WTF?!

So long, and Thanks for all the fish!

2010-02-21T18:38:00.000+05:30

The time has come to bid adieu and move on. I have decided to leave cognizant. This was my first job and the days spent at cognizant will definitely be something to remember and cherish. During my stay here at cognizant I got the time to stop and assess myself. I was able to get a hold on new perspectives that helped shape me (hopefully for the good ;) ). I got the chance to get to meet some really smart people and made some really good friends for life. The channel one blogs in cognizant were a source of great fun especially during my training days at cognizant. The kick ass 'empowered' sessions were a great learning and bonding experience. One of the things you tend to notice when you are at a company like cognizant, is the fact that different people across the vertical/organization seem to be solving variants or maybe different instances of the same problem, most of the time and they are so disconnected. This is sad, because you feel helpless that you cant seem to do much about it. Maybe I was just being plain lazy, by telling myself that its not my problem. Interestingly, I think this problem probably stems from the way an organization looks at revenue. In what may be is very crude terms, I think an IT services company probably looks at revenue as something like:

"more clients with problems => more resources to contract => more revenue"

You might want to point that there are groups of people (center of excellence etc) trying to come out with stuff to fix problems at a more generic scale across the organization but I think that’s a negligible number in comparison. A software product company instead looks at revenue completely differently. They go more like, "Hey that looks like a problem, can we come up with product that fixes similar problems?", and because of this intrinsically different way of looking at revenue, I think, break-through innovation is more likely to happen at a software product company. Of course, we need take risk potential into account, which is why they say building products is a risky business in comparison to providing services. Now that said, I also believe there is amazingly great potential to develop products at a totally different scale within a services company like cognizant. IF, and that is a big IF, only you could figure out a way to build a great community across the organization, somehow integrate everybody across a vertical, somehow! That would be an amazing feat to see. Talking about a Community and software development reminds me of FOSS. It also reminds me that I should stop, I digress too much!!

Bottom line: I have put in my papers and will be joining Amazon soon. I ll be working for something around the Amazon Kindle at their Chennai dev center. The very prospect of working with some of the smartest people in the industry sounds exciting. I think I had gotten a little too comfortable during my stay at cognizant and hope to learn a lot of new things that make my brain hurt (in a good way of course). Clichéd as it may sound, change is inevitable. You cant evolve if you resist change, I say!

Life....

2010-01-30T18:59:00.002+05:30

Do the stars really determine my actions and the world around me? Do the planets really determine my compatibility with other people? Okay, I am not really pondering about how good astrology is anyway or if it works at all! My question merely is; what good is it anyway?! What good is a life where you consult your astrologer before you take a crap? I wonder, if it is a good time to wash my bottom. We do like to be in control of our lives don’t we? But surprising as it my sound, I think many of us are afraid of being in control of their lives. It is sometimes easier to take orders from someone than to take all the hard decisions yourself. You can always blame them if things go wrong. Decisions, decisions, decisions! Sample this hypothetical situation:

You have a problem and you go decide to go an astrologer for some reason this time. No, of course he doesn’t give you a solution to your problem. He doesn’t give you a different perspective or help you solve the problem at all. Instead the astrologer enables you, to take *your* shoddy problem and help you blame the darned *planets* for it! Voila! It isn’t your problem anymore! You don’t even have to bother looking for a solution now. Searching for a solution won’t help anyway, bad stuff happened to you because it had to happen, not because you did anything wrong, No sir! That darned project was doomed to fail anyway and there was nothing you could have done to stop it. Heck! You are not lazy; laziness is in your natal charts! Good time is just around the corner; let me sit my lazy ass down until then. As you can see, astrology can have amazingly therapeutic effects and eventually you are somebody who doesn’t do things because you want to, you do things because you are supposed to. You not only surrender your problems, you also surrender your mind and your life to astrology in the process. And before you know it you are slave to astrology! Life could be worse really! Imagine, you being in control of your own life. Imagine having to take the blame for all your misdoings. Imagine not being able to be in a position to blame it on the charts. All you will probably have do is tip the astrologer and maybe flash a 22.1023K gold ring with a sapphire crystal before you pee, but it’s all good.

Eleanor Roosevelt beautifully summed up the purpose of life.

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

Without free-will none of this makes any sense! Astrology is evil because it takes away from you, your free will, and your right to think or act on your own! You are a slave to something and you don’t even know it! Next time you do something, Stop and, ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. It’s easy to say “Don’t do things blindly” but as simple as it may sound, it is sad to see so many people go astray, and get manipulated/influenced by not just astrology, but various other things on an every day basis. Wake up. Life awaits you.

Update: Thanks to @Revs, I was able to find out about advanced research in evil-eye shielding techniques. BUY THIS Product NOW! Awesomeness in form of jewelry!

The escape route!

