Gunz of Iyeron

Weighty Questions

2006-03-13T10:35:00.000+06:00

A lot of things have happened over the past week. Apart from the fact that South Africa won the greatest One day International ever played and India is on the brink of victory, yours truly has made a resolution to shed some weight. Not that I have decided to do a whole lot about it. I am a strong proponent of the concentrate-so-hard-until-you-lose-weight school of thought. I started believing in this fundamental truth when the Buddhist monk-kid in Matrix said,” Do not try to bend the spoon; instead realize there is no spoon”. This was bolstered when I read, “when you want something with all your heart, the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”.

Of course those of you, who are unfortunate enough to know me well, would have guessed by now that I have started talking about it already. I happened to casually mention this to a good friend of mine who was equally hell-bent on losing some weight, albeit for very different reasons. She was shocked when I told her that I had lost just a little less than 2 kg over the last week. A few expletives later on what a lucky *bugger* I was, she got down to taking some expert tips from me on ‘how to lose weight’. I almost chuckled when she admitted that she aimed at losing 1 kg a month. I almost got punched in the nose for that. Conversation was thus happening in a free and candid fashion when suddenly, out of the blue, she popped the question. Oh no, not that one, but one that is dreaded equally by mankind.

“Ganesh, tell me frankly, do I look fat?”

The fact that womankind has mastered the art of flummoxing mankind is evident by how intricately the question was worded. Allow yours truly the pleasure of taking you through the query in a systematic manner. Firstly, the line starts by addressing me directly. This precludes the possibility of me trying to pretend as if she was talking to someone else. Also jumping out of the third floor window is not a viable option because you may end up breaking your bones and would not be able to run again when she confronts you on the ground a few minutes later. Secondly, the word “frankly” takes care of whatever little ability men have at attempting a direct lie. Of equal efficacy is “look into my eyes and answer”. This is the reason, why you don’t hear men say things like,” You look perfect” or “The baby is so beautiful” or “We are just friends” to women. It is time to face it – lying to women can be a traumatic and a life changing experience for most men. Thirdly, she doesn’t ask me if ‘I think she looks fat’, she asks me if ‘she looks fat’. This makes useless the hedge that all men use at all times. You can’t start the sentence with “I think...” and later convince her that you were on top of 270 ml of Vodka and were not thinking straight.

Although, man has made tremendous progress when it comes to science, he has advanced little in unraveling the mysteries of responding in an intelligible fashion to women. Gibbering is still considered a satisfactory response to a compliment from a beautiful girl. There is very little downside to “unsatisfactory” response to a compliment. You are, however liable to get bonked on the head if you err in answering the question above. Changing the topic by talking about how this cute guy at work was checking her out is still the best way out.

Chasing Perfection

2006-02-14T09:31:00.000+06:00

There are some days, which compel you to break rules. I broke one such rule today – blog about cricket. I had refrained from writing about cricket for the greater good of my not-so-crazy-about-cricket readers. So, if you are Indian and an avid cricket follower, then do read on. The lines that follow would in all probability make you swell with pride. If you however do not care much about the classic duel between bat and ball, I would still encourage you to read further. Who knows, if this write-up does make you sit up and take even an infinitesimally small amount of interest in cricket, I would consider myself successful - successful in doing my bit to make this world a better place to live in 

Writing about Cricket is complex business. There are times when you gush about how magnificent your team is and then there are times when you, well, do not. The fact that India got to the World cup final by decimating all the other cricketing nations made me feel proud of my team. The fact that they cowed in to Australia in that very final made me feel quite the opposite way. You would say nothing is absolute; it just depends on whether India won or lost on that day, right?

Wrong.

As the Indian score stood at 190/5 chasing 289 for victory, time almost came to a stand still. Kaif was making the long dreaded walk back to the pavilion, which felt longer for the batsman because he had not contributed numerically to the team’s cause. This scene was not entirely new for the Indian fans. There have been numerous occasions in the past, where India has come tantalizingly close to “finishing” things off and clinching the deal, but have faltered before scoring that most-important run. This however was a different day, a different opposition and a different Indian team. Yes, The New Age Indian Cricket team had arrived. Dhoni had arrived.

As the Indian score still stood at 190/5, Dhoni walked in to the middle with his familiar swagger. He went about setting things straight right away. A few nervous pokes, getting off the mark and a one handed boundary over the bowler’s head was all it took for him to get into his devastating rhythm. As nervous Indian followers bit their nails off, Dhoni did what he knew best. He pulled, cut, hoiked, drove, hooked and belted the leather out of the hapless Paki bowlers. Lesser batters watched in awe and admiration at the wonderful and unbelievable array of shots that he unleashed. Worth special mention were the consecutive offside punches for four off Asif, which crashed into the railings before the fielders could even move two paces. Then, there was that Rana Naved over which would have the unfortunate bowler having nightmares and waking up in a pool of sweat, in the middle of the night for some months to come. These swashbuckling shots more than just crashed into the advertising hoardings. They averted the famed Indian collapse and derailed whatever little hope the Pakis had of winning the match. The winning runs came in style off a ferocious hook played in a manner, which would have put fear even into the hearts of Larwood, Voce and Co. of the Bodyline fame.

While watching the match, it felt quite silly at times to be alone in the living room, hurling obscenities at the Paki bowlers and punching into thin air when Dhoni hit away to glory. However, nothing, sure as hell, in the whole world would have felt better. Well, I would have to admit that hearing Inzamam say, “We not fielding well today, that’s why we lose match...” in the post-match conference did come close.

Treat for Four

2006-02-10T14:01:00.000+06:00

The pretty girl looked at me eagerly, her innocent big round eyes waiting in anticipation for any movement of mine. Her ears looked eager to catch the next words emanating from my mouth.

I looked long and hard at her, and then I looked longer at the menu card. Then I glanced at the placard kept on my table and turned to the Pizza Hut server to place my order.

