Ujjwal's blogs

A common disaster

brilliantnut — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:37:00 +0000

After years of bleeding edge innovative disasters, I had a common one.. Spilled tea on my laptop... Everything else is fine, but the touchpad is behaving erratically. Sometimes it gains a mind of its own, and the mouse pointer starts dancing all over the screen, and it keeps clicking left and right randomly.

Ashish suggested that it will be ok once it has dried off, and I'm currently hoping against hope that this happens, because its rather irritating to work like this, and I don't really want to lose a couple of days of productivity because of this.

Wierdest Birthday Ever

brilliantnut — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 17:42:00 +0000

Happy Birthday to me!

This has been one of the wierdest birthdays ever.

First off, people started wishing me several days in advance.
There were several reasons for this:

ICQ alerts for birthdays on your friends list 2 days in advance. Most people looked at the alert, but did not look at the details and started wishing me 2 days in advance itself.
Orkut alerts birthdays for friends about a week in advance. I started receiving happy birthday scraps a day in advance. I responded to some of these with "In which timezone?"
Some people used their mobiles to set an alarm for the day. Unfortunately, by some quirky behaviour of electrons, they were alerted a day before, and they wished me yesterday saying, "Isn't today the 6th?"

Ironically, some of these early birds actually missed the worm, and managed to not wish me today. (yet)

Thankfully, my brother Rachit, along with Nikhar and DJ managed to find a cake somewhere and we had a nice family dinner Desmond's, after which the three of them somehow lifted me and gave me a tiny round of bumps, between receiving calls on my cell.

After picking up Rachit and DJ's bikes from office, we were heading home. Somewhere on the way, DJ disappeared from my rear-view mirror, and I stopped to wait for him. After some time, we figured that he got detained because tools started arbitrarily falling out of his bike's toolkit, and he stopped to pick them up.

Since I didn't feel like heading home so soon (It was only 1230 am, and it was my birthday, for crying out loud), we decided to head out for a drive (my favourite hobby). We headed towards the clover-leaf interchange on the BMIC, and went over as many of the loops as we could before heading back home.

High speeds, several drifts, a cake, and half a movie later, I went to sleep, preparing for a long day of work ahead and an early morning.

Unfortunately, different people have different ideas of how early an early morning should be, and I started getting birthday calls as early as 06:30 am, and I had to abandon sleep after barely 4 hours.

Wishes in office were freely forthcoming along with threats of bumps at 3 pm. One of the kids actually figured out how to use an SMTP server and sent out a broadcast mail from me(!) telling everyone it was my birthday and actually inviting people at 3 pm. (Kudos to whoever did this for actually copying my signature in this mail, making it appear more genuine ;)) However, nothing really materialized at 3 pm or even several hours after that. I nearly began to enjoy poking fun at my teammates for being wimps, when they finally gathered enough courage and people at around 7 pm to give me five minutes worth of bumps. Seriously, if this is all one has to bear after religiously kicking in on absolutely any birthday celebration, its totally worth it! Then again, I can safely speak such words because I have the advantage of my weight on my side.

On a more serious note, a thought that is spinning around in my head since morning: Nearly a quarter of a century, and nothing substantial to show for it. I hope I can fix this before long.

Laptop woes

brilliantnut — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 02:32:00 +0000

After nearly 2 years and a month of working at Trilogy, they finally decided to give people at my designation some real laptops. Well, I did have an IBM 600X before this, but that was so stone age, that it was embarrasing to show it around to others.

As it happens, we are getting some spanking new Dell Lattitude D620 to replace both my desktop and laptop. While I do feel that my productivity will drop by around 25% in moving from two computers to 1, I still did opt for this because the new laptop is kinda cool!

I did figure that the image that help was ghosting on to the laptops was kinda wierd, so I asked them for a factory piece along with the CDs so that I could install things myself to my satisfaction.

In some of these respects people like Dj and myself are both boon and bane for the sysadmins. Boon, because we take several things like this off their shoulders, and bane because we know our stuff (or atleast we think we do), and usually bug them a lot more than the average user.

In any case, Dj and I both walked off with a factory fresh laptop and the cds, and set about reinstalling Windows from scratch, in tandem, kind of doing the same things.

Except, after we had finished installing Windows, and then installed the motherboard drivers, my laptop crashed.

A fresh install of windows, with just one driver update and it was corrupted already.

An even more interesting event was that I was able to recover using the Windows Recovery console by expanding just one missing file (SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\PCI.SYS), and things are back on track now.

Sitting at home and formatting the other drives, I decided to make this blog post from the spanking new laptop. Its kind of sad that I'm doing this using IE. I haven't gotten around to installing Opera yet because the partitions are not formatted yet, and I decided to put up with this just this once.

All this while I was still trying to get some work done on my old laptop. Contrary to point 12 in this joke, it does seem that computers do behave like women sometimes, and my old laptop just BSODed on me twice in the span of ten minutes. Talk about jealousy!

I have yet to put this new laptop next to my desktop. I hope it takes this more sportingly.

OutOfPetrolException at name.deepjoy.Bike(12.30 am)

brilliantnut — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 02:37:00 +0000

Dj and I typically wait around for each other, if we're leaving for home in the middle of the night. While this was reasonably balanced a while ago, of late, he's been waiting around for me more often than the other way around.

Tonight, he figured that he really did want to get home and sleep, and I was only halfway through the workspace that I was reviewing, so he said he's leaving and, well, left.

Incidently, both his phones were out of battery.

