role of his arts teacher never lets his character overshadow the kid’s role. Prasoon Joshi’s lyrics score a homerun and especially the track Maa is heart touching especially while watching the movie. This movie definitely is now listed in my favourite list and one of those which can be watched over and over again. That makes Aamir’s tally 5 with Andaz Apna Apna, Sarfarosh, Dil Chahta Hai and Rang De Basanti already there.

Apart from being good, this movie brought back fond memories to me. On my right there were 2 kids (probably in their 8th-9th grade) from my school and had directly come to the theatre as they were in their uniforms. During one scene in the movie, when the English teacher was scolding the boy on top of her voice the kid next to me promptly uttered "Shirish Patil madam". She was my Science teacher in school and remembering her yelling at us like that just made me smile that day. I recollect only one day when we students had seen her smiling… though can’t recollect the incident that made her smile. The drawing competition in the movie reminded me of the numerous drawing and painting competitions I had taken part in as a kid. Those Sundays’ when dad used to drop me at the venue (mostly it was Saras Baug) and then sitting among hundreds of children I used to showcase my ‘talent’ on the blank drawing sheet. I never won any competition then but have loads of certificates of participation :D. I was (and ‘is’ as well) never good at drawing and being slightly colour blind had many a times painted trees brown (under the guise of modern painting :P). But mom and dad had always praised my scribbling and had diligently enrolled my name in all those competitions and waited in the afternoon summer heat for me to enjoy rubbing crayons or dabbling with water colours… coz every child is special and so are you. No matter how old we are there is still a child within all of us… pamper him, respect him and don’t let him out in this bad world :-).

This is the last post of the year 2007 and I would like to wish all of you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. I sincerely hope that the New Year brings lot of happiness for each and everyone in this world. And like I say every year please don’t mix drinking and driving... have a great time folks.

Desktop Goddess # 11

Na hai yeh paana, na khona hi hai

Tera na hona jaane kyu hona hi hai

Tum se hi din hota hai surmayi shaam aati hai

Tum se hi tum se hi

Har ghadi saans aati hai, zindagi kehlaati hai

Tum se hi tum se hi

Aankhon mein aankhein teri, baahon mein baahe teri

Mera na mujhme kuch raha hua kyaa

Baaton mein baatein teri, raatein saugate teri

Kyu tera sab yeh ho gaya hua kyaa

Main kahi bhi jaata hu tum se hi mil jaata hu

Tum se hi tum se hi

Shor mein khamoshi hai thodi si behoshi hai

Tum se hi tum se hi

Finally I am washing off my exam-sins by posting a Bond gal :D. Denise Richards... aahhh!! I can't remember the name of her Bond movie though I can vaguely remember watching a scene of her in a long pipeline with Pierce Brosnan. But can I mention Denise Richards and not remember her Wild Things... I mean her movie Wild Things! It definitely remains one of my all time favourite movies and not only for the *ahem* nice scenes but a good storyline. The song mentioned actually doesn't have any relation to Denise but heck it's my blog :P. My current favourite song with haunting lyrics and music (playing in the side bar as well). Denise and the song, both rock!!

100 years.. only?

Heavy workloAd. frequent fights with Project manager. new peoPle to work with. devoid of energY. Boring trainings. real-lIfe friends now virtual friends. virtual fRiends nowhere in sighT. Heartbreak. dilemma. mba Dream. exams. boring studies. failure? marriage? dAmn..studies not boring. but no time to studY

Now I know why it is famously known as the quarter life crisis. I should go and search one mail on that in my inbox, might be relating to it will bring down the anguish by re-assuring that everyone goes through this phase. This is the probably the third time I am celebrating (well!) my birthday on this space… yeah third time (First and second). I have so much to write and yet somehow time slips away and when I have time words evade me. 16th December birthday post coming after 5 days *sigh*. Well anyways let us hope for a bright and cheerful year ahead and might be I should try skipping some work to update this space often ;-).