“I will keep it simple.Please get that offer of yours - “Treat for Four” please!”

As soon as I uttered those words, I could see her eyes widen in surprise. I thought I heard a silent gasp.

A little background would be in order here. A “Treat for four” meal at Pizza Hut is the ultimate test. The ultimate value for money. A gastronomic delight in terms of quantity.It includes the following:
1.Two Medium sized Pizzas (10” me thinks)
2.A plate of Pasta
3.Garlic Bread (4 Nos)
4.Two cups of Soup
5.Two Glasses of Pepsi

You would normally think that waiters, servers, maitre d’ and others of the kind would be very subtle with emotions. Theirs is clearly not to stare and glare but to bare what comes their way. This young girl however, was clearly not able to hide her horror at the thought that I was going to finish off the “Meal for four” all by myself.

On a good day, where I have not had a lot of food in the evening, I actually might eat all of that for dinner. I like good food and I like it in plenty. It is true that the “Pizza” had left an indelible mark on me after all that consumption in the US last year. However, they say “Time heals everything” and they say that with good reason. After about 6 months of abstinence from pizza, I was all-eager to dig deep and dig plenty into the Pizza. However, she clearly overestimated my abilities on that particular day. I was just back from the Bryan Adams concert after about 4 hours of standing and singing. For a feat like this, you need focus and determination. I was clearly not in the “zone” then. Fortunately, my flat mate who is a shade over 6’5” walked in and sat at my table.

Her frown vanished, a smile appeared and blood returned to her cheeks. Understanding dawned on her and perhaps empathy also. She could now imagine two guys - one 6 feet tall and another six and a half feet tall lapping up the great “meal for four”. The next words she spoke came out fast and furious...

“Yes sir, I will get the soup and the drinks right away. The Garlic Bread would be here in 8 minutes, the Pasta in 6 minutes, and the Pizzas in 15 minutes. Have a nice meal!”

P.S. I rang the bell this time around.

The Friends Quiz

2005-08-11T10:35:00.000+06:00

It has been sometime since I pampered myself, so I made a quiz about myself. Take it to find out how much you know about me.

Take my Quiz

If you score anything below 70, you better call me up and stay in touch !

Roads .....

2005-07-15T16:29:00.000+06:00

I just got my bike transported to Bangalore. After three months of driving sedans in the US of A, life is back to plain harsh reality – driving in Bangalore. I haven’t had the privilege of driving a lot on these roads but after having had the opportunity to be an observer, I have some observations/pointers for the people who would like to venture on to these one-of-the kind roads:

1.So, do we drive to the left of the road in Bangalore? Yes we do, most of the times, that is. We start on the left of the road, and when we do not have any space left we move to right side of the road. This is a continuous process and it proceeds by moving to the next available empty space. Very much like draughts or chess, just that this requires much more dexterity, skill and foresight on our part.

2.We find lanes claustrophobic. I mean, how can a self-respecting driver stay in one lane all the time? We value our freedom of more than 50 years and extend the same to our roads. We like to switch lanes and demonstrate our skills on the bike. But then if this gives off the impression that we are all glamour and no responsibility, it is wrong. We never do wheelies on the main roads.

3.Unlike some countries, where honking may be considered offensive, we rise above such frivolous interpersonal issues. We honk for the sheer joy of it. We honk when we are making a turn, we honk when we see someone ahead of us, we honk when we see someone overtaking us. We even honk in a traffic jam. We Bangloreans are a spiritual lot and we believe in miracles. We believe that honking can miraculously clear the traffic in front of us. Though this has never ever happened, we still don’t give up. We are a persisting and a persevering lot, you know.

4.The roads in Bangalore do not have shoulders – more like boulders? Yes. Unlike some countries’ roads which have a lane which is not used by the general public, we don’t have such a system. We are strong adherers of that famous law by that good natured chap, Parkinson and we make sure that the traffic expands to fill the available space, even time at times.

5.Given our strong Indian roots, we have a strong sense of equality. This extends to our roads too. Everyone on the road is an equal, be it the Rs 12 K moped-wala or the guy who owns the Rs. 65 L Mercedes S class. Both take the same time to get to a place from a certain other place. We are all equal here in Bangalore. The Bangalore traffic is such a strict proponent of this philosophy that it would not allow even an ambulance with a critical patient inside to go through it. We Bangloreans however are not totally devoid of human sensibility. The ambulance blare sometimes is a pain.

All said and done, driving here is fun, uninhibited and full of frolic. Throw in the added excitement of having to deal with the excellent traffic constabulary here, (which by the way speaks only language – Kannada and mysteriously translates a fine Rs.100 to Rs.200 when spoken to in Hindi), and you have nothing short of a James Bond thriller - without his ladies of course. Roads in Bangalore as they say are like James Bond - licensed to kill.

This and That...

2005-06-13T19:08:00.000+06:00

“Is this your machine?”

This was the IT support helpdesk in response to my request to be added to the Local Administrator group. Why did I want to be added to such a ghastly directory? I have no idea. When I logged in for the first time this morning with my new NT user id, it told me to do so; I logged in a call at the IT helpdesk asking them to do so...

The above question may seem innocuous to most people with answers ranging from the normal‘yes’,’no’ to “I don’t know” in the rather extreme cases, but when asked on the phone, the question didn’t quite make a lot of sense to me.

“What?” (The obvious choice when you have zilch idea of what’s going on)
“Can you see your mouse moving?” (She sounded a little impatient with the fact that every little thing like remote desktop control had to be explained to techno-moron employees like me)

Suppressing another “what!?!” with great difficulty, I looked at my mouse, then the mouse pointer on the monitor. Sadly none of them were moving and I told her so. She made me repeat my IP address. I duly opeyed. A gasp and a “shit!” later, she sheepishly admitted that she had mistyped my IP address and had changed some innocent bystander’s admin password. What was more bizarre (or maybe funny in a corny way...) was that she had been remote-controlling the mouse of some other user. I could empathize with the unknown victim. To suddenly watch your mouse move on its own is not funny at all. That, this on a Monday morning can have disastrous consequences, is pretty obvious.