Around 10 minutes after he left, I received a call on my office desk phone. It was Dj, calling from a borrowed phone, telling me that he was stranded halfway to home as his bike was out of petrol. I told him I'm coming to pick him up.

I got the workspace I was reviewing on my laptop and basically ran from my desk to my car, and drove like crazy to where he was standing. My head was basically spinning with fear (and a little bit of anger too) in the time between his call and my getting there. Thankfully, he was where he said he'd be, and nothing worse had happened.

Of all the cities in the world, Bangalore is the worst choice for a 24-year old software professional to be stranded alone on the road at 12.30 am and borrowing people's phones to call for help, even if he is a yellow (or brown?) belt in kung-fu.

I raised an eyebrow, when he said he wanted to go find fuel somewhere, but I could see his point of view, so we drove to the closest 24 hr pump that I could think of, and got a bottle of petrol and dropped his bike home. We then went and grabbed some tea at one of the midnight places, and I did calm down eventually, but I nearly scolded Dj worse than his parents probably ever have in the meantime.

Lessons to take away from this incident.

Don't leave alone at night.
Don't let your phone(s) go down when you're travelling alone.
Never disregard both 1 and 2 at the same time.
Never, repeat never, disregard 3.

Dj, I'm sorry if I said a bit too much. Then again, what are friends for anyways.

Oh, well, back to work again.

Six Sigma, or nearly there.

brilliantnut — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 03:41:00 +0000

One of the most popular places that we go for dinner is McDonalds. McDonalds is a good choice because it typically has the fastest turnaround time between entering the restaurant and getting your food, even when there is a Tirupathi style queue. The other advantage of going to McDonalds is that you can enter any McDonalds in India and order a McVeggie knowing that it is going to taste the same as the McVeggie that you're used to having around your home base. I'm not saying that this is the best possible veg burger around, but I'm saying that anyone knows that they are amazingly consistent in their taste, size, crunchiness, softness, and whatever other parameters you could measure a burger by.

Or so I thought.

Last Wednesday, DJ and I headed out to McDonalds for a quick dinner like any other Wednesday (or any other day for that matter). As usual, I ordered the two veg burgers on the menu and a fries and coke to go with it. Attention was mostly on the football match playing on the television while I chomped through my first burger and fries... I don't know how it is with you guys but eating at the big Mac is a mechanical process for me, I unwrap the burger, open a sachet of chilli sauce, apply it inside the burger and eat it, all the while never taking my eyes off the TV screen.

Perhaps that is why the second burger came as such a rude shock to me.

It was burnt.

Not visibly. I couldn't see the cutlet charred or anything, but I knew that it was burnt at the first bite. DJ smelled the burger and confirmed my opinion.

I went back to the counter and they replaced it for me. Kudos to them for that.

However I went back to wondering what the reject rate for McDonalds is? ISO 9000? Six Sigma? I couldn't find this information anywhere, so I'm guessing that McDonalds hasn't really gone too far to find out, but what I'm really interested in was what was the probability of me getting that burnt McVeggie?

Six Sigma translates to less than 3.4 defects per one million opportunites. In McDonald's case it would come up to approximately 1 defective burger a week, all over India (don't ask me how I came up with that approximation: Its 4 am). I'm not overestimating when I'm saying that I think their actual error rates must be lower than this.

So. 1 defective burger a week. all over India. It comes to me. Its not even funny.

In other news, my website is down again, and this time, its not even my fault, its a bug at my service provider's end... Since he's such a good friend of mine and since there are only two days for it to fix itself, I'll wait those two days before raising hell with him.

In other-other news, the stupid car servicing guys were not able to fix my car's driver side window and the wheel alignment after their third attempt at it. I screamed at them at the top of my voice (which is actually pretty high), and stood on their head for a couple of hours to get the Window fixed. Unfortunately I took them at word when they said that the wheel alignment fixed, it must be fixed. This notion was swiftly disabued later... Now I have to go back and scream at them for some more time to get the wheel alignment fixed.

Showing the finger

brilliantnut — Thu, 18 May 2006 20:06:00 +0000

Cut my finger this morning, while trying some simple stuff like cutting open a pack of coffee with a knife. While this is not really news, I've been having a tough day at work since morning, because of the freaking finger.

While diarrhea, fever, flu etc. are not really enough to keep me away from work, this tiny cut in the finger has had me squirming in pain every moment of work.

On the other hand, I just got a band-aid and have since then been showing the finger to everyone :-P

And to you too:

I know, you were expecting something else, but my limited sense of decency prevented me from making this any more obscene.

On a mor intrsting not, I'v bn wonring how it woul b if I wr to typ without using that fingr. All sntns in this paragraph ar in that mo. I wonr if anyon an figur out whih fingr it is, an what I was trying to typ? Of ours, th first qustion shoul b asy basu of th pitur, but what about th son on? I promis a isastr iat to anyon who an figur it out xatly. I won't hat, promis!

Riots, Strikes and other routine stuff

brilliantnut — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:19:00 +0000

While I've lived through the worst riots in Indian history, life has been more or less peaceful the last few years.

Then, last Wednesday, the thespian Dr. Rajkumar passed away.

The subsequent riots brought back memories of 2000, when the college admission process, and subsequently, the start of the academic year in Bangalore was delayed because of the riots in Bangalore. It was when Veerappan had kidnapped Dr. Rajkumar, and Bangalore was burning for that. While I was in Mumbai, awaiting the start of the college year, I remember Dr. Rajkumar for having touched my life at that time.