2009-05-05T19:23:00.009+05:30

Prologue:

With two three days in the last one month, I must say, Chennai trekkers is certainly one of the best things that happened to me ! (Should I say thanks to the kameeni ? :P)

After a trek to the Ombattu Gudde on april 10th - 12th, self was doing what he does best, ["generally bumming around doing nothing"] until self spoke to one samyak kaninde about the escape route trek which was happening on from 1st - 3rd May. The nice guy that he was, he said it would be possible to accomodate me despite the trek being heavily overbooked! I immediately signed up for the trek and boy am i glad i did! The nice person that I am, I made it a point (under due thankfulness one could say) to make the trek memorable for the very same samyak kaninde, by irritating him to no end throught the duration of the trek... ;) I also took the time to call up each and every one of my friends and make them all jealous. [Sigh! Sometimes i think why am i so nice? :P]

[Photo by: Mithun]

The trek:

The day:April 30th 2009
The time: 10.00 pm

All of us who were gathered at the guindy bus stop boarded the chartered bus to kodaikanal, the excitement was inevitable! To our dismay the bus we took from Chennai was extremely slow! I think it probably had the engine of a TVS-XL moped! It took a whooping 4 hours just to climb the kodai ghat section! 57kms in around 4 hours! It was averaging 12 kms per hour. In the middle a few of us got down from the bus and choose to walk / jog along with the bus as we were bored sitting inside the bus. Finally we reached kodaikanal around 2.30! We started the trek from the Caps valley at around 4pm! Trekking through through the enchanting Shola forest is something I can never put to words! (read: author is on an all time low on vocabulary and wants the world to move beyond words and read minds :P) . The moment i entered the forest, I just fell in love with the place! The terrain was totally so awesome, it was like walking on a mattress! We saw a half decayed dead bison as soon as we entered the forest and sure enough you could hear them cameras click. After 4 hours of easy hiking we reached the camp site near the berijam lake at 8pm. This surely was a royal trek owing to the fact that this time it wasn't maagi noodles or something we cooked ourselves for lunch/dinner but we actually had cooks which the local guide (mani) hired to cook for us! Hot sambar rice with cabbage porriyal was served for dinner and most of them hit the sack in a couple of empty cottages. And since we had two tents, 8 of us slept in those two playing uno till 12.30 in the night and then we hit the sack. Stepping out of the tent the next morning, one could see awesome mist rising from the road, the lake and all this coupled with the sunlight! You just couldn't ask for more. Lay down and bask in the sun all day, what more do you want from life? A lot of us who woke up a bit early choose to take a walk around the place and see the lake and of course take photographs! The second day of trekking began with a heavy breakfast and we packed biriyani which was cooked by some awesome cooks mani had arranged. Sure enough as we started the trek and a little while later we saw a dead bison again! The second time around people were took photos holding the bison skull by the horns and what not! At around 11am, we encountered a small stream, where most of the crowd jumped in! After a while we came across a beautiful virgin lake (where a few people jumped in again) and we had lunch by the lake. A very heavy and scrumptious lunch! Vegetable biriyani, onion raitha, and pickle! Ravi Ghosh (One of the organizers and my friend) had bought a lot of chocolates and snacks for everyone! The second day trek ended around 3.30 and left everyone wanting for more. We reached a village called kavunji from where we were supposed to go to natampatti and camp for the night. A van was arranged to take people from that village to natampatti in three trips, with 20 people in each trip (read: If i haven't told you already, there were 57 people on the trek and for all those who don't know 60/3 = 20 :P). Some people including me choose to walk / jog behind the van to reach natampatti. Some guy travelled on top of the van i.e on the luggage carrier, sure seemed like fun! After reaching natampatti, the totally enthusiastic crowd couldn't just sit simply! We played a couple games of kabbadi with 12 people playing and a whole lot of spectators and photographers!! Kabbadi or any game for that matter is so much fun especially when your team wins twice in a row! ;-) Only one word could stop the game and that was around 5.30 pm when some one mentioned on word - "waterfall". We hiked a small distance to take a look at the waterfall and then reach a village! We spent time interacting with the village people and looking around the place and got back to the forest guest house by 8pm. After a dose of extremely spicy/hot chutney and semiya for dinner it was time for a camp fire! People were first reluctant to sing and it was only samyak who entertained the lot but in a while the enthusiasm got to the crowd everyone started singing and even started dancing around the fire!! Followed by the camp fire, we had a couple games of UNO before we went to sleep. The first two days of the trek were so much like a picnic or a college tour given the small distances covered and also due to the very enthusiastic and fun loving group! On the third day, everyone was taken by a surprise after two days of slacking! ;-) We actually got to do some decent trekking and we covered approximately a distance of 25kms on the third day. Day 3 was also the day when on more than on occasion we ended up searching for people who we thought were lost. Firstly padmini (a fellow trekker) had told sam and couple other guys who were responsible for sweeping the crowd, to wait for 5 mins as she had to attend to nature's call. She was done with that and the moved ahead with the crowd while sam, ravi , vivek and gowri were waiting for her. After a while gowri and sam got impatient and went ahead to ask if anyone saw her but since she was long gone these guys couldn't have seen her. So these four people started searching for her in every corner of the jungle shouting her name. Meanwhile she reached first set of people who were waiting for everyone to regroup. Thats when the saranya and gang reached the regroup point and informed us that 4 people were asking for padmini and looking for her. Me and brijesh ran back to the sweeper gang who left no stone unturned in searching for padmini! Towards the end of the day yet again when we were waiting for the last 3-4 people to reach kovilur, where the trek ended and wondering why they had not yet come. Brijesh and ravi ghosh decided to go back and search for this gang! Apparently our guide mani also had a sweeper who sweeper had taken these last 4 people directly to place where the jeeps were waiting (via some shortcut) and hence we missed them . Sam came to call us and inform us that the last 4 guys had already reached the jeeps. Finally as we were getting back to the jeeps we realized vivek who was with us went missing and sam ran up again to look for vivek but vivek had taken a different route and already reached the jeep ! Me and ravi walked a little bit to call sam and finally called it a day! With 13-14 people crammed in each jeep we reached from kovilur to munnar and caught the bus to bodi where our chartered bus to Chennai awaited our arrival...