CATastrophe

Who will bell the CAT you ask eh? I don’t know who will but what I know is that I definitely won’t be among that lot… this year at least. Yes, this year means I am going to attempt it next year as well. My friends have been attempting to crack the supposedly toughest and trickiest exam for the last 3 years and that too after studying a lot. Did I study? Oh yes I did but only for 13 days before the exam. But I did study seriously for those many days except for the fact that the paper setter knew what I was studying and decided to ask questions from the topics I had left for option :(. Seriously I was skimming through the paper trying to find questions on geometry and number system. Luckily that was the case with Mathematics only and the other 2 sections went fine. Now if they didn’t have sectional cut offs I would have hoped to bell the CAT but alas… now I know what to study (or not to study) for the next year so I will be prepared. I just hope that the paper setter doesn’t read my blog.

This image is related to the post somehow. Those who are aware of world politics might get the joke (no personal issues with any of these personalities).

I also attempted the IIFT, Delhi exam a fortnight back (the last post was from that). Those guys don’t have Pune as their test centre so had to go to Mumbai (Vaibhav’s city for Sean’s reference) with a colleague. His cousin studies dentistry in a college there so she managed to get us a room to share with her friends… in boys’ hostel and I had thought she had arranged in girls’ hostel! Kidding, I knew it was a boys’ hostel and though I had been to my college hostel rooms with my friends living there I had never stayed there overnight so the ‘hostel experience’ was new for me. I tried hard not to think of being bound to the dentist chair and getting my tooth pulled out under the pretext of ragging. But the ‘seniors’ there were so timid that later my colleague and I felt ashamed for pulling their legs... seriously those guys were very sweet, probably they are taught to be so to become a good doctor. The room where we stayed was quite clean; might be I had expected it to be in a huge mess and it was not that much so it looked clean. The walls were replete with posters of all the femme fantasies in bare minimum. When I slept my legs were touching Maria Sharapova’s long legs and Bipasha Basu’s bare torso touched mine on the right. Sometime past midnight the guy with whom we were sharing the room barged in and woke us up to announce that a bomb had been found in the nearby railway station. So he advised us not to go for sight-seeing. I was like dude we are here for an exam not sight-seeing. My colleague had a restless sleep after that but I slept peacefully. I don’t know whether the reason was being tired after the travel or Maria and Bips giving me company. The exam was on Sunday and we were told that the traffic on road would not be heavy but we hadn’t thought that it would be so less that even a taxi was not in sight. Somehow we got hold of a taxi after walking a bit. The much fancied fast-pace life of Mumbai was evident from the hustling crowd at the railway stations. For a person like me who has been brought up and acclimatized to the laid-back life of Pune, it was no less than a horror. Trying to alight from the local trains was itself a Herculean task. Somehow we passed away the weekend in Mumbai among the bomb-scares (hoax or not we don’t know), exam terror (real, I can vouch for that) and I really didn’t have the energy to meet anyone in Mumbai so called up all those whom I had promised to catch up with and said “Hey, maybe next year I will be attempting this exam again, so please not today.”

How horrible is it that the exam for the colleges for which you are not eligible is much better than the earlier ones! I was not aware that to appear for JMET one has to have 60+ aggregate percentage in engineering (damn! 60+??) and the form didn’t mention it so I had filled it up. After one of my friends told me about the eligibility for a call from the colleges I decided to attempt the exam for practice (I have other exams lined up as well) and to my surprise and dismay it went off extremely well. That’s life eh?

By the way, blogspot is giving me troubles (not blogger though) and I am not able to comment on blogs so please bear with me for a while to comment on yours’ and reply on mine.

S - O - R - R - Y

The entrance exam season for MBA courses kicked off in great style with the CAT 2007 on 18th Nov. I will write more on that in the next post but after that I gave IIFT, Delhi exam. This exam has a GK section in addition to the maths, logical and verbal sections and whoa! it was a lengthy paper. So I didn’t manage to reach the last page of my GK section, in time, on which the questions were as if drafted only for me :(. In one question I had to match the creator of Calvin & Hobbes cartoon characters (Yashita stop grinning)… yes the same characters which open all the posts on this blog. Another question asked the candidates to match Bond girls with their movies. I could match the names of the actresses with their faces in my mind but I have not seen a Bond movie yet. Yeah no need to revisit the earlier sentence.. I am yet to see a Bond movie. I know Pierce Brosnan was the previous Bond guy so when I saw The Thomas Crown Affair movie on television sometime back I was quite amused and confused seeing ‘James Bond’ stealing. Later a friend told me that it was not a Bond movie *ahem*… I hope Bond fans are not reading this post. A few other questions which I could have managed to answer just slipped out. Moral: Never read the unattempted questions after going home.