This time around, we headed indoors as soon as we heard the news. However by the middle of the second day indoors, we had run of Maggi, and gas in the cylinder. This brought back hard hitting memories of 1993, and it looked like we had a hard 2-3 days ahead. That and a couple of other factors combined and we made an ad-hoc road-trip to Goa. No offence intended, but we will always remember Dr. Rajkumar for providing us with this opportunity, if only indirectly through his fans.

In other news, I was headed towards my brother's college to meet his HOD regarding some shortage of attendance letters that they had sent to my parents in Lucknow, when I received a call from him, asking me to give the whole thing a miss.

Apparently, everyone in his college was on strike, demanding the dismissal of his college warden on accusations of sexual harrasment. Thankfully, everyone included all the students, the non-teaching staff, and all the teachers, all the way up to the vice-principal. The point in question according to me was, who they were striking against, but my brother was having good fun nevertheless.

I'm almost envious of him, never having been a part of a college strike myself. This, and a couple of other incidents are making us wonder whether we should consider politics as an appropriate career for him.

509 Bandwidth Exceeded

brilliantnut — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 00:32:00 +0000

In my zeal to make a sitemap for my site, I ran an automated script on my site.

The stupid crawler ignored robots.txt and exceeded my available bandwidth.

My really nice hosting provider went and bumped up my limit for the remainder of the month, so that my site is up right now, thankfully.

Have I mentioned that he's a really cool dude. :)

Fun in a late Sunday evening disaster.

brilliantnut — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:27:00 +0000

While the trip out of town with my Mensan friends started with a disaster, the trip itself was a lot of fun, and relatively uneventful disasterwise.

Or so I thought, as we re-entered Bangalore, with home calling out to us.

Near the Yeshwanthpur junction, we were following a maroon WagonR, which had several dents on its back. Occupants in my car remarked how it looked fresh out of an accident, with green paint still visible on some of the dents.

Even though there was moderate traffic, it was flowing at a reasonable speed of around 60 kmph.

As we crossed the Yeshwanthpur signal, the WagonR in front of me decided on its own volition that it was time to stop. This decision was taken when it was several meters out of the signal's stop line, which even I had crossed while it was green. What probably confused the poor bloke was the fact that the orange light was out in the signal in front, so when the signal changed from green to orange, he got flustered (being fresh out of the accident) and stopped.

Seeing him stop, I slammed on the brakes. While I was able to reduce the impact considerably, the resulting mild tap from my (huge) Safari on his (tiny) WagonR was enough to shake things up, to say the least.

This is where the fun starts.

Dazed by the impact, I started to reverse my car. In doing so, I touched the Scorpio which had screeched to a halt behind me. The owner of the Scorpio promptly got out and started to scream at me in not so pleasant words.

As he was doing this, I brought his attention to the WagonR in front of me, which, as we were speaking, was reversing and banged right back into my Safari which had spared him too much damage only a few moments ago.

This is where the crowd started having fun.

The crowd, which has not really received due mention thus far, had already collected, and a couple of people were screaming themselves hoarse from the sidelines. The ironical part is, even the cars were not damaged, apart from a few scratches, let alone human damage, and the screaming on the part of the crowd was totally uncalled for. But then again, who calls for such things to begin with?

The traffic police had, by now, involved itself in the affair, and had collected my license and surveyed the damage, all in the space of the 90-odd seconds before the signal opened again. They told both of us to wait after the signal where they would come and settle things.

Obviously, the traffic policemen had started having fun.

We went past the signal and halted. I noticed the Scorpio guy halt a few meters ahead of us to survey the situation and to see if he could extract any advantage out of the situation. Seeing the police headed towards us, he obviously decided that the non-existent damage to his car was not worth getting involved with the police for. Pretty soon, he grew wise to the situation and headed off.

Meanwhile, the 5 of us got out and started arguing with the middle-aged male driver of the WagonR. While he was pointing at a dent presumably caused by my car, Sundar calmly pointed out that the same dent was too low to have actually been caused by the Safari, which, obviouly is slightly on a higher side, vis-a-vis suspension. When he tried to point at a higher dent, Pradyot pointed at the green paint which was fresh on the dent, which could obviously not have been caused by my black car with grey bumpers.

At this point, the fun went out of the other person's life.

He started on the track that he doesn't want to get into a haggle with the police, and was ready to leave. Several factors could be the reason for this sudden change of mind, some of which we only noticed afterwards.

He was a non-kannada speaker. Had I been alone, I would have wanted to avoid the police myself, being a non-kannada speaker. However I had the benefit of two native Kannadiga passengers and was willing to fully exploit the situation to my advantage.
The previous accident had broken off a part of his car's rear number plate. If the police had noticed this, they would have screwed his happiness from here till kingdom come.
He must have remembered that after green, the signals go orange for sometime and not red as he had thought previously, at which time, you are expected to go through, if you've crossed the line and stop otherwise. The site of the accident was obviouly on the wrong side of the line, and by connection the law.

Nevertheless, since the police still had my license, I was in no mood to let him go unless he retrieved it from them. This he agreed to do. We waited for the policemen.

When the policemen finally reached us, he had this sudden turn of thoughts and started pretending that the policemen were on his side and frantically started pointing at the various dents. Luckily for me, the policemen themselves were only Kannada speakers, so they spent most of the time talking to Sundar. Sundar handled them admirably, with all the tact of his age and experience, and pretty soon, we figured that the policemen were looking at the magnitude of the dents for their bias. When pointed out that the dents were obviously relics from a previous accident and had no connection with my car whatsover, they turned over a good leaf and they asked us to mutually settle it as we saw fit.

This is where Sundar started having fun.