It would also be obvious that I am back at work. A week’s off at home and a fantastic reunion with your best buddies (Sau and Ani) can do wonders to your system. Guys’ night out reunions are all about talking about old girlfriends, talking about new girlfriends, about no girlfriends (That’s generally me...), about pep talks and exorcising old ghosts (Me again ...). The kind of night where a bill of Rs.1500 between the three of us at Apache’s at Pune doesn’t seem a lot. System catharsis - to cut a long story short.

I have also kind of resigned to the fact that life on weekdays begins at 815 am in the morning and ends at 8 pm when I get back to my room and is about lazing away the weekends. But I haven’t given up all hope. In the distant horizon are plans of renting an apartment and owning a guitar and a pair of Bose speakers of my own :D. So life goes on .....

Flight of Icarus

2005-05-23T12:02:00.000+06:00

Bored before getting aboard……
12:45 PM US Central time, May 20, 2005, Houston
The play of words is not amusing. I am at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport and there are three more hours to go before they let me board the plane. I walk up apprehensively to this Lufthansa counter to ask him whether he is open and can check me in. I am almost half expecting that I would be looked from head to toe and would be brushed aside as a hopeless and desperate first time international traveler. Or worse, he would ask me as to why I wasn’t there at the airport the previous day itself.

This guy however, graciously offers to check me in. I suspect that the guy is Indian, and this gets confirmed when he goes “Oye pappe, ki haal hai! “ to a Lufthansa colleague of his. My agile mind races and comes to the ingenious conclusion that if I have to get hold of those emergency seats (These by the way are the dream of every international passenger who is taller than 5’10” flying economy class. They offer legroom which is par imagination, the kind that exists only in the Business Class, something similar to what the airlines show in their advertisements….), I would have to strike the Indian chord with this guy. I start talking to him in hindi and request him to please check if he has one of those wonderful seats still available. The guy is startled, nay, almost shocked and gives me a curt “I will check, Sir” which would have made the snobbiest of 18th century butlers dance with joy. And yeah, he gives me an Aisle seat at the bloody end of the flight. The seats where you can hear the air hostesses chattering …..

Life gets better…..
3 AM German time, May 21, somewhere over the Atlantic
Just when I start entertaining disgusting thoughts about my life with the Aisle seat at the back of the plane and how it could not get any worse, the guy sitting next to me who has been listening to this iPod of his turns to me and strikes up a conversation. Apparently, he didn’t have a 20 GB iPod.

“So…. Where ‘er ya headed to?” (In typical Texan accent)
“India...”
“Oh… Where in India”
“Chennai…”
(A lull in the conversation already, apparently neither of us is a great conversationalist. I do the civil thing and reverse the question to him)

“So, where are you heading? Frankfurt?”
“Nopes…Iraq”
“Huh ?”
“Iraq…”

My mind races quickly to find possible answers to such a situation. It is not everyday that you sit next to people traveling to Iraq. I finally come up with one.

“Cool …”
“Hmmm …It is pretty dangerous out there. People die everyday. The other days, three of my buddies were returning to their homes when their helicopter was shot down….”
“Oh …really?” (One more of those classic replies…)
“Yeah … It is bad out there. Things have worsened since the war. They kidnap people like us and hold them for ransom.”
“hmmm…How long is the duration of the onward flight?”

I make two decisions here. One, life can be worse than sitting the back end of a plane with numb legs, so stop cribbing, and two, shut up.

Dehydrated
4:30 AM German time, May 21, Still over the Atlantic
I don’t know if it was the wine or the no-water diet for the last 4 days or the airplane effect, I had this sudden nauseating feeling and started sweating profusely. Had to got to the restroom and wash my face with water and drink some water (Not in the restroom of course…). I don’t know what that was, never before experienced ….would call it a generic stroke.

The Stopover
9:50 AM German time, May 21, Gate B45, Frankfurt International Airport
Things have changed. It already feels like India. The waiting room for my onward flight contains 90% Indians. And yeah, people no longer hold restroom doors open for the others behind you, a silly habit that I had picked up in Houston. And they don’t say “Bless You!” When I sneeze, a habit I thankfully didn’t pick up. A female colleague of mine used to do that a lot when I sneezed (which was a lot too). I dismissed that as a girly act.

As I type these words on my laptop, there are a few cute Tam-Bram chicks who are staring at me. (yep…Cute tamil girls do exist. These endangered species inhabit the suburbs of Chennai where the milieu is perfect for their growth and development. The Male counterpart however, is widely believed to be extinct.) These girls are probably thinking “There goes one more Iyer with a laptop who is returning from the US….Just wants to let everyone know”. They are right in one sense. I thought I was a unique Iyer when I took up mechanical engineering. But today, I am an Iyer, work in the IT industry, listen to a lot of Metal and as the final blow have also been to the US. Help !! the tamatrix has me !!

Home!!
2 AM Madras International Airport, 22nd May, 2005
Immigration was a breeze. I mean, what else does one expect from immigration into your own country ? They could have deported me in the Houston port if the US authorities suspected me. But what could these guys do to me ? Deport me ? hehe …where ?

Baggage claim however wasn’t a breeze at all. Some kind soul did me a great favor by “checking out” my checked in bags and placing them by the side of the conveyor belt. There I was, waiting for my bags to come out right at the mouth of the belt to be the first to take out my bags. I mean, what kind of a psycho does this? Check out some stranger’s bags and be kind enough to spare him the trouble of moving them out of the belt.

I finally spotted my baggage after half an hour. Customs was a breeze and there I was standing in the warm humid breeze of Madras. Yaay! Back to India!!