So I would like to tender heartfelt apologies to Mr. Bill Watterson and James Bond & his babes. As a punishment I have been reading my C&H books daily, for at least 1 hour before sleeping. Also I will be updating the Desktop Goddess series with a Bond girl and might watch a 007 movie in near future. Yes, I like to inflict nice punishments on myself ;-) This post is dedicated to Watterson :)

Jack and the beanstalk(er)

Hi! How are you dear?

Who is this?

I did not send you my new number? Now guess

This was the rough start of a chain messaging with an anonymous number who one fine afternoon messaged me. I don’t know how to frame this sentence correctly but... the person insists that he/she/it is a female and knows almost everything about me. Added advantage is that she is single *ahem*. Now I am quite sure that it is some friend who is playing a prank coz I don’t have my mobile number displayed anywhere in public and more so coz I changed my own number a few weeks back. My first suspect was Aditi coz I had played the ‘stalker-on-cell prank’ on her with help from her sister Pooja he he he… it was fun :P. But then now it seems she is not the culprit :D. So who might be the person on the other end? I don’t know and don’t want to know coz the person is really smart in her (let’s stick to one pronoun) replies and if her identity is revealed then I would lose fun in those replies. Now I am safely assuming here that she is someone I know but what if she is really a stalker? He he... now if that person is reading this space by some chance I am not calling you a stalker but just thought of this so chill! Why I am thinking this is not coz of the anonymous sender but recently the newspaper was swamped with stories of stalking. Cyber stalking is not a new phenomenon but with media coverage and public awareness more and more stories are coming forth. But a new trend has started that whenever a crime under this is reported everyone blames the social networking sites like orkut, facebook etc. for this. I mean it is right up to an extent that we meet and tend to get close with unknown people but turning these sites into a scapegoat is not the solution. In Mumbai, a rich man’s son was murdered after being kidnapped by his new found friends on orkut. So when the news reports were being widely publicized, my cousins were ‘scrapping’ on orkut. Dad was at home on a leave and he got curious from the news reports that what the hell is orkut all about. So he finally managed to convince my sis that he wanted to know about it. When he came to know that I was also a member of orkut he was like “Really?” Probably my dad still thinks that all I know is MS Word and Excel… he he he. I knew this day was gonna come and I had already spruced up my profile and mainly removed the link of this space. I don’t have any particular reason to keep this site away from parents and relatives but yeah I would like to keep it that way. Luckily there is so much in the profile there that he never managed to read it. I know we have digressed from the stalking issue. I was talking to a colleague last week and one of her ardent admirers (she might have many coz she is pretty) had created a fake profile of hers on orkut. Generally fake profiles contain objectionable matter but this profile was kept so clean that none of her friends had an idea that they were talking to her stalker and not her. Luckily she and her boyfriend managed to nail the person and a simple threat worked. But the need of the hour is strengthening of laws to curb this stalking menace. Some people are demanding banning of orkut in the wake of these cases but I don’t think banning a site is the solution. Remember the ban on blogspot by the government? It is quite a debatable issue and what we can pray is that everyone is safe among the stalkers roaming around in the virtual and real life.

I am going on a 2 week leave for preparing for the exam on 18th of this month. After that as well a couple of exams are lined up. So won’t be around for a while... all of you take good care of yourselves and keep smiling.