Having got the WagonR driver in a position he wanted, he wanted to ensure that after moving away from this place, no other hit-and-run case relating to this accident may be filed (considering that the police had both our vehicle numbers). He asked the police officer for an assurance to that end. As it happens, the police guy was unwilling to provide any assurance to that effect. The only way to go about getting that assurance was if we would make a trip to the nearby police station, and file a letter about the compromise with the police.

I was ready for this. The other driver wasn't. There ensued another bout of argument to convince him to see this point of view. Anyways, we soon headed to the police station. By now, most of the tension of the accident had eased, and we only wanted to get away from there asap.

Sitting in the police station, while the inspector was writing out the letter, I started getting fidgety and started fiddling with some random papers on the inspector's desk. Before long, Pradyot whispered in my ear to make me stop.

For most of the people with me in that car, this was the high point of the whole episode. Everything in that situation was stacked against me:

I was not a localite.
I had the bigger car, and by common-sense logic (or should I say mob logic), was obviously at fault, no matter whose fault it really was.
I was the younger driver, aged 23 as opposed to the 37 years of the other driver. By this assumption I was obviouly the more immature driver, even though he had more dents in this car.
Because of 2 & 3, I must have exuded a rich, spoilt brat image, something I've been striving to achieve since a long time, inspite of it being entirely untrue.

After all of this, a mutual compromise was probably the best thing that I could have asked for. I should have been thankful to God for that and all that, and the way I went about expressing this thanks was by fiddling with the papers on the inspector's desk?

The trip ahead was mostly focussed around this aspect, and the other gory(?) bits of the accident were more or less forgotten. We all had a lot of fun. :)

For reference:
Cars referred to in this post:
Tata Safari Dicor
Maruti Suzuki WagonR
Mahindra Scorpio

People in my car:
Pradyot, Sundar, Mayur, Saikat and ofcourse myself.

Early morning disaster.

brilliantnut — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 23:03:00 +0000

Typically, I stay away from early mornings. Honestly. I've gone to the extent of refusing early morning meetings at work because of my fear of the morning sun.

On that fateful day however (last saturday, March 11th, 2006, approximately 6 am to be precise), I was one of the two in favour of departing early. This had something to do with me being one of the two drivers for the trip and naturally supporting the grandiose plans of beating the Bangalore traffic by leaving early.

So, just as I was getting into the bath, removing my spectacles, I heard a loud snap, followed by a crash and a shatter.

Fearing the worst, I located my spectacles. They were in my hands. I put them on. Something didn't quite seem right.

I looked at the floor. I could see piecies of broken , rather shattered glass. Dangerous. Something wasn't quite right.

If I had my glasses on my nose, what were pieces of glass doing on the floor? I didn't have any memories of having dropped them recently, and I'm not the kind of guy to throw them around in fits of anger, besides I couldn't recollect any such fits in the last few minutes.

I took off my glasses and looked at them. Turns out that one of the screws had given way and the lens had fallen down. The screw, though intact, had caused the snap while giving way, and the glass lens was responsible for the subsequent sounds.

While I got a towel on and swept away the glass pieces, I got philosophical about why an old and faithful pair of spectacles would give up on me, especially looking out on a nice 500 km drive on some awesome roads, when I would depend on them so much?

I had a couple of thoughts:

My spectacles were jealous of my spanking new pair of contact lenses. While I'm not really used to the contacts yet, I've started leaving my good ol' glasses home on several occasions, especially when I'm headed to parties.
The weather. It has been getting warmer in Bangalore recently, which caused the lens to expand and hence cause the screw to give way. Why only one glass, and not the other? Because I have different power in both eyes, and the right lens is significantly, repeat significantly thicker than the left lens. Do the physics. Thats why.
Wear and Tear. Maybe they just got old and gave up. This is the most unlikely possibility, because I've had other spectacles for longer time periods and have never had them behave like this before (i.e. lens falling out before other forms of damage).

Yes, I wore contacts through this two day trip and have been on contacts ever since. The upside is that I'm now getting used to wearing the contacts on a daily basis because I don't have the fallback of the glasses any longer. Eat your heart out, old broken pair of glasses.^*

^*But I'll miss you anyways.

Where is my website?

brilliantnut — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 13:19:00 +0000

Some people would know that I have my own website at http://www.ujjwal.net/

While it does not have a whole lot of content right now, it does host my family tree, which is huge, and any other random stuff that I feel like putting up for someone.

While I've been labelled a geek since a long time, (close to my first semester in Engineering, in 2000 to be accurate), I only took the big step and got my own domain and website last year.

In this last year or so that I have had the site, there have been two occasions that the site went down. Both of them were obviously not problems with the provider that I buy from but the provider that he buys from.

The first time around, the provider's provider ran away with all their money. The grapevine is still ripe about what the case is this time around.

For a website, being down for a day twice a year is big deal. Really Big Deal.

My site is not a high traffic website, and it does not need to be up 24x7x365, and does not cost me millions of dollars every hour of downtime.

But your website is something that you expect to be up. All the time. Its like the foundation of your geekiness.

When such things start going down, exactly at the moment when you are rejoicing the newest addition to your family tree (I became an uncle yesterday, again^*), and want to update the good news on your site, you start to question who this Murphy fellow is, and what is his nit with your life anyways.

I just hope my provider doesn't read this and decide that he doesn't want the disaster zone on his servers. I really like my service-provider. He's the most awesome dude, I've ever known.... Except for the website going down, which of course is a miniscule detail in the general scale of things.

^If you really do go browse through my family tree when its up, you will realize that at 250+ individuals, again* is the operative word here. :)

Update: The site is now up. Didn't I tell you what an awesome dude my service provider is?