I have been Banglored… (In a good way)
9 AM IST, May 23, 2005, My cube, Bangalore
Life sucks when you have had just 6 hours of sleep in the last 60 hours. You tend to eat when you should sleep, tend to sleep when you should work and tend to watch TV when you should sleep. System screw-up in short, people also refer to this as jet-lag. Reboot.

Down Memory Lane

2005-05-16T01:25:00.000+06:00

Just when you thought I was done with blogging until I get back to India, the bug bit me again. This time it is down memory lane again – memories which are substantially older than three months unlike the last post.

Flashback to 17th April 2000, when in my first year of engineering, inspired by Shantanu who had created a very successful Aishwarya Rai website and Hrishikesh who introduced me to a wonderful set of HTML tutorials (The HTML for dummies kinda thing) and armed with a wonderful partnership with best buddy Ojas, I set off on the adventure of creating a webpage dedicated to Sachin Tendulkar.

Remember, it was the time and period where working in Frontpage Express was considered a sacrilege. Armed with just notepad and the HTML tutorials for reference, we started the venture. At the end of some 2 days of continuous labor, we had something which could be shown to the world. We however, realized that this was the easy part. Telling people about your website is more difficult than it appears to be. I mean, you could do things like writing the website name on the college benches, dropping chits in the corridor or writing the url on people’s vehicles or clothes but then in 2000 where internet cafes were scarce and not a lot of us worked in the IT industry with access to free email, e-marketing was tough. Email signatures would have worked if only people checked their email more often. Email adresses back in those days were more of “Yeah...I have an email address, in fact, three of them” kinda thing rather than people actually putting them to some constructive use. Inspite of all odds being against us, we got some 120 page hits in the first two days of the grand opening, 80 of them being me and Ojas checking whether the counter had moved.

I even mailed my crush about how I had created a new website and how she should forget for sometime that she knew me and give me an unbiased review of the website. I believe I would have gotten the same kind of review from her even if I hadn’t brought complex relationship matrices into the picture. She hardly knew me then. She was however, polite enough to reply back saying that she really liked the website and that I had done a great job and she could really sense some talent. Later on, as I got to know her better, I realized that she dint think much of cricket and cricketers - somewhat similar to what most of the guys think about bharatnatyam. That was painful. I had planned to win her over with my cricketing stories in the district circuit.

ANyway, getting back to the webpage story, fate decided to smile on us when somewhere in middle of 2001, rediff homepages scribbled our names on their main homepage in the "More Member pages" section. That brought us a lot of hits. And today, when I checked the same rediff page after almost four years, we are still there on that page!!

Click to see the Page

So, if you have visited my Sachin Tendulkar webpage from the Rediff homepages, then you would have the natural question that all sane people have – “It looks grotesque! why the @#%# do you not update it, dude?!?”. Apart from the fact that the controlling partner of this website, Ojas is somewhere in the middle of Atlantic without any access to internet, I have lost the password to make updates to the page. Think of it as one of those 128-bit encrypted passwords that I don’t remember now.

Looking Back....

2005-05-15T08:11:00.000+06:00

It is 8:30 pm in the night and still not dark in Houston. This being my last weekend here and my stay in the US drawing to an end, it is worthwhile looking back (are three months not enough for that??) on some of the pleasant highlights of my trip.

Brands: It is always great to revisit the theory you have studied with the help of practice (study.. huh? What am I talking about??). I had read of Avis’s “We try harder because we are second” in Kotler and I actually got to rent a car from Hertz – the first in the car rental business. Buying at “everyday low prices” at Walmart sure beats writing about it in a Supply Chain Management exam. Eating a delicious Taco Salad at Taco Bell is way better than analyzing the Strategic Management case study. And reading Iaccocha’s autobiography doesn’t compare to driving a Mustang ...and so on and so forth... I realize you get the idea, so I will shut up before this post looks like a rookie novel full of lame similes and metaphors.

Food: Besides the fact that I still cook horrible food (the absolute best in its class) and that I still cannot tell toor dal apart from the other type of dal, I really enjoyed the food here. I once had the reputation of eating with a relish, anything that could be eaten. I can now tell the difference between Mexican, Italian, Lebanese, Persian, Chinese, Vietnamese and of course Indian cuisines in the accuracy of three tries. Needless to say, all of this amazing food hasn’t disappeared without any damage being done to yours truly. I have gained weight. The exact assessment of the damage however is possible only after some of my female friends see me in person and “comment” about the changes in me (I hate this part...)

Dating: I almost dated an American girl. This nice colleague at work did me a great favor by assuming that I am single (Do I look that needy??) and setting me up with a friend of his (A girl by the way). When I politely turned down the magnanimous gesture, he mistook me for a shy and a bumbling Middle Eastern lad who was bad with women (this part he was probably right...) and was generous enough to give me some of his choicest tips on dealing with women and lecture me about the great American dating practice. I got quality crash courses which combined Body language, humor and positive thinking. He also encouraged me by saying that I was great with my female colleagues and that American girls ‘dig’ guys like me with a sense of humor (hmmmm....). I ‘dug’ myself out of the hole by using my favorite maneuver of dealing with women. I chickened out.

So, is it time to shut up? In an effort to stop driveling and start summarizing, just what did I like about the US?

1. The Variety of food (Slurp….slurp…..slurp….and more slurp)
2. The variety of women (err...slurp …slurp?)
3. The cars and the empty space on the roads (Nothing beats cruising at 80 mph on the American freeways)
4. The “9 to 5” working hours (Which mean 9 to 5 most of the times …)
5. Walmart (Nothing less than an American revolution ….)

So what’s the plan ahead? the plan ahead is basically this: Land in Bangalore, head off to Mumbai for my presentation at NITIE, plead and if necessary beg my boss for a 4-day holiday from work, cool my heels in Aurangabad for some time. Once that is over, return to Bangalore and start bragging about how great it was to cross the Atlantic and how Lindbergh could have done it better.