Trekking in the eastern Himalaya – Part 1

2009-01-11T22:03:00.014+05:30

Standing beside the trekkers hut at Sandakphu which is at an altitude of 3636 meters, with temperature hitting five degrees below zero, on the loftiest peak in the Singalila range, posing for a photograph wearing nothing but underwear might not actually sound like your idea of good fun but you are not me and 'to hell with caution', I say! Although it wasn't anything that was a part of the plan but it did happen and I did stand there to embrace the cold wind on my face and my ass, to pose for the photograph. It was shot on raj's camera and sadly, he misplaced his camera on the way back. So if you find a camera in the eastern Himalayas that contains a couple of dudes standing in their undies please be kind to return the camera to the author and please be kind enough to not misuse the photographs. :D

The Sandakphu trek was organized by Diwakar of Chennai trekkers (Chennai trekkers is certainly one of the reasons I am liking Chennai!) and was certainly a fun and adventurous experience. Fifteen had registered to go on this awesome trek, and in accord with that self and Hari had showed up at 5.45 am on 19th of December 2008 at Chennai central. Eleven of us (me, hari, kunal, shaji, diwakar, swaroop, sai, krish, raj, santosh and madhu) had planned to leave from Chennai to New Jalpaiguri by train and another four would join us at New Jalpaiguri and Maneybhanjang. The train journey took about two days and we reached NJP at around 10pm on the second day.Bang outside the NJP railway station there were a host of dhabas/restaurants to cater to our growling stomachs. We also did see a few hotels serving South Indian dishes ;)

We had decided to spend the night at NJP and found ourselves a lodge near the railway station. Although NJP is in the plains, it must have been around 19 degrees at 6 in the morning which was pretty cold comparing to Chennai standards. After taking bath with ice cold water we had breakfast at NJP and left for Maneybhanjang in two Tata Sumos. We were 13 now because of the fact that Horst and Remy joined us at NJP , Alexadara and Ramani uncle would join us at Maneybhanjang. We reached Maneybhanjang by 3.30pm and took refuge at the kanchenjunga lodge for the night. The evening was spent walking around Maneybhanjang while the guides and porters were being arranged for the trek the next day by a couple of us. Maneybhanjang is a small village that is mostly used by trekkers as a base camp for treks into the Singalila national park. The national park is part of the eastern Himalayas and the two highest peaks of West Bengal, Sandakphu (3630 m) and Phalut (3600 m) are located on the Singalila ridge and inside the park.

Our trekking plan was as follows:

Day 1: Maneybhanjang to Garibas via tumling [18km]

Day 2: Garibas to Sandakphu [12km]

Day 3: Sandakphu to Phalut [21 km]

Day 4: Phalut to Gorkhey [18 km]

Day 5: Gorkhey to Rimbik [21km]

We had two buffer days just in case nature decided to play hard and in case of any other emergencies. We carried sleeping mats, tents, sleeping bags, a stove and lots of extra stuff which was unnecessary on this trekking route given the availability of trekkers huts and cooked food all the way upto phalut but the plan was to carry all that in case of emergency and we were hiring quite a number of porters. I should say I was tempted to ask for a porter to carry my back-breaking back pack, (Ah! the luxury of traveling without the back pack) but I decided to do without one.

It would get dark by five in the evening in these places and as it turned six on the clock and some of were enjoying whiskey followed by food at 7.30. Most of us hit the sack by 11pm. The trek was to begin the next day and the very thought was exciting.

The post seems to be getting pretty big and so I ll break here and continue with this on my next post.

Of Beaches and Ice Creams

2008-09-02T00:33:00.005+05:30

Sit down on the sand, facing the infinite array of dancing waves that come towards you with vigor and then as if in submission die down at the shoreline, you feel unusually serene. You posterior feels a little uncomfortable though. You try to adjust yourself to better suit you and yet the feeling of someone jabbing your rear end with a stick does not go away. Stirred up by this you investigate to find the culprit, an ear of grilled corn that was gnawed on for a considerable amount of time and strategically placed under your ass. Ah! Beaches are certainly wonderful places that they are.

Last week I was at besant nagar beach doing what you do at a beach. Kite flying, eat bajji, the usual running by the shoreline and then there is the occasional throwing-a-friend-into-the-water. In one word it can all be simply described as “Fun”. So here we are having fun and I realize that you can’t have fun without ice-creams. No sir, not quite possible if there is an Ice cream vendor in your vicinity! Hence I walk on the nearest kwality walls ice cream wala to have an ice cream. I figure out I want the almond fudge ice cream. Voila! I was hogging on the almond fudge ice cream with the wrapper in one hand and then more or less seventy five seconds later process of ice cream eating was done. I turn to the ice-cream seller and look for a dustbin that these ice cream vendors around the beach usually carry with their ice cream stand. Not able to find one attached, I gently ask the guy “Dustbin illaiya?” He extends his hand as if to ask for something and grunts. He seems to want my ice cream wrapper which I hand over to him with a smile. He shifts to the side of the ice cream stand thingy and drops the wrapper. “Silly of me not to notice the dustbin on the other side”, I say to myself as I move to notice the non-existent waste bin. Alas! The guy simply threw it on the beach! What a waste! I am infuriated but who is to blame? Why is that that we do not have any bins whatsoever over the beach I ponder? Last time I had to carry the ice cream wrapper to the road side bin to drop it, and if you were on the other side of the beach, I’d say it was quite a walk. It was nice to notice ice cream vendors carrying nifty waste bins attached to their stands, the little part they play to keep the place clean. Anyways how difficult is it to carry, the shit you are responsible for, to the huge bin on the main road? Not a Herculean task I suppose. People like to talk of cleaner beaches in other foreign countries but the I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same person dropping a chocolate wrapper on the besant nagar beach. Agreed that it is very alluring to drop our shit and leave the cleaning to someone else, but at what cost?