Tiny little disaster

brilliantnut — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 22:22:00 +0000

Tiny little disaster. The cup broke while walking from the pantry to my desk. Thankfully I had finished the coffee already (yes, I sit that far away, at the other end of the world... oops, office.), and nothing spilled. No one was hurt either.

I typically don't blog disasters this small , but its been a long time since I broke a cup or blogged at all, and I have a backlog of disasters pending to be written up, so if any one is reading this, please keep an eye out for backdated posts, as long back as November 2005.

Missing Life Support System

brilliantnut — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:54:00 +0000

You were on life support?

Thats just a catchy title. If you know me, you know that I'm referring to my mobile phone, which for a number of reasons, is my life support system. I lost it last night.

Again?

This is the most common question I've been asked by everyone whom I've told so far. I categorically deny it. I've never lost my phone before this. It has been out of commision for repairs and stuff, and I have been lost without it, but, at all points of time, I would be able to accurately pinpoint where my phone was.

If you are always so sure of where your phone is, how did you manage to lose it?

Yes, thats the catch. It fell out of my jacket pocket while I was riding my bike yesterday. So, I knew that its in my pocket, but when I reached office, it wasn't there. An attempt to call the number made it clear that the phone was out of reach both literally and figuratively.

Hang on, but wasn't yesterday the day when Bangalore was Mumbai'ed? What were you doing riding your bike in all that rain?

Yes, thats another story altogether. I was trying to get to office. It took me nearly an hour and a half to travel around 4 km, because of the roads jammed with water and traffic, most of which I spent talking on the phone to long lost friends (yes, thats an activity I enjoy in my spare time). Once I had got past the packed area onto clear roads, I put the phone away and reached office, covering the remaining 3-4 km in around 10 more minutes. Somewhere in this rush, the above-mentioned unfortunate event took place.

Don't tell me you went looking for it later...

Well, hopelessly optimistic fool that I am, I did. However, since the phone was unreachable, I had assumed that one out of two things must have happened:

The phone must have fallen off into a puddle of water, and all its internal circuitry must have fried up instantly. While my phone has survived getting wet earlier, this was probably too much for it to take. It wasn't a Nokia, you know, which by the way, my next phone is likely to be.

Someone picked it, and took out the battery immediately. This would have rendered my phone unreachable, while giving them the time to get it to appropriate people who might be able to hack into the protection that Reliance built into the phone, and get some money from it somewhere.

Since both options would basically mean that I had to buy a new phone, I had come to accept this fact.

I still went to look for it. Didn't find it, of course.

So how are you reachable now?

Office phone, Home phone, landline, online etc. Or through comments on this post. I'm too distressed by my loss right now, to give coherent thought to this. Maybe I'll put in some effort later after I've bought a new phone.

So, you're blogging after a long time, right? Had a lack of disasters lately?

What kind of friends or well wishers are you anyways? I only blog disasters in my life, and you want me to blog more?

Besides, its not a lack of disasters, but rather a lack of time to type those disasters, accountable for the lack of posts in this blog. However, I could still use some goodwill.

Ok, you've lost your life support system. You deserve to be a bit grumpy. So its ok, we're not taking offense.

Thanks for understanding. None intended.

A chain is as strong as its weakest link

brilliantnut — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 12:15:00 +0000

Since some time, my bike had developed a new 'feature': Every now and then, the chain would come off. This would then require me to take a break from the tiresome job of riding, to get off the bike and fix it, much reminiscent of the old bicycle days. The fact that this usually gives me greasy hands is proof of how much my bike loves me...

Last night (around 12 hrs ago), the bike decided to give me even more memories, and the chain came off as usual. However, when I got around to fixing it, I realized that there was something different..

No matter how I tried, I couldn't get it fixed again. The actual reason for this was that the chain had also come off the inner sprocket.. Now try as I might, I was unable to make any significant progress, apart from getting more grease on my hands..

So I decided to drag it home, and get up early to get the bike repaired..

Now we all know how likely that is to happen.

As it turns out, I ended up taking a lift to office, and still missing the meeting for which I wanted to reach office early.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a chair!

brilliantnut — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 11:00:00 +0000

For those who can't guess, the above is the image of the base of a chair with a broken wheel. According to some, the only crime of the chair was that I sat on it.

Of course, I deny that absolutely, and claim that it was already broken before I sat on it, but there are few who will believe that.

Thankfully, I got up just in time, and I did not have a great fall.

Of course, I also prevented history from repeating, which would have been really over the top.

Proximity Warning

brilliantnut — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 21:43:00 +0000

Recently Jyothirmayee, Vinay and their team moved to a cubicle close to mine. Vinay has been talking about impending disasters ever since.

As if to fulfill his wish, one happened today.

For some trivial thing, Jyothi stood up and called my name. As it happens, at this time, she had two things in her hand: a cup of coffee, and her mobile phone.

As she said my name out loud, she also fumbled and dropped the things from her hand... Murphy's law has it that the coffee had to spill over her mobile.

Here is the result:

Of course, what is being shown here is the coffee having been wiped off (There is the stained handkerchief as proof).

Lucky for her that the phone didn't take any significant damage :)

A tale of the fallen toothcap

brilliantnut — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 04:28:00 +0000

A lot of disasters have been skipped here, some of the notable ones included an accident on my bike with my brother, and a flight I was supposed to travel on getting cancelled.

However, the last one really takes the cake as being the whackiest.

Yes, this is a tooth cap. It fell out during a recent flight from Delhi back to Bangalore.