Oh, well .....

2005-04-22T23:43:00.000+06:00

She: Hi how are u doing i hope everything is going good. I wanted to show you this. Right click on the group name of your buddy list and click send message to all. Then copy this info and send this to all the people in this group. A new type of buddy list will appear after you send it. The new buddy list will tell exactly where somone is, who they are talking to, and if they have more then one screen name it tells you what it is.......cool huh!!!!! It even tells u who all r in the Invisible

Me: there ?

Me: this is hoax :PPP

Me: anything happen?

She: ya

She: but i kno u r invisible

Me: duh... yeah u do bcos i messaged u :P

She: lol

Me: so hows life ?

She: gud...n urs?

Me: gud...

She: k..

Me: k..

Life has been this way for the last two weeks.

I was chatting with Hrishi the other day and he pointed out that my blogs never really reflect any of my darker moods. I agreed with him there and this hypothesis only got stronger when I realized how little I have been blogging over the past two weeks!

I am sure all of you must have gone through a phase where so many things happen to you yet all of them seem pretty inconsequential. That is something that I am going through now. I would not say this is a lean patch in my life but then it is one of those phases, where all you realize is that you go to bed in the night and get up in the morning; everything else seems to breeze by – your travel to the office, your work, even your lunch and your dinner which is like a big deal for me... You are just "comfortably numb".
====================================
I participated in this three-day process workshop. My role somehow boiled down to capturing the scribbles and drawings - the outcome of the meeting on a Process modeling tool. This according to me rates a couple of notches higher than writing minutes of meeting on the job role evolutionary tree. Somehow survived that one!
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Our team of four here sent out a simple idea on a ppt regarding the process models in our project to the program leadership here and we were lauded and commended for it. That was good. More importantly it was amazing to see how sticking to the fundamentals and simplicity still rules the roost.
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Four and a half days and a fantastic Mediterranean meal later, Ninety percent of the project team seems to have called it a week. Friday is the Work-From-Home(?) day around here. Oh well.... good for them, I am still waiting for my 2’o Clock meeting. The initial euphoria over my KIA Optima seems to have died out now and I think I might go in the late afternoon and change the car to something else, maybe something smaller, Or maybe I wont go .... It’s been the same way throughout the week - boredom, inactivity and apathy.

Roadtrip

2005-04-11T22:20:00.000+06:00

Me: This beauty is a 2.4 L ... 2.5 times more powerful than our Zen at home. And it has an amazing 149 HP under its hood!!! 0-60 miles per hour in 7 seconds flat! Imagine !!

Mom: Don't drive unless it is absolutely essential to. Don't drive unless you have someone sitting next to you. Don't take your car to the office unless you really have to stay late.

Mom just could not get it. She simply could not share my enthusiasm over the KIA Optima I had just rented from Hertz. She could not feel the revs as I did and was more worried about the more trivial things in life like safe driving, avoiding the traffic and taking care of your life.

Not that I had a reason to blame her. I have never had a perfect driving record. I was the driver who always came up with a trick or two up the sleeve even when I was driving on a straight and a plain Highway. Like not looking at the speed breaker before a village and going at it at about 70 km per hour. My habit of yelling out "Save yourself!" ten meters before I took a circus-like jump with the car did not help either. I just loved to drive and used to do it a lot of the time. No wonder we did not get a good price when we sold off our vehicle. And no wonder my dad never let me drive the new Zen we bought.

I had my share of life-altering experiences on my bike too. We used to do these Street Hawk like gimmicks where one guy would yell 4-3-2-1-go and the other used to suddenly turn on the throttle and race past the hapless uncles on their scooters. We thought it was incredibly clever and funny. Well, it was funny except for that time when I was Jesse Mach of Street Hawk and was doing about 75 Km per hour when I saw this Buffalo standing right in the middle of the road. By the way, Buffaloes are a morbidly funny bunch of animals. Even though they are mild by nature, they do not obey the traffic rules. And more relevant to the present situation, they do not take collisions with motorbikes in good humor. The polite American "Oh ! Excuse me! Have a good day!" remark when you collide with one (An American I mean...Not a buffalo) is simply not their style of coping with collisions.

So, I did what I had to do, and tried to swerve past the black mass in front of me. I did it quite well except for the fact that the rear wheel of my bike slipped on some pebbles (remnants of a building construction activity) on the side of the road and I did a grand Hrithik-in-KNPH like maneuver. I was lucky that we had not attempted this very far from my place. So, my dear friends did the intelligent thing and carried me home.

God Bless America and God bless Americans on the road.

Watch-ing a good deal

2005-04-04T21:04:00.000+06:00

Bought a watch from Wal-Mart a couple of days back. The cynic that I am, I checked the Casio India Website to check if I had gotten a good deal. I Was pleasantly surprised to see the exact same model splashed on the homepage :D

Casio India Homepage

GAP

2005-04-02T01:20:00.000+06:00

“So buddy, y‘r gonna be in Ammmerica for so long! Don’t u have a woman waiting ‘n ya back in iiindya?”

“Hmmm....yea” (feigning a wistful sigh)

Sure I did. I think I had three women who would be very happy when I got back to India. One would have to be my Mom and then there was my Granny who would be happy because I didn’t settle down in the US. (She still overestimates my abilities and thinks that these guys would have me for a long time .... If she only knew why they sent me to the US!). The third would probably have to be the imaginary girlfriend I was talking about.

In my short stay here, I have figured out more than a couple of things:

1. Americans cannot comprehend the fact that you don’t eat meat.
2. Americans cannot comprehend the fact that you don’t drink a liter of cola daily and actually drink that ghastly liquid called water.
3. Americans cannot comprehend the fact that you don’t have a girlfriend.