I guess that’s the way it is! Lets fill the place up with trash until a bunch of service minded people from a large MNC{read:TCS} cant stand the scene and decide to clean it up. Newspapers laud these young lads time and again but if it weren’t for our trash, there wouldn’t be anything to clean and its no fun cleaning up an already clean beach is it?

Tagged AGAIN?!

2008-07-27T02:51:00.005+05:30

Doesn't come as a surprise that revathi has tagged me yet again so that I get off my ass and in an attempt to complete the tag, revive this dormant blog of mine.

This tag requires me to pen down a bit about myself. Now how difficult is that? I do not know about normal people but when you are as ignorant as me, self introspection is the last thing you should be doing. Oh well here goes nothing.

Six whatever s about me:

What is a whatever? Frankly this little tag gives not set of rules. There sure is quite some ambiguity which i shall use to my benefit :P

1. I think out aloud sometimes. Chalo, Lets put it differently , I talk to myself. Not often but I do talk to myself. At times I debate with myself, but well thats a very rare thing.
2.I am riding the bike and as people overtake me and give me the wtf-you-think-you-are-doing-look. OK ok! I missed the part where I am listening to music on the earphones, let my hands go, and sway with the fast paced song as the bike is cruising at 70km/hr.When you are on a bike with the right music , the right mood and the road being sufficiently empty[OH! I am cautious you see] try this! Its an exhilarating experience. Trust me!
Err actually dont try that! Dont SUE me if you break your head!
3.I am sitting in front of the computer and chatting away to glory when my mom is screaming my name out loud for the tenth time.I come out of my trance and react just before I get my ass kicked. SIGH! I can do only one thing at a time. I have this one track mind that somehow i cannot concentrate for more than one thing at a time.I can hear the other person screaming but it takes me a while to process it. I guess i don't have a very good preemptive scheduler.
4.I am color blind. I cannot differentiate between certain shades of yellow/green and between certain shades of brown. For this fact I avoid describing anything by giving names to its various colors and the like.
5.I cannot sing. Forget singing! I talk in monotone. My voice is lifeless, I realized that only after I heard a recorded me talking. I somehow talk in an assumption that people who know me understand me and about who dont, oh well I am sorry I cant help it. I try to wish a certain someone "Happy Birthday" , I sound like I am half asleep, I hate the person and I am wishing them just because I am being forced to.
6.Its very difficult for me to wake up, I really need minimum 10 hour sleep. If you let me sleep I would wake up only at 6 in the evening and that too because of a grumbling stomach. I missed the first hour of college almost 50 percent of the time. I always used to show up at 10.30 or so college. I used to dream of waking up at 6 in the morning, get ready, have breakfast on time and go cooly to college before time at least on one day! It never happened.But now I see that changing. I am attempting to fiddle my internal clock until I get things right just to change things.

Five Things I miss write now:

Okay here goes in no particular order,
1.My mom's cooking! Home Food, Oh boy! I do miss home food more than anything.
2.I miss coimbatore, I love that city. Miss riding down the coimbatore roads with cool wind hitting your face.
3.I miss being with family. Not that I dont like being with friends mind you, this is a totally different thing :D
4.This one suddenly popped up from nowhere, I now miss playing team double catcher [Our appartment's customized version of hide and seek] It sure was fun! Good ol times!
5.I totally miss the dhaba we used to own at coimbatore. Sure was a jolly good time.

Ten Things that I want to achieve in a decade:

I could sum up the ten things in one line, "Break free from laziness, Get productive, GET A LIFE!" BBut let get a specific here, targets are nothing if not specific.

1.Learn a couple new programing languages, contribute to atleast one project on source forge. Learn a few dynamic algorithms properly.
2.Learn to cook. When I say cook , I mean at least a decent three course north indian meal.
3.Learn the guitar. At least learn the guitar so much that I can kneel down and play a nice romantic song when the need arises :P
4.Do more treks this year. Go on at least one trek to himalayas. Go kayaking, rafting and the like. Visit the north, explore south east india. Go on atleast one 8-10 day biking trip.
5.Get regular to the gym.
6.Learn dancing. Go for a dance class. Shake off the I-cant-dance inhibition.
7.Start a Dhaaba!!
8.Read at least 100 books over the decade. Which sounds like very less. But that sure is a big number for me.
9.Learn a foreign language. Atleast one!
10.Learn photography. Get a DSLR, Get good at photography.Learn photoshop.

Tagged Again!

2008-06-28T18:12:00.003+05:30

Helllo People!

The last time i was here, it was because revathi tagged me. This time its sree.

Its a sad tag!
And when I say sad , I really mean sad.

I am supposed to turn to page 123 of a book near me , scroll to the fifth line and type the next 3 lines here. Now why would anyone want to read those three lines?