I can hear you going GROSS, but I'm sure you also understand that this means I now have a poor tooth with a huge hole in it, which lies exposed to the big bad world of bacteria without any protection, and not even a life to speak of (yes, they killed the tooth during root canal surgery). There is also a slight hint of pain involved.

This makes the impending visit to the dentinst extremely important and urgent. Priorities in increasing order are:

Find time to visit dentist
Take an appointment with a dentist
Find a new dentist. :(

Of course, this might have the side effect of getting all the other cavities cured before they become this serious, but that would only be a side effect.

Megalomania: Happy Birthday

brilliantnut — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 16:31:00 +0000

Megalomania: Happy Birthday: "After thinking about it for a while we decided that the Chicken Heuristic was a little too simplistic and so we abandoned it. Using the other 3 heuristics we managed to separate the non-vegetarian noodles and the vegetarian noodles and put them in different bowls. Once that was done we found pieces of chicken in the vegetarian noodles. It was a little confusing at first, but we finally figured it out. Our heuristics hadn't worked. We now had two bowls of noodles, both containing equal amounts of the non-vegetarian and vegetarian noodles. Luckily we had some more vegetarian food and so the vegetarians didn't starve."

Since most of the sequence of events is already outlined above in sridhar's blog, let it suffice to say that I was(am) one of the vegetarians, and we just about managed to get by with what little food they had spared for us.

Add to this the fact that I hadn't slept for the past 40 hours or so just complicates matters a wee bit... albeit only slightly...

Its gaim this time

brilliantnut — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:09:00 +0000

When I moved my workstation to a cubicle closer to my new team, two things went wrong.

The office boy screwed the keyboard PS2 plug, when trying to plug it into the socket.

My gaim (instant messenger client that I use for ICQ and MSN) stopped working.
Yes, I mean stopped working. I mean, I'm not sure what went wrong, so I decided that this was an appropriate time for an upgrade. Alas, even the fresh latest install didn't work. Am back to using the sucky MSN and ICQ clients for now.. :(

Leading through vision!

brilliantnut — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:29:00 +0000

One of the first things that we learnt during the company induction is the stages of leadership.

Learning the ropes

Leading through example

Leading through others

Leading through vision

While this blog itself is proof that I'm in stage 2 (just like in my career), there is a particular post which shows that I'm developing properties of stage 3 as well.

This post is here to show that I'm making small waves in stage 4 also. Yes you got that right, Leading through vision, in the disaster zone.

Here go some small incidences that prompt me to make this statement:

So I got myself a website. That is, I purchased a domain name and some web-space from DJ. The intention was that I would be putting up my family tree on the net. So, the root of the website still points to this blog. However, eventually I did get around to installing some family tree software on the website. Hey, what do you know, barely 2 days within my getting the family tree started, something happened, that I've not heard happen to anyone at all. DJ's web space provider went down! So, I thought that it must be some temporary problem, but eventually it became clear that my site was not coming up anytime soon. As it turns out, one of the main stake-holders of the provider had gone underground with all the money, and the rest of the company was about to declare bankruptcy or something like that.. Of course, DJ did make alternate arrangements faster than humanly possible and he gets full credit for that... After all, its not his fault that he took me on as a customer.

So I thought that only my computer behaves wierd. However, one day, even Sridhar was naratting that his computer was behaving completely wierd, in a way he has never seen it behave before... Apparently his shell used to exit everytime he did a "cd". Now does that rock, or what!

Ok, I know this is over the top, but DJ actually blamed the Tsunami on me, in a joke one day... Now that is definitely over the top. I disclaim it completely. It wasn't my fault.

Now, if only my career was progressing as fast... 8-|

No food once more.

brilliantnut — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 15:09:00 +0000

Another day, same mistake.

Because of the late breakfast that I had, I didn't feel like having lunch at the normal lunch time.. Asif, Sridhar and DJ were going to Forum for lunch once again, so I just asked them to get me a burger or something.

Guess what, they forgot.

I wasn't even surprised or shocked at this.. Its just that I didn't think that three people would forget me like this.

I feel like shutting these people in some room, and leaving them without food for a month.. However, I'm too much of a nice guy to actually try that....

Being a nice guy doesn't take away the anger, though.

The Ripper

brilliantnut — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:30:00 +0000

What happened today is one of the greatest proofs of the fact that I'm a disaster zone.

So, we decided to go out for lunch, instead of eating in the office. So, we walked down and were getting into Mrinal's car. Just as I was sitting in the car, I heard a rip.

Guess what! It was nothing but my jeans. Now, the surprising part ofcourse is, how can someone's jeans tear, without any provocation whatsoever..

QED.

The Tap Went Dry

brilliantnut — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 00:21:00 +0000

The above was the catchline of a poor joke that was doing the rounds among our group. Infact, the history behind this is as follows:

Once again, purely at random, DJ cracked a joke, which was not even funny, but only contextual. It was basically an attempt to construct a joke out of something innocent that someone just said.. Frustrated at all of this, we started saying that lets come up with a catchline, and wait for DJ and/or Sridhar to construct a joke about it.
I don't know what came to my mind, but the first line that came to my mind was the line "The tap went dry". (I think what was in my mind then was the ages old ad, "Kaha tha na Rahul, paaani chala jaayega" (for non-hindi readers :-P "I told you Rahul, the water supply will get cut off!!"))
It is better for the reputation of my blog that I don't repeat the jokes that came up after that.

But this happenned ages ago. The reason that I mentioned all of this on the post today is that today, the catch line struck back at me.

Today in the morning, the tap went dry.