The last of these troubled me now. When the “buddy” asked me the question, my agile mind quickly raced through the possibilities in which one does not have a girlfriend around here.

1. You are married. (This one being subject to exceptions in some cases)
2. You already have a girlfriend (This one being subject to exceptions in most cases)
3. You are gay (In spite of Joey’s non-judgmental views about them)
4. You totally suck and can’t get yourself a girlfriend. (Which unfortunately is well....the truth for most of us)
5. You are waiting for the right person to come along (Yeah...like Britney Spears did ....and what most of us pretend to be doing)
6. You just broke up, are tired of relationships, are carrying a lot of emotional baggage and are cooling off. (which actually sounds cool at times....)

I could have lectured him about the great Indian culture and how it is perfectly normal and cool to not have a girlfriend without being any of items 1-5. Instead, I took the moral high ground and chose alternative number 6.

“Ohhhh .... So she decided to say B’bye because you came to the US, huh? That is great, now u can date without any guilt in the US. Sample some Ameeerica women, maaaan! How do they say ‘cya later’ in Hiiindi”

I politely declined the generous offer, and proceeded to clear his linguistic query.

“Phir Milenge....”

“So she said, I love you but phiiiiir Miiiiilengay?? Hahahahahaha”

He thought it was hilarious. I grimaced. I felt like I could hear Eagles playing somewhere in the background .....

Well, I'm a runnin' down the road, tryin' to loosen my load,
I've got seven women on my mind:
four that wanna own me, two that wanna stone me,
one says she's a friend of mine.
Take it easy. take it easy.

Saag Paneer

2005-03-28T22:24:00.000+06:00

Have been cooking a lot lately because it is kind of difficult to make a fulfilling dinner out of burgers and sandwiches. Think it would be nice of me to share one of my secret recipes.

Take 2 pounds fresh baby spinach, washed and stems trimmed. Tip 1 - Ignore the numbers - cooking is an art which has to be perfected. Let us not make it math! Grab hold of whatever spinach that you can with your right hand (or both of your hands if you are a rare specimen that is blessed with small palms or if you are an even rarer female visitor to this blog), toss it into the water and boil it for some time.

Take a couple of onions. Put on a stupid soap on the TV and start chopping finely. These are the subliminal moments of truth in your life when you realize that “fine chopped onions” are just a myth and are just as rare as Ganguly making some runs when it matters. Fry these silly buggers with all you have got. They made you cry after all.

Heat some cubed Paneer or Tofu in case you happen to be in the US (Why else would you even try the ghastly act of cooking?) and keep it there until you realize that it is all fried up and black. Perform a salvage act wherein you think it would be incredibly funny if the Paneer got burnt equally on both sides. You have an inkling that it would taste better. You even think of the episode where Ross gets tanned four times of his body on one side , chuckle, and then gasp ..... too late, guess it would have to be just Saag instead of Saag Paneer. Whatever! It’s healthier without the fat. You also jot down a quick reminder to call up the reception to send you an extra cooking pot.

You go back to the boiling spinach and the neglected frying onions. You also discover that the “golden brown” that is often recommended by Sanjeev Kapoor is now Royal Burgundy Purple. You toss the spinach in. After trying to unsuccessfully tune the radio to a rock station, you turn to the now boiling mixture and give it a quick stir. Damn! You 'remember' that you forgot the Garam Masala .... Too late to add it in. Well, on the upside, you would be doing your already screwed up system some good by having some bland food once in a while.

You luckily remember to add in some “Salt to taste”. This concoction would taste wonderful with some bread, you feel. You start chewing a mouthful, when you hear a knock on the door.....

“Hey, Wanna eat some of the yesterday’s leftover dal chawal with some pickles??”

“Sure, sounds great!”

Of memories and burgers

2005-03-17T00:50:00.000+06:00

Approximately the same time last year around (give or take a month), I was in Chennai roaming about in the hot sweltering sun during my summer job. There used to be those funny moments, when walking from Chennai central to the Beach station, where my connecting train was, I would be left alone and I would start reflecting. There I was, 1500 Km away from home trying hard to figure out what the hell I was doing there. I was doing some project the deliverables of which I was not sure of, meeting some cycle dealers who would not want to speak to me and would brush me off after giving me some of their choicest words in Tamil ,fabricating some numbers out of thin air, and yeah not to mention reading John Grisham novels in the train ! I often wondered where life would take me after a year. Now 9000 miles away from a place called Aurangabad in India, I shudder to even think on similar lines!

As for the stay in Houston, TX, I am thoroughly enjoying every moment of it. I have been given a very comfortable hotel room which has a kitchen which comes in so handy if you pretend to be a vegetarian like I do. People here find it very difficult to comprehend the fact that a person could survive without any meat and fish. Some of the typical conversations at burger joints go like this:

Me: Do you have a vegetable burger?
Her: Yeah, we do put some veggies in the burger ...
Me: No no ... I mean without any meat...
Her: Oh ...so you want fish in it?? We can fix you that
Me: No no ... No meat and no fish ....no non-veg ...
Her: Hmmm ...we can make that for you ....
Me: thanks!

After a couple of minutes, the person waiting on us produces a “vegetable burger” with a flourish. It looks and tastes great except that it is just what she said it was – a Vegetable burger without that whatever-is-inside thing that characterizes a burger. I silently start munching on it making a mental resolution to never visit this joint again.

My Longest Day

2005-03-01T03:13:00.000+06:00

It took two trips to the US Embassy at Delhi before the consular officer there (a cute female by the way) got convinced that I was not Osama Bin laden without the beard. They even talked to my practice head over here who confirmed the same (that I am not a terrorist and only a dumb MBA). I finally got the visa "in the flesh" on Thursday the 24th.

Meanwhile, after seeing for a month my absolute uselessness in India (Some of the more unfortunate among you would have experienced my incessant emailing and forwards); my super boss decided that they would have to send me to Houston, TX for three months. So I traveled to Houston – and a long travel it was!