Walk away if you want to…

I got this sms today morning:

‘When you become too close to someone, you come across their imperfections and your future relationship depends on how you handle these imperfections’

Quite true, isn’t it? When we get close to people we tend to take them for granted. We think that we know them so well that they will react in such a way in a given situation and when they don’t it is like a whacking blow to the impression you had formed of them. Remember the movie Maya Memsaab? The lead actress is full of impressions and in her own fantasies of what her lover might do when he reaches home. But when the lover comes home and he doesn’t directly start making love to her like she expected she is buried deep in despair. We get so attached to people that when they walk away from our life we find ourselves looking for a friendly shoulder to rest our head on. Sadly one finds that there are no more shoulders around coz he/she was so attached to the person who left that he/she completely forgot about other people. Might be even in times when they needed his/her shoulder or a hug or just a simple smile. Why is detachment so difficult and why do some people have this brilliant knack of detaching themselves at the blink of an eye. I was attached to only a few people but I find that I have started clinging on to more people more and more in the last few years. I hate this coz when they get detached I find myself bumping into them and leaving me feeling like being stripped naked on a busy street. Aahhh the nonchalant lot! Might be I expected them to hug me and they just smiled, might be I expected them to talk to me when they just said a Hi and walked away, might be they were busy or in trouble which they didn’t want to share with me lest I get entangled in their problems. Yesterday night the clouds were thundering in the sky and my mind was bogged down by innumerable thoughts not letting me study for the exam coming up. Luckily it rained only on the earth. I have observed that I have started to think a lot more than I used to. Thinking is good but not when it makes your thoughts dominate and suppress your actions. I have observed that I have started to think before I speak. I am not that sarcastic anymore to people, to situations and to life in general. I am not anymore that Sudeep who used to speak out frankly what his mind used to convey the tongue. Now it is comes via the brain where it is filtered. Might be this is good but I hate this Sudeep. I don’t want people to like me for what I am pretending to be. I am fine even if they don’t like me for what I am but no not for the pretence please. I have started letting out my secrets to people. I have started giving them access in my life to such an extent that they question about it every morning. I think I might be his clone… I have to go and find that original Sudeep.

Dirty Dancing!

Traditional dress – 1200

Entry passes to the dandiya party – 200

Dancing with a bevy of beauties – Priceless

Some things can’t be bought with money, for everything else there is Master Card :p

Have a great weekend all of you!

Ek aankh maaru toh…

Last weekend I was thanking my stars that I rarely had a problem with my eyes till date coz I am really scared of anything bad related to eyes. Seeing people suffering from conjunctivitis in the company and wearing goggles all day long I prayed that the October heat doesn’t affect me and the conjunctivitis virus keeps away its eyes from me. But the Gods were not with me this time and I woke up this week with a swollen red eye... yeah only one eye so it was looking weird. But by evening both eyes were affected and 3 days I had to stay back at home till the infection had subsided. I also joined the goggle group in the company after that for a day until the eyes returned to normal size. The experience of having conjunctivitis for the first time was not so bad coz I had heard that eyes pain a lot and it becomes difficult to open up the eyes due to the sticky matter which comes out due to the infection. Luckily there was slight pain and almost nil sticky matter except that tears were rolling out so much that I felt that someone had left a faucet open in my head. Frankly speaking I was bored sitting at home… not that I mind holiday but sitting at home I neither could read nor sit in front of the TV or computer. So finally after laying down idle for a long time I decided to clean my cupboard... which is actually called my study cupboard but it is never used for anything remotely near to studies and instead I use it as a storing space... well my parents prefer to call it a dumping ground but that is a different story altogether. Even though it does look like a mess I can easily find a said thing lying in there but if it is neatly arranged then I just don’t like the look of it.

I started off with taking out all the things lying there one by one and in a matter of a couple of hours the whole room floor was bustling with things I hardly remember seeing them last time. Then cleaned the whole space and arranged the things properly… yeah properly as in a stacked manner. I mean I was going to be at home full time for the next couple of days so just throwing back the things in would have been hazardous to my health... not that it had any radioactive materials but just because mom was at home as well. I was sure that this look would last for just a couple of weeks so I didn’t mind rearranging the things. But I found some stuff which I wanted to mention. The first thing I got hold of was the Placement brochure of my engineering college. It was a namesake placement brochure because I can’t remember a single student getting placed while graduating using that book. My batch was one of the greatest batches of our college… ok fine I will be modest… it was the greatest and not ‘one of the’ :D. Where else you would get a batch that rarely went to the college, had their professors admitted in hospital for chest pain coz of the trouble the students gave, won accolades for the college in almost all the extra-curricular events but were lagging far behind in studies? I sat down sifting through the pages and was trying to remember which guy was doing what nowadays. Most of my batch mates are abroad doing their post-grads’ and I couldn’t recognize 2-3 people simply because I had never seen them on the playing ground where we all spent most of our time. I remembered the day when the college had called a photographer to click our photographs for the brochure and some guys had come dressed in suits. I had forgotten that a photography session was scheduled but was lucky to be in a shirt… I mean not in tee, not that I roam around topless.