I am seated on my dingy bed , in my room as i notice the book nearest to me is "Atlas shrugged" by ayn rand. The pages are dogeared. The guy who loaned it to me saw the condition and cried out loud. I am to buy him a new book! BAH! I will not. :)

Being the voracious reader that I am, I am half way through this book and have been reading it from 6 months now. I have done like 4-5 sessions of reading. *grin* Okay now back to the tag. The three lines in atlas shrugged are boring. Now i turn to this other book. This is called "The DILBERT principle". Another book I stopped reading halfway. SIGH! Am i lazy or what? :)

PRELUDE [Page 122]

A man comes into a woman's office and offers to show her a report. The woman responds by saying, "Well I m a little busy right now"
Undeterred by this mild rebuff , the man will pull up a chair and proceed to chew up an hour of the woman's valuable time. Eventually the woman's productivity will be devoured by an endless parade of men who would rather talk to her than do work. Her career will begin death spiral, until eventually she becomes a bag lady.

Okay lets turn to what scott adams has to say on page 123. The tag requires me to write only lines 6,7 and 8 but I m going to be a spoil sport as usual and write the whole paragraph.

PAGE 123

A man comes into a woman's office and offers to show her a report. The woman responds by saying, "Ah shove it up your ass and die."
The man will be momentarily shocked. It is unlikely that he will pull up a chair. Nor will he experience any bonding. He will probably back slowly out the door. The woman's productivity will skyrocket.
But what about repercussions? The woman might someday need a favor from the man she verbally abused. Fortunately for her, all men are trained at birth to accept verbal abuse from women and get over it rather quickly.
And in the unlikely event that the man shows some hesitation to be helpful in the future, the situation can be smoothed over with the simple communication technique of saying "Do it now or I ll rip off your nuts and shove them down your throat."

MORAL OF THE STORY: Women who swear will fly up the corporate ladder faster than you think :)

Taggggggggged!

2008-05-11T00:53:00.004+05:30

Sigh! Tagged! I ve been tagged by the Devil!

Oh well! Atleast this revives my dormant blog, So here goes nothing!

Last movie seen in a theatre:

Just got back from a movie, Speed Racer!
We got in 10 mins late. Actually we thought the movie was to start at 7.30 but we go there at 7.10 only to know that the movie started ten minutes ago! Anyway getting to the point, If you watch cartoons you should know speed racer, from that standpoint i liked the movie.

What book are you reading?
eRR Atlas shrugged!
Been stuck with this one from almost 3 months now! I m not an avid reader, 3-4 reading sessions done in 3 months. Oh well! You could say i m a lil lazy! ;)

Favourite board game:
Oh been a long time since I have played some board games, Hmm I would say the fun board games were monopoly and life. I hardly recollect playing anything else.

Favourite magazine:
Darn it who reads magazines that too on a regular basis? Anyways ignorant ol' me can only think of digit.

Favourite smells:

I just love the smell of lime ..

Favourite sound:

Jeez favourite sound?!

Lemme think, Do i have to have a favorite sound? Hmm ooh yeah roaring of an engine of a Ferrari or Porsche or any race car for that matter! Bikes too ;)

Now let me assure you! I havent ever seen or even heard how a porsche sounds first hand let alone drive the mean machine and you know this is more of a ... fantasy?

P.S: If any of reading this would help a poor child's dream come true, please feel free to donate money to my paypal account. Thank you! ;)

PP.S: Oye ramanan ki bachi! "silence, howling of the wind"? Pichle janam me bhoot thi kya?

Worst feeling in the world:

Betrayal!

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?

Reach for the cell phone and look at the time and no matter what time it is convince myself to go back to sleep ! :)

Favourite fast food place:

A place called Doughnuts in coimbatore. I dont fancy pizza's much, Burgers yeah.
Nothing specific. Actually! depends on the mood... Could vary from bhel puri shops to bistros to kebab shops...

Future child’s name:

WHAT?! I don't I repeat I do not think of that far in the future! I don't know what I am doing tomorrow! Nope cant answer this one, besides whats in a name?

Finish this statement, “If I had a lot of money I’d…”

If i had a lot of money, I d spend like crazy only to become a popper again.
Go backpacking round the world, DRAG along my friends with me, ride fast cars, live in style for as long as i can....

Do you drive fast?

You could say that :)

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?

Nah I used to sleep with a turtle long long ago , but that was only for a few days.
I do hug a pillow though , not an animal , but hey its stuffed!

Storms - Cool or Scary?

Storms sound Cool.
On second thought imagine getting stuck in a storm , whoa thats scary!

Do you eat the stems on broccoli?

At a restaurant of my choice when they serve a few pieces of broccoli with any sort of a platter I d bite and eat the whole damn thing.
At home I d go bleeech!

Moral: Ghar ki murgi daal barabar!
Sigh! Not really , I miss home food! :(

If you could dye your hair any colour, what would be your choice?

Blue sounds exciting! Facial hair too! ;)

Name all the different cities/towns you have lived in:

Coimbatore, Chennai.

Favourite sports to watch:

I dont watch sports. Not my kinda thing...

One nice thing about the person who sent this to you:

Does it really have to be nice?
Umm Full of life? Nah !

Ok I think I ll go with full of life!

What’s under your bed?

Arey bed sucks! I bought this cheap bed and now i m not using it, back to sleeping on the floor with a mattress... If had a bed I would hide random stuff under the mattress .. You know things like money, sometimes some papers, certificates even!

Would you like to be born as yourself again?

Oh yeah! [You could add a million dollars with that though]

Morning person or night owl?

Night owl ? Maybe but I m not like an insomniac , I usually sleep by 12-1 on weekdays... I wake up real late though, so that kicks me out of the morning person category!

Over easy or sunny side up?

Sunny side up.

Favourite place to relax:

No place like home!

Favourite ice cream flavour:

Butterscotch, Black current, Banana. Depends on the mood.