It is actually funny how that flight makes you look very stupid. You board the flight from Hyderabad at 0200 Hrs and after traveling for about 11 hours when you expect it to be a sunny afternoon; you land at Frankfurt when it is only 8 in the morning! It makes you look a bit silly and kind of accentuates the feeling that the time you spent doing something amounted to nothing – Literally. You then make a quick dash to gate 65 A only to discover that your onward flight has now been moved somewhere else – to some other gate. Asking people about the new location is fun especially when they reply in German to your English queries. Somehow you make it in time for the connecting flight to Houston. If the last journey made you look silly, this one adds daylight to your miseries.

So, after flying over the Atlantic for 10 more hours in broad daylight and paying $45 for the cab, you realize that it is only 2 in the afternoon. And that this was the longest day of your life where you saw 18 hours of daylight.

The end of a Saga

2005-01-11T23:22:00.000+06:00

The dust has settled. The swords are back in their sheaths. The wounds have healed. People do not interrupt each other with an "I would like to make a pertinent interruption here.." anymore. They listen to and trust each other. To cut a long story short, CRP 2005 , the placement saga has ended. By the way, I managed to sneak into Hewlett-Packard when they were not looking.

Before the people here who know me start cribbing about the lack of good HR practices in HP, let me make it very clear that I have had my share of high points during the placement process:

The P&G interview : The process was a pain to any person who could not spin a yarn or make an incident as small as helping out for an event in the backstage (I mean cheering up people, getting soft drinks for the judges etc,which is not even work) seem as large as "Co-organized the College fest". With heart wrenching and soul searching questions like :

Tell me about an incident where you resolved an ethical conflict ? (Huh !!??)
Can u recall an incident where, what you did shaped the direction of a project ? (contrary to general expectations,I learnt that a straight "no" would not qualify to be an excellent answer)
Can you tell us about an incident where persistence paid off ? (12 GDs, 15 interviews in 5 days flat - all of this for one job .....Need I say more?)

The Glaxo Smithkline GD: A little background would not be totally irrelevant here. I am basically a nice guy (Atleast I profess to be one), so ten students (akin to hungry lions who have not seen the interview stage for some time) being thrown into one cage for only eight minutes with one small piece of meat in the middle of the cage, does not qualify to be the most comfortable of situations for me. So, it was like being caught in a crossfire where my neck reminded me of what audiences in the side of the Roland Garros courts during a Chang-Courier match must have been through. Yeah, I did contribute in my own way. I added to the mayhem.

There were many more like this. "Instances" where I would be kicked out of GDs, Interviews and would come very close to making the final "cut" but somehow it would elude me. So, when at 2:35 AM , 7th January, I chose HP over three other offers, it was a big moment for me. It was a moment of triumph of ignorance over knowledge, the triumph of laziness over drudgery and the triumph of what not over what not as one of our Professors would like to say. Above all, it was fun ......

Tick Tock Tick Tock ....

2004-12-19T20:58:00.000+06:00

My To-do list (Yes, I have one like that!!) read something like this about 2 days back:

- Capital Markets Assignment
- Gandhi Assignment
- Innovation Assignment
- Intl Finance assignment
- Give 8 exams of three hours each
- Study for those 8 exams (from scratch, I have a valid excuse this time around – Placements)
- Study before you give the exams and not in the order written
- Read at least two books
- Read up some basic stuff for the interviews
- Attend 10 Hours of Pre Placement Talks every day for the next 15 days (that is on the days you don’t have an exam)
- Get a Job

I am proud to announce that I have vanquished the first three off my list and it already feels like a great achievement. I mean, doing three assignments in one day (the ones which Profs actually read) is no mean achievement. But I doubt if this going to get me anywhere. I have to do all of this in the coming 15 days.

So the next time some wise guy asks me in an interview, “tell me about a situation where you were under a lot of stress and you survived”, I know what to say…….

So just why am I writing a blog which doesn’t mean anything when I have so much to do ??

Wrong Number

2004-12-11T23:20:00.000+06:00

This happened very recently with a neighbor of mine ......

Him: Dai ... Do you have any country music ??
Me : Nopes da .... dunt listen to much of that stuff ...Want anything else?
Him: Okai ... Send me some soft English songs

This was over the IP Messenger as we like to call it. I was about to attach the "Richard Marx" folder when the effect of sitting in lectures the whole day took over and I had this irresistible urge to be clever. I felt it would be incredibly funny to see him rush out of his room after being struck by an earth-shattering Pantera song. After all, how else is a decent, quiet and unsuspecting guy supposed to react when he expects some nice soothing music after a hard day's torture at college and what he gets is something like this -

(By the way, I must warn you that this stuff is meant only for people over 18 years of age. So, if you are not 18, make sure your parents are not around ...)

Truly, f**k the world, for all its worth, every inch of planet
Earth, f**k myself, dont leave me out, but dont get
Involved, dont corner me
Inside, ulcer, unjust b**tards, file out face first
Meet the lies and see what you are

Yea, I know this is not funny. The song has only just started. I wish I could somehow describe the LOUD Guitar riffs that go alongside it (Work of sheer genius by the way), but I think everyone gets the general idea. He has been in his room for about 2 hours now and I don't see him coming out.

Maybe, I should go check .....

Lost in Transition

2004-12-08T23:24:00.000+06:00

There is something very funny about life. When you are “here”, you want to be “there” and when you are finally “there” you wish you’d rather be “here”. Even as I write this, less than 12 days remain before my final tryst with academics begins(Hopefully!!). The way my preparation (the lack of it rather!!) is shaping up, I would not want to make definitive statements about it as of now :)). With my days at NITIE numbered, I feel Claustrophobic sometimes, with life coming to a standstill. Yet, I know these are the days I am going to remember for the rest of my life.