Basically, it was some problem with the motor in our apartment. The strange part is that out of the three Bathrooms in our house, only my bathroom was without water. Actually the tap was spluttering with air, as if it was trying very hard to give out water, but was unsuccessful.. I waited for a long, really long time for it to start up again, but without success. As a result, I was late to office again, inspite of having got up early for a change. I guess I just deserved it for starting off with such a sad catchline, to hopefully convert it into a reasonable joke.

Do catchlines have a way of getting back at you and taking revenge? I guess this one did. :(

The bike strikes back

brilliantnut — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 15:54:00 +0000

Finally at 5 am last night.. er.. today morning.. I had resolved all issues and left with Shailendra and Vandana, for home.

As soon as I started riding out on my bike, I realized that something was wrong.. And when I looked back, my suspicions were confirmed.. I HAD A FLAT TYRE!

How it happenned was a great mystery, because it was fine when I had reached office in the morning. It was probably my bike's way of repaying me for all the torture that I put it through by riding on the Bannerghatta Road(?) on the way from and to home.

I rode it for a while, in hopes of getting some place open. (It was five am so this was stupid!, but if you have been awake till five am, then sometimes its ok. to be stupid... ) Finally I parked off the bike at some petrol pump and started to walk towards home (only because there were no autos in the vicinity..). Just as I was contemplating my deplorable condition after the 6 km walk to home, I spotted an auto coming towards me, and caught it promptly.

The fact that I had to skip lunch because I was getting my bike fixed is only a sideline. Ofcourse, since its not the first time I'm skipping a major meal in the last few days, this does not count as a major disaster.

No Dinner for me!

brilliantnut — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 01:17:00 +0000

Well, so it was a rare occassion. Really rare that I should ever give hunger a lower priority than anything else. But I did.

I had loads of work to do, so I asked DJ to get some food for me from wherever he was going, instead of going along with him, as I usually do.

After waiting till nearly midnight, hunger finally overtook my concentration on the work to be done, and I called up DJ to find out what exactly was holding him up??

As soon as I greeted him, he realised what he had been forgetting all through dinner, and his silence was kind of enough to make things obvious. He had come back to office, and had forgotten all about my dinner!!!!!

Even the office pantry had run out of most edible supplies, and I had to have Cereals + Milk (which is usually breakfast for me) as a poor substitute for dinner.

Reminds me of the golden rule in life, "Pehle pet puja, phir kaam duja!" (translated from hindi: "First worship your stomach, then go on to other work!")

TATTI !!!

rachitrulz — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:40:00 +0000

Found somewhere in Tamil Nadu !! Wonder what everybody up north thinks about this ??

Toilet Under Repair!!

rachitrulz — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:16:00 +0000

Found this A4 sheet taped to the washroom of a small office in Chikpet, Bangalore.

Interestingly, while I was busy clicking clearer images of the sign, somebody appeared from the left, unlocked the door, went inside, locked it from the inside, did "something" for about a minute, came back outside and put the lock on it again!!

Public Veheicals

rachitrulz — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:04:00 +0000

Board outside BESCOM Office, Banashankari.

I wonder if the painter knew how the word "Vehicles" is pronounced!!

Left Hand Driving

brilliantnut — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:25:00 +0000

Saw this while riding through town one day. Sort of irrelevant and hugely relevant at the same time, if you think about it.

Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue

brilliantnut — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:31:00 +0000

For those who thought that the above line is what legends are made of, I give you McDonalds at Forum, Koramangala, Bangalore:

Close up of the screen:

Hair conditioning

brilliantnut — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 03:54:00 +0000

Found this awesome feature on the latest model of a popular car:

Quote: Hair conditioning system for warn, sunny days.

Bio-Medical Waste Collection???

Deep — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:47:00 +0000

Bio-Medical Waste Collection???, originally uploaded by deepjoy.

Seen near Banshankari

Bring your own food?

brilliantnut — Sun, 28 May 2006 06:27:00 +0000

Saw this poster stuck to a tree some time ago:

Aspirations

brilliantnut — Wed, 10 May 2006 00:02:00 +0000

This one morning, while driving home from work, I saw this huge yellow Volvo bus with this extremely intresting caption in the back window:

For those who don't see the humour, Reva is this really tiny two-seater Electric Car, which is somewhat common on Bangalore roads (though it hasn't really caught its fair market share).

On a social note, it would be really awesome if all buses were to aspire to and attain the emission levels (zero. zilch. nil) and the driving cost per km (Approx 40p per km) of the Reva. The world would definitely be a better place.

Then again, if the buses can aspire to and attain the power and speed (max of 65 kmph) levels of the Reva, they wouldn't be able to bully around on the roads that much. :)

If buses were to aspire to and attain the seating capacity of the Reva (2 adults + 2 children), then we would have serious mass-transportation problems.

So, are these aspirations good or bad?

Guanine buyers only!

brilliantnut — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 07:54:00 +0000

Of late, most of the stuff we're putting up here is becoming similar to Engrish, (which by the way is one of our old favourites. ;) )

However this bit of art is refreshingly educated and scientific:

Transcribed below if you're having trouble reading this:

YOU WANT RENT OR
LEASE HOUSE in
J. P. Nagar Just Dail
Contact: Manjunath
<phone number removed>
Contact Guanine Buyers only

Interesting tidbits:

Here's what wikipedia says about Guanine
Considering the dude is offering house for rent or lease, why is he looking for buyers?
Never mind the Dail

A car you wouldn't want to mess with...

brilliantnut — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 13:24:00 +0000

Sticker????