You pass this tag to

This is actually the best part of being tagged. But Sigh I got no one to tag! I m not tagging anyone.So the tag dies here!

Of all the people you tagged this to, who’s most likely to respond first?

This is easy ! No one :P

Monday blues ...

2008-01-28T21:26:00.000+05:30

It’s a Monday morning; you come to consciousness at Eleven am with a stiff neck, your head still resonating from last night’s blaring music. Your neck hurts as you try to get up and then you decide its better to stay put on the bed. Besides it’s a Monday morning! Nobody goes to work on a Monday! (Err they still do?) and hence you convince yourself to go back to sleep for another 5 minutes which eventually turn to 30. At eleven thirty you realize you have got to deposit money in the bank else the cheque that you have issued towards credit card bill payment would bounce due to insufficient funds. Reluctantly you wake up cursing the credit card company, the clock, and whatsoever is remotely related with the fact of getting you out of the bed.

Ok enough of you-person-perspective and abstract writing. Although it sounds like I have had a hangover from excessive alcohol consumption; I assure you, that is definitely not the case.

*I-am-not-alcoholic-grin*

Yesterday I had been to IIT Madras’ yearly cultural fest called Saarang for the rock show. The two bands for the evening were a Singapore based band called firebrands and another Delhi based band called prestorika. Firebrands had a dj et al which typically reminds me of linkin park but then who cares about that. Anyways the point is that last thing I was expecting them to play was a pink floyd number but they did it. They played a slightly improvised version of ‘another brick in the wall’. They also did various other covers like ‘one step closer’ by Linkin park and ‘wake up’ by rage against the machines which I felt was more their style… Next up was prestorika who started with an immaculate “Sandman” by Metallica which got the crowd in the Mosh Pit wooing and screaming along with the lead singer. Now Speaking of Mosh Pit, It is definitely something you have to experience! Initially I was on the sidelines but then as firebrands got into the groove and people in the Mosh Pit grew insane, I jumped into the Mosh Pit giving vent to head banging and air-guitar-ing as crazy as ever! Let go of all inhibitions and go crazy with the music! T-o-Tally insane but it was fun! The head-banging gives you delusions of floating in space hehe Remember when you were child and used to go rotating in circles with your hands in the air? This is a similar experience albeit you flow with the music. You scream the lyrics if you know, you scream similar sounding gibberish if you don’t, but you are in a trance for that moment, or maybe hypnosis with music as your master. ;) Maybe I am exaggerating a wee bit here but yeah a similar state, that... Later prestorika shifted to more of megadeth and heavy metal tending to death metal which went beyond my head, it was tiring now, I looked at the energetic crowd with awe. Although I only wanted to stay a wee bit longer I had to leave…..

The case was something like this

Me: {Imagine: a completely wasted guy in a bar pleading for one more drink }

One more number guys?

Friends: Gotta go! It’s almost over anyway {read: That’s what you ve been telling from the last two songs}

Me: Yeah anyways my neck aches {read: Giving in Helpless}, but you know a wee bit longer wouldn’t hurt would it? {grin}

*Friends thought they heard me say ‘lets go’ and thus leave in a hurry*

60 seconds later I follow…

P.S: I shall upload a few shaky low-light pics I managed to take later… So watchout :P

Music can be the best prozac?

2008-01-13T16:57:00.001+05:30

Do you have a magic song? A song that you can relentlessly keep listening to no matter what, no matter if this is the only song on your playlist repeating for the zillionth time?

I have this weird habit of a one-song-playlist, You may find this weird or not but that’s me. :-P

I am currently listening to “wish you were here” by pink floyd for the zillionth time in a row this week. I am no pink floyd fan or I don’t swear by any particular singer or band for that matter but what I am trying to say is that this song is like magic for me right now, this song takes me to a different dimension altogether! From the moment the first chord strikes to the last second of the song is an awesome experience, It is something I can never pen down into words maybe because I live in a very abstract world or maybe this is such an abstract experience which has to be only felt or simply because I am short of words hehe

Have you ever felt music take you to a different dimension altogether, take you high? I have!

You just have to give in to the song and it will carry you away to a different world, you may cry with the song if It wants you to and if you are already in a sad mood a song may take you the heights of joy you might never have imagined. Trust me; songs can be the best Prozac ever!

Jeez! it sounds like I am drunk and blabbering, I don’t know why I would even wanna post this shit *dorky-grin*

Anyways coming back to ‘wish you were here’ , You can feel the power of the singer the moment he starts with “So, so you think you can tell? Heaven from hell, blue skies from pain…. A smile from a veil”, MAN! The lyrics leave me in awe. The guitar couldn’t be more influential on my little mind, and then when he goes to “How I wish, how I wish you were here…” The song takes control of you completely and you feel the pain of the singer who is probably missing someone very close to him. At first I dint like this song so much but now as the song is ending I find myself hitting the back button and voila there I am listening to the song yet again and enjoying every bit of it.

Thank you Pink Floyd!

P.S- Thanks for putting up with my crap. Muchos gracias! :P

Definitely a WTF

2007-07-18T22:45:00.000+05:30

Orkut's and its weird today's fortunes have hit the roof with this one

My Today's fortune:
You and your wife will be happy in your life together

Dont they even think of rationalizing this fortune thing, most of the time its more like Today's-sentence-for-you

Life in a metro...