Then I got my hands on an old black diary… no not the little black book kinds ;-) … but my company diary. Inside were scribbled dialogues for the skit we had performed on the Foundation Day. I sat down recollecting the time spent writing those dialogues with the co-hostess and how later she got hit on her head by a swinging door the day before the show and we had to search for a new hostess. A few pics of the show were uploaded here then.

I never throw my I-cards so found many of them from college to classes for engineering and then the CATIA course identity card I did after graduating but never collected the certificate. I also found my exam admit cards for 10th and 12th grade. It is fun watching the progress your face makes in the pics on all of these. It is not like the evolution of a Neanderthal man but still…

It was a good time spent sorting all the stuff and recollecting things related to them and for that time I totally forgot about my conjunctivitis as my eyes were busy looking at the fond memories. Still I have not yet opened the drawer containing my collection of rocks, newspaper cuttings, stamps, coins, matchboxes, greeting cards… I am definitely going to have trouble moving stuff when we shift to our new house in a couple of months.

By the way in case if anyone was wondering from the last post what’s on the whiteboard it is:

It was not conjunctivitis; those were the side-effects of a roving-eye

Every story has a line..

and every line has a story

One of my colleagues requested me to keep all my whiteboard lines saved somewhere and this is one place where I can easily do it though I have been clicking them as and when I change them. But some of the lines which came into my mind but did not make it to the board have to be mentioned somewhere. So here is first part of the lines I can remember.. will be updated as and when I have new ones. Disclaimer: I think all the lines are original but if there is any copyright infringement then yeah go ahead and sue me. Just make sure that I win the case :p. Many say that some of the lines are obscene but I would defend myself by saying that many say pornography is obscene but there are people who say it is an art. It is just a matter of one’s perception :D

It is almost 2 years that I had put up this one on my desktop in office and later had created a good one by merging some pics but sadly it got lost during the machine upgradation. But later didn’t do anything using pics until last week. It has been two and half years in this company and I am sitting in the same place since the first day and have had more than a dozen cubicle partners till date. Even now as teams are being shuffled people are being shifted to different places. So I used one of my childhood pics and added to it..

If you sit in the same place for a long time, you start thinking that you are the king.. or you really turn into one :-)

Sometime back my friend had forwarded me a text message which read..
‘Board outside a red light area: Married men not allowed. We serve the needy, not the greedy.’
This message had me smiling for its sheer creative brilliance. Later I wrote..

Seen outside a whore-house: Tit for that

I have been attending workshops of my class on weekends, and trust me after every workshop I feel attempting the upcoming CAT exam is even more difficult. One such geometry workshop later we guys came out swearing and some of us decided to grab a beer at a nearby bar. I too joined in coz it had a TV set and India-Australia match was being aired. Since I don’t drink one of my friends came up with a nice nickname for me, ‘tea-toddler’ instead of teetotaler.. he he. I remember someone asking me in a party the reason for not drinking. “Driving?” he had asked. I had said, I don't drink so that the sloshed up gals have a sober guy to make out with, which later went on the whiteboard. Now you know why the gals were drinking a lot that night ;-)

Then there was a government ban in some country on kissing and my take on that had left Keshi & Kathy hot.. with anger of course :D
If it is not allowed to kiss in public places is it ok in private...?

Ha ha.. I got the most brickbats in company for this one.

Pam and Rick got a marriage license this week and there was a discussion in my cubicle on the movie King Solomon’s Mines so..
If you can’t be King Solomon then give a try to be Rick Salomon

If you don’t know who Rick Salomon is then you will have to catch the next flight to fly down to Paris and stay for one night there :D

Have a nice weekend :-)

Dilemma

Mr. Anderson: How do I make a choice?