The end of the exams would signal the start of the Placement process. Yeah, that thingie where the 86 students in my batch would do anything that is within the rules or sometimes out of it to get “that” job. Conversations, when we are moving around uptown places like Hiranandani tend to be similar to this:

Me: Check out the black t-shirt .... Shez Cute!
Person 1: Wow!
(We look closely ....)
Person 2: Jeez! She works for P&G!
Me: I would have never guessed!!!!
Person 3: I hear they have excellent HR Practices there ….
Person 2: Really? How many do you think they would recruit this time around?
Person 3: I hope they recruit more this time, people say they are ramping up operations here ...
Person 2: Yeah that they are, by the way, how much is Infy offering this time?
------------------

If you haven’t noticed, it doesn’t take much time for a conversation to come back to placement season. It is going to be exciting, it is going to be tense, it is going to be tiring and nerve-sapping, it is going to be baad , but above all this it is going to be loadz of FUN!

Back with a Thud

2004-10-18T17:13:00.000+06:00

Okay guys, I took a hiatus. Nope, make that an exile. Many many thanks to all my loyal fans out there who wrote me thousands of letters requesting me to resume blogging. You don’t think I got all those letters? Well to speak the truth, there were five people in total who asked me where the hell I was. Maybe, they were not getting the bi- weekly tonic that used to make them feel good about themselves and their lives. The post after which they used to thank God for all the things he has given them. I don’t blame them.

I would like to say that I don’t even have a reason or a plausible excuse for my absence (Yeah .... as if u cared!). The popular rumor was that I was collecting some God-damned slides for some God-damned exam, but hey, give me a break. You don’t collect slides for one month! One more rumor was that Blogspot disabled my account. Plausible but not the truth.

So, does that mean that I would be regularly blogging now?? Ha! There is an oxymoron there! Like they say, “Those who can, do.....others blog”

P.S. Apart from grades that resemble “dregs”, a rock-concert was the only good thing that happened to me during all these days. Thanks to all that head banging and singing(!), I have a stiff neck and resemble a Doordarshan newsreader without a voice.

Here I am

2004-09-09T22:12:00.000+06:00

Here I am ....
Here I am ....

This is me ....
There is nowhere else on earth I wanna be ....

Sadly this is not where I should be.

I should be studying for the IAPM test. I cannot recollect the number of times I must have prayed to God to "spare me just this time!!" and how I would be the perfect student next time around and would prepare well for the exams. Sadly, the next time never came around.

And Here I am less than 48 hrs away from yet another test. For the Atomic physics fans out there (if there are any), my situation can be best understood by Hiesenberg's uncertainty principle - that is you either know where an electron exactly is or you know how fast it is traveling. The more you know about the position of the electron , the less you know about its velocity. So, where does all this come in ?? Apart from the fact that I am utterly confused, it is the fact that I know exactly when the test is ........

There are a lot of silly rumors moving about. Someone said that the syllabus consists of 18 slideshows of 130 slides each. I think I will get back to collecting slides. It hurts less.

Deja Vu

2004-09-04T02:12:00.000+06:00

(The scene: Akash and Sid watch closely as Sameer squirms in his seat after his 10 Hr long truck-trip from Goa to Mumbai)

Akash: Tera Matlab tu truck me aaya??? Ha ha ha ha (With his characteristic twinkle-in-the-eye expression)
Sameer: Aur Nahi to kya? Tujhe kya lagta hai, main roz takiye pe baithta hun??

(The background: NITIE EDP Mess)

For those of who think MBAs are always civilized and cultured, this is going to come as a shock – nay, a heart break. There are reported instances of the venting of base and barbaric tendencies, by these so-called white collared executives, of intensities that would put even the most hardened of Al-Qaeda executioners to shame.

The last such incident happened when the clock struck 23:59 on the 3rd of September this year. Yours truly was hoisted three feet above MSL and as Geoffrey Boycott would like to say with clenched teeth, was given a good “wallop”. An aviation pilot would have twitched his nose in approval and would have nodded his head vigourosly. It was a carpet bombing exercise executed to perfection.

All this happened because I happened to come into this world on the 4th of September and my batch mates thought it would be a nice gesture to celebrate my birthday. The purists of the English language are advised not to delve into the semantics of the words here. I use the word celebration very loosely. For those of you who might not be acquainted with the customs and the methods of Birthday celebrations in our college, it would suffice, at this point to say that the Birthday boy literally “feels” his birthday for the next two days at least. That is if he is lucky, otherwise the feeling lasts for the better part of the week. Yeah baby! We at NITIE Kick Ass! Literally!

Getting back to the things that hurt less in life, it was heartening to see most of my chums remembering to call me. So what if one friend called me 24 Hrs in advance! It is the gesture that matters !

P.S. For those of you who are more interested in the countdown-life-stuff, I turned 23 today. Yea, it took a lot of effort (hehehehe.... who am I kidding!!) but the view from up here sure is great!

Look Maa... No hands !

2004-08-29T19:58:00.000+06:00

Okay

This wasn't supposed to happen for the next 10 years. I have always known myself as potential material for Businessworld but little did I expect my face to be splashed as the "whoz who" of Indian Business so soon.

P.S. There is a small catch here actually. This pic was in the issue where BW carried a profile of our institute. I share a 2X2 inch space with 15 other people. Yeah baby ...We epitomize teamwork.

P.P.S. Please leave a comment if you can spot me in that pic. This is actually a pilot run, the results of which would decide whether I send this pic to my family and friends.

Samiksha 2004

2004-08-23T21:54:00.000+06:00

Okay

The reason I have not been able to make the customary 25 daily trips to my blog and post the usual 5 blogs per week is because I have been busy with this

http://www.coolavenues.com/bschools/nitie_samiksha.php3

As you can see we have got some reaaal good people in there. Expect it to draw a lot of students from the other B-schools in Bombay !