2007-07-17T02:00:00.000+05:30

Just finished watching a movie , " Life in a metro". Nice movie, Great songs., Gripping screenplay .. Definitely worth a watch especially if you have nothing else to do eheh , No seriously, maybe I expected nothing out of this movie or whatever! its good ;)
The movie has left me in a sad + happy, umm ambivalent mood, Longing for love ... seeming to be the zest of life; Lost in the thoughts of having someone to love , to be loved by 'the one'.. Hmm there are times(most of the time actually) when you push these thoughts aside with a so called realist attitude. They are definitely not going anywhere .. The question still remains, Will I ever find my zeal for existence ? I can only wait and watch :)
Do listen to this song, "in dino" from the same movie, most of the songs are great!

The Cake that was...

2007-07-09T00:01:00.001+05:30

The Cake
Originally uploaded by >>Jass<<

"Joy is not in things , Its in us"

The 4th of july ...

2007-07-05T00:21:00.000+05:30

Its my birthday, I wake up at around 10 like any other day, Little did I know how the day was going to unfold...
I receive calls from friends and relatives as the day progresses.. Calls from people who you knew would call , surprising calls from good ol' pals... Just another birthday, thats what i said to myself :)
At 1pm the courier man arrives to deliver the long awaited camera , my prized possession. My mom receives the package and brings it to me , As soon as I hold the package , I m like "This is so light as if it were only the thermocol box and nothing in it ." Anyways I set that thought aside and the next moment me and my uncle are unpacking the package in an impatient frenzy, I was filled with joy, although momentary because to our freaking surprise, the box was empty. For a moment I thought it was a joke and snapped back to reality in the next millisecond. I walked down to my room, filled with a million thoughts in my mind, picked up and called the camera guy in madras.

Tring Tring ...
Me: Hello , I m calling from coimbatore , Jaskirat Singh
Camera Guy: Yeah tell me , did you receive the parcel?
Me: Yeah , but there is nothing inside!!
Camera Guy: WHAT?! Camera ? Battery ? Nothing ?
Me: Yeah! Are you sure you put the shit inside?
Camera guy is pissed offf...
Camera Guy: Sir , How can you bluntly blame me like this , I have been in this field for ten years.
Me: Sorry that was not my intention.. But what the heck am i supposed to do ?
Camera Guy: I ll go and check upon the madras branch of the courier office, meanwhile you enquire at the coimbatore branch.
Me: (Confused) Ok

I kick start the bike and fled to the RS puram branch of the courier office at coimbatore, since that was the branch that delivered the package to me. I walk in to the courier office with a 'baffled and fucked-up' look on my face, I explain to this guy (Vijaykumar, branch office manager) what happened. He is like please bring the parcel , we might need to have a look at it . I m like "what the hell difference is an empty parcel box with a paper cover outside make to you, call up the head office, get me the tracking details, when the parcel arrived at where and stuff". Meanwhile I go home and get the empty parcel shit. I call upon my neighbor cum family friend, Mr Mickey and his accomplice to come with me for help.

As we walk out of the house , Its drizzling , we decide to take the car. We ride to the Same RS puram branch of the courier office. The three of us walk to the same guy I met earlier, The guy is clueless . He says "I ll have to wait for the delivery boy who came to deliver the package to your house and then i ll get back to you"
I m like "Here liSten, check the weight of this empty box and shit", he is like its 200grams, to which i reply "the parcel was booked for 350 grams approximately, check your records, The package seems to be torn and repacked on one end"
Mr mickey notices the cello tape on one end of the torn package and cuts in the middle "Listen , Its a clear case of fraud, Look at the cello tape , there is variation is the width of the cello tape used to originally pack this which is all over the thing and this other wider cello tape which has been only used at this one end and ofcourse let alone the 150 grams weight missing". The other guy is baffled, He picks up the cell phone and tries to contact the delivery boy , walking out of the office. Meanwhile we are sitting at his desk and thinking what to do next, we had to get to the problem point, where this shit occured. It could have happened in the madras office, or maybe at the madras head office, or at the coimbatore head office or this one. Head offices and transit systems are ruled out because there are more checkpoints there and hardly any time for this shit to happen, parcels only stay momentarily at head offices and are distributed to branch offices almost immediately, Besides there are too many people at a head office for this kind of fraud to occur. All of a sudden, our friend here notices the cello tape at the courier office, and subtly points it out to me. Me and mickey examine that shit and it seems to be the same width as the one on the torn side, repacked shit. Okay, no big deal, there prolly only 2-3 sizes of cello tape and luckily or unluckily the one here seems to be the one so no big deal. The vijay kumar guy arrives and we explain the rapacked shit to him, although we dont tell him about the cello tape he is like i can tell you something only after the delivery boy comes back...

Mickey then adds "listen , you get back to me in say an hour , fine ? Else i have to proceed in a different route" ending that on a sharp tone,we leave the place.Mickey goes home, he asks me to go to the Head office and collect details regarding this shit.I walk in to the head office in gandhipuram, coimbatore. There is this manager guy here who is helpful, I get all the details from him.He is like the record weight from madras is 400 grams,we recheck every parcel before we distribute it to the delivery offices, It was 380 grams this morining and recorded in the comp.

so i m like measure this shit(the empty parcel) on the same weighing scale, it was 210grams.

I m like "listen this is the same shit you measured in the moring 380 g, now its 210,my cam was around 150 grams. So clearly whatever happened , happened after the parcel left the head office and before it reached me, i dont care what the fuck you do , explain the 170 grams weight difference to me.He calls up the rs puram manager and asks him to come over... Meanwhile this our camera guy is causing havoc at the chennai office, I called him and told him to settle down a bit...