Oracle: You didn’t come here to make a choice. You have already made it. You are here to try to understand why you made it.

WordWeb says dilemma is:
State of uncertainty or perplexity especially as requiring a choice between equally unfavourable options.
I would say 2 unfavourable options. But I want a word for state of uncertainty which requires a choice between two equally favourable options?

Mr. Anderson had concluded Choice! The problem is choice.

FINAL(ly)

This is what everyone in India was waiting to see.. the World Cup in our hands. Kudos to both the teams for a thrilling final. The shortest version of cricket has been conquered by beating Pakistan by just 5 runs. Now the Indian team faces their next test on the homegrounds with the Aussies visiting for the 50-over version. Woohoo!!! :-)

Slam, bam, bang!!

Sweet? Salty? Na re na na.. 50-50

This simple ad jingle of this Britannia biscuit is still one of my favourites and the biscuit as well. But nowadays the talk of the town.. err.. world is 20-20. If you are not into cricket let me tell you that this is not a brand of biscuit but the new version of limited bowling overs (20 overs each side) in cricket and the world cup is currently underway in South Africa. After the major Indian debacle in the 50 over world cup contest I had lost interest in watching cricket but this version of game has sort of rekindled the love. 20-20 is definitely an attempt to make cricket endearing to those sect of people who think it takes a long time to finish one match. Football, rugby, hockey etc take hardly a few hours while the 50 over matches take up the whole day and let’s not talk of test matches which go on over 5 days and that too mostly end in a tie. 20-20 match takes only 3 hours to get done with. I remember a conversation with my college friend Rohan, who is a die-hard football fan. During one practical class he was going ga-ga over the previous night’s match and I retorted that the score line was 0-0 so what was so interesting about the match. He said that the attack and defense that both teams put forth was worth watching. Now I am of the opinion that a game should be entertaining because I would love to play football no matter if it ends in a 0-0 result but if I am watching it then I should be entertained in form of goals. In cricket I don’t care if a batsman defends a ball well or the bowler swings the ball to perfection coz what I want to see is wickets, sixes, boundaries.. so match highlights is the best option. But 20-20 is the thing which provides all this stuff I want and I have started loving it.

Yesterday one cricket legend wrote in his column that 20-20 is detrimental to the game of cricket as it is a batsman’s game and fielders are mere spectators looking at the ball sailing over the stadium. I agree but might be this form is in a nascent stage, so a few modifications to it might improve it and it will be more acceptable and lovable format in cricket. India-Pakistan match never fails to arouse excitement and the one last week also lived up to its expectations. Had it been a 50 over match it would have ended in a nail-biting tie but the new bowl-out rule turned the same nail-biting finish into a finger-biting one (if I may use the word). Who had thought that castling over the stumps without a batsman in front of them can turn out so difficult that Pakistan couldn’t manage even a single hit? Many a times matches being played on a neutral venue can tend to become boring due to lack of spectators of the host nation but in 20-20 crowds are thronging to watch the blitzkrieg launched by batsmen and also the DJ and the dancing troupe have a lot of activity to keep the crowd on their toes. Cricket purists say that the dancers should not be brought in this so-called gentleman’s game (sledging is part of being a gentleman :D). I have started agreeing with them coz they are deceiving us. Last week the dancers were wearing Jiah-styled (of Nishabd fame) teeny-weeny shorts and suddenly this week they switched to ankle length commando pants. WTH! Lol.. my cousin bro during a match said that the dancers were dancing on a platform by Reliance (a highly reputed Indian company) and I was busy looking at the blondes shaking their booty (literally). Who had the time to look at Reliance label? Entertainment is the word. That is why I love watching women’s tennis as well even though many say it is slow and boring. Where would you get to see good tennis with such beautiful faces? How can it be boring.. Maria was resplendent in her red hot dress last month. May I request Star Cricket to stop Hindi commentators from boring the TV spectators to death and cutting down the commercials between the overs? Anyways, I leave you with a video of Yuvraj Singh hitting six sixes in a single over in yesterday’s encounter with England.

Have a good day all of you.. ohh that is also one of my favourite biscuits :D

Big Brother!

Can someone please pass a few racial comments against me so that I can win 1,00,000 pounds (only prize money mentioned) like Shilpa Shetty? No wait.. what use is hearing comments here if I don’t get to live in with Danielle Lloyd. So I will wait for the official Big Brother invite.. until then I will be a brother at home.

Yesterday was Raksha Bandhan (thanks to wiki I don’t have to explain).. some of you might be surprised that this festive occasion was in last month, but for some reasons not known to me our community celebrates it yesterday on Rishi Panchami (no wiki entry on this). Like all the years down the lane I would have sent money orders to cousin sisters but this year we have my uncle’s daughter at our place for her studies so the ‘holy-thread tying ceremony’ (phew!) was to take place in real. I got a shock of my life when mom said that I had to bring a gift and just giving money won’t do. I remembered Aditi & Pooja’s brother (from their rakhi posts) complaining why the sisters don’t have to gift the brothers. I wasn’t expecting a gift here but dreaded the thought of getting a gift simply coz I suck big time in choosing a gift. That too for a girl!! I was trying to remember last time when I had picked up a gift for a girl.. it was when I was around 9 yrs old. Mom had bought something and I had ‘picked it up’ from home to gift it.. yeah that’s how close I am with girls on this planet lol. These are the times when you really wish for a girl friend to drop by from the sky and help you get out of this situation. But smart that I am I didn’t look skywards and decided to take sis out and let her choose what she wants. But smarter than me my mom is who said that it should be a surprise. WTH! I love surprises.. but in pranks, not for gifts. I mean just imagine the look of the person who gets a horrible surprise gift and ditto for the person who gives it. So frantically I messaged a few girls I consider myself close to, to suggest me what to get for her. They all messaged back that it was a difficult question and they were the wrong people to ask about gifts. Great!

I attended my Sunday afternoon classes and hoped that somehow everyone at home would conveniently forget about the festival. Coming out of the class I saw that I already had 2 missed calls from home. Mom asked me what I had decided to get and I said I had appointed a 5 member committee to mull over the topic and they will get back in a few days. But mom was not in a mood to laugh at my sick jokes and gave me an address of a store of her friend (mom of a student of my mom) who could help me select something. Mom was so precise in giving the address that I couldn’t even whine that I might not find the clothes store. Off I went to the store..

Just at the entrance of the store I forgot the name of the lady and fearing that mom would come out the mobile and smack me down I didn’t call up home and went inside. Luckily I remembered the student’s name and asked the cashier about his mom.. his in the sense the student’s and not the cashier’s. The lady was on a holiday. It seemed that the entire female species was up in arms against me yesterday. Still I went to see if I could get something and a sales-boy asked me what I wanted.
Me: I am looking for a short kurta for a girl
SB: *starts piling up tops of myriad colours*
Me: *dude this has so many colours.. doesn’t help to be colour blind*

I kept staring at the kurtas laid down on the table for 2 minutes hoping that one of those would spring to life and hug me crying out ‘Take me home, Take me home’. Sadly that didn’t happen and suddenly I noticed that the size was too big for my sis so I asked the boy for medium size. I saw a pink one and told him to pack it. 5 mins and I was done! I felt elated and as a buffer gift I also picked up a box of assorted chocolates. Sis was delighted to see the kurta coz pink is her fav colour she said. I didn’t lose the opportunity to say that I knew it was her fav colour so had spent time searching for it.. didn’t I mention I am smart :D. We guys (2 cousin brothers were also present) devoured more than half of the chocolates ;-). All in all I heaved a sigh of relief. Bugged all those girls I had asked earlier that I had shopped for a wonderful gift in flat 5-7 minutes *drumroll* and then slept peacefully.

Lessons learnt yesterday:
1. Surprise gifts can bring a smile on the receiver’s face unlike pranks

2. Don’t waste time in choosing clothes and instead simply pick up 2 boxes of chocolates as gift when you know that you be eating more than half of them MUAHAHAHA :D

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.