Now this main manager guy is talking to, screwing, explaining all the freaking possibilities to the other rs puram manager guy who is like "I have got it from you and distributed to my delivery network who carried to mr singh, How can you blame me ?"
The manager guy is , my responsibility stops with handing over the parcel to you which was checked to be 380 grams, After that its your problem. I don't care how you do it. The computer and machine are not wrong, there is 170gram variation and you are liable for explanation ...
The delivery guy who brought the parcel to my place is also here outside the cabin.He is waiting out with an innocent face, i-dint-do-it shit.

I m like listen Mr manager , you leave this shit , give this rs puram guy an hour to track , do his shit whatever, Listen now i know where this has happened , I know how to handle this , If this guy is not able to do it himself , I ve got my own guys to do the job ..." (Faking as i was told to by uncle and mickey).The delivery boy is outside, he is sorta listening over.
Then i walk out blankly,as if i dont care what happened to the cam , i know i ll get it.(ah! fuck i was in tears i was controling them)

I come out and there are all these delivery boys,they are like , we know him he dint do it ...and i m like listen , to some guy who is not involved at all (the delivery boy is listening from a distance) "I don't know who did it , that is upto you to tell to me, I only know where it occurred , if its not one guy its all of you , The commissioner is a good friend of mine , I know how to deal this myself , but thats not what i mean to do , but if i have to i will , now i have to go , see you in an another two hours"
Now cos after the weight shit i m pretty much sure it happened here, so as i leave i give them shit about the cello tape, the intention was to freak who ever was involved, if by chance he was a novice at this stealing shit , he should give in eventually.And i leave, these guys are like confused

I m like "go home - keep cool",I go and lie down in mickeys house for an hour... He is like give them time to freak out and he is cooly sleeping.

Then at 7 o clock we go to the rs puram office, this other unknown guy is there and mickey is like "where is vijay kumar?", the other guy is like , "he is gone out,he should be back in 10 mins.".

Mickey acts super pissed, he flicks the phone and dials to my uncle and gives vijay kumars number to him.He also calls his police friend and talks shit to freak who-ever-is-over-hearing and could pass it to the 'other guys' .. He finally tells this other guy , I've been decent enough, now i ll have to do it my style, you ll talk if there is a rod up your ass... This guy walks out

Meanwhile my uncle calls this vijay kumar guy and freaks him out of his guts,my uncle is drunk and talks all shit to this guy. The vijaykumar guy finally calls back in a few minutes, he is like we beat up this delivery guy and he admitted to have stolen the camera... These other guys are pleading, blah blah... finally all of them come home to return the cam, and beg , cos all of them would lose their jobs and association and shit nonsense , they are also kinda freaked out thinking we ve got connections with the mafia... Clearly the two people involved should be the rs puram guy and the delivery guy who took all the blame , so every one could point a finger at the only person. Whatever!! "All is well that ends well"

There was a cake ready at the end,and oh if i forgot to mention its also my sisters bday today.

Same day, two years later :)

Finally its all over, My friends are at home, with a cake ready to be cut, we go to eat out at around 10 to a chinese restaurant ... WHAT A DAY!

Fun Sunday !

2007-07-01T22:28:00.000+05:30

The day begins like any other, by the time you wake up the clock has gone way past 10, slowly you gather all your energy to overcome your dreary sleepy state, you hear your mother shout in the background, Although you are tuned to ignore that voice, it seems to increase in intensity and finally you are out of the bed and in front of the computer on gtalk, pretending to work.
Like any other day your mom has given up and you are glued to the computer until you realize that its almost 1pm and you definitely need to bathe.After the righteous bath and customary dressing, you hop to your best friend's place and within no time you are sitting at the fully loaded dinner table despite the fact that you are not very hungry. You are so lost in the food, you dont realize when your plate gets reloaded and you are chomping away happily , huge servings of chicken along with biriyani. You wipe the place clean, still staring at it, thinking of how you managed to eat so much... Now that two other friends show up, you are all yapping away happily.
In another hour you are down at the nearby cake shop and you are feeling this unusual craving for chocolate today. You manage to eat two whole chocolate cakes in a state of elated bliss...
Fifteen minutes later you are walking in race course, the climate is cool, It is drizzling in incoherent fragments(which is just perfect), In a while another friend joins the group and now you are jogging. You get into the mood and turn up the volume on your ipod by another notch and hit the track . The drizzle on your face, the wind, the music all combine to give you this surge to sprint and catch up with those ahead of you, It feels great to be back on track after a quite sometime and although you are gasping for breath, to your surprise you actually manage to complete two and a half kilometers and then you begin to walk. Your other friends who are on the verge of their second two and a half kilometer round run past you. Having done 5 kilometers in the past on a regular basis, 2 and 1/2 might actually mean nothing great but still you are surprised of the fact that you were able to do it and you dint stop, not for an instant. The feeling is great! Now Its almost 8pm and there is this desperate need for some mango ice cream and you head to your friends place because his ice cream factory is closed. Now since only butterscotch was available at your best friend's place that will have to satiate the desire for ice cream. You are gulping down spoons of ice cream and playing cards until ten , laughing and making merry all the while...
Might seem like just another day but One of those days when are happy for no reason whatsoever....

"Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. " — Emily Dickinson

Post #1

2007-06-30T23:20:00.001+05:30

After a strenuous effort to overcome my slothfulness and an inspiring post by steve pavlina to defeat the dilemma of 'to blog or not to blog' , ME has managed to post#1, although void it still counts as a post :P

Just hoping I can keep posting at least in inconsistent bursts, if not on a regular basis ...