Deep — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 01:27:00 +0000

Cycle Pushing

Deep — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 01:18:00 +0000

Seen on Brigade road

Tecnically Liqvid

Deep — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 01:12:00 +0000

Clock Room

brilliantnut — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 04:27:00 +0000

See bottom-right of image for what this really is!

Hot Dtinks

brilliantnut — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 06:00:00 +0000

How did a spelling mistake as obvious as this make it multiple times on the PVR menu at Forum, Bangalore?
Presumably a mistake by someone on a QWERTY keyboard.

What if they had made more mistakes?
It would STINK!

Prohibited signs

brilliantnut — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 01:09:00 +0000

Spotted at the bottom of the Shravanbelagola hill:

And at the top of the hill, on a platform near the monolithic statue:

Its incredible how prohibited can change spelling in a separation of some 700-odd steps :)

a bumper sticker DJ would love to have!

brilliantnut — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 03:50:00 +0000

The Horizontal People Transporter

brilliantnut — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 03:05:00 +0000

An elevator in the apartment that I stay in:

To put things in perspective, a close up:

Now I know the way to my neighbor's house :)

This way please

brilliantnut — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 02:09:00 +0000

Sighted on the way back from Nandi Hills.

In all fairness to the painter, he has included an ellipsis to indicate that he ran out of space, but then again, I'm not so sure of that!

Aer Nose Throat Clinic

brilliantnut — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 02:05:00 +0000

After all, its the aer flowing through your system that is most likely causing the problem. They fix the aer!

A thorn by any other name...

brilliantnut — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 02:39:00 +0000

My name (Ujjwal) is a frequent target for misspellings by people. I've Ujwal, Ujval, Ujjawal, Ujawal, etc. Today's sample is one of the best I've ever seen :)

Considering I was born in Guwahati, I would now only be 500 km off the mark if I claim to be Uizzwal from Aizwal ;)

Brings a smile to my Face :-)

Deep — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 11:57:00 +0000

I have no clue how they do that???

Deep — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 11:52:00 +0000

It's gonna fight back

Deep — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 11:43:00 +0000

Rainbows from Both Sides

Sun, 06 Sep 2015 12:26:50 +0000

A: Dude, I just saw a rainbow in the clouds below us, from the airplane window.
B: Yeah, big deal. It was probably just a trick of light.
A: Buddy, Allrainbows are tricks of light. Yet, whenever, I see one, I always stop to smile.
Seeing one in the sky below you was damn cool!
I guess I can say, I've seen rainbows from both sides now. :)
B: You're a hopeless romantic....
A: No, I'm still a kid, who hasn't lost a sense of hope & wonder.

Flash Fiction scratch pad

Mon, 18 May 2009 09:48:47 +0000

T: I had this friend in school
T: he was a year senior to me
T: and dating this girl in my class
T: now the girl's parents forbade them from going out so they got a junior, a year younger than me to deliver their messages to each other. finally girl fell for the junior and started dating both junior and senior. senior had no clue about what was going on.
T: when he finally found out, he gave the junior a black eye, went up to the terrace of his building (naval buildings are short in some cities, this one had 3 floors)
me: uh oh.
T: and threatened to jump because of the betrayal
T: finally he did jump
me: Tezaab style... :-P
T: and ended up breaking his leg
T: yeah totally
me: ouch.
me: it mustn't have been very hard for the junior to do some simple manipulation to take benefit of the situation....
me: Girl (to junior) : Tell Senior that I'm free at 4 PM, and come and meet outside the coffee shop
Junior (to senior) : She said that she's not free to meet you at all..
me: Girl (at 4 pm outside the coffee shop): Where is Senior?
Junior (present at the right time at the right place): Oh, I wonder why he didn't come... here, let me get you a coffee while we wait...
me: --- Many hours pass ---
T: hahahahahahaha
me: At 8 pm, outside coffee shop...
Girl (literally in tears in the arms of Junior): How dare he stand me up like that?
Junior (comforting her) : something urgent must have come up... come, I'll drop you home...
Girl (to junior): oh, you're such a sweetie.... you want to come upstairs for coffee?
SCORE!
T: all said and done, I disliked the girl's role in this triad
T: oh she was quite the player, that one.
me: how could you blame the girl in this situation, is something beyond me.. :-P
T: you could totally write flash fiction based on this
me: that's what I was thinking... :-P

[Flash Fiction] The Pick Up Line

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:47:22 +0000

It started with a glance.

It was a Friday, and as usual, I was out pub-hopping with my colleagues from work. It was a weekly ritual, that helped us get the frustration of staring at an LCD display all week out of our systems. Amidst the insane laughter accompanying the inane office humour, I happened to glance towards the door, and saw her enter.

Perhaps, it was a matter of chance, or maybe even providence, but she happened to look towards me at the very same moment. Eyes met, and there was a slight glimmer of... something. But then she smiled innocently, and I couldn't help but smile back.

She was wearing a simple sleeveless, knee length summer dress. A slender body, graceful walk, jet black silky hair; she seemed like some angel stepping onto earth.

As she walked to a table with the bunch of friends she came in with, I counted heads. Headcount + Body Language added up to good news in my head. She was single, and hopefully ready to mingle.

As the evening progressed, there were many silent glances exchanged between the two of us. Somehow, she did not seem to mind the fact that I was so blatantly checking her out, and instead was returning the favour.

As I got more drunk, and my inhibitions were lowered, I formulated the perfect pick-up line in my head. As I emptied out the Tequila shot, my confidence rose to the brim. I got up, walked towards her, rehearsing my first words in my head, confident in the knowledge that it would work.

As I woke up to the bright glare of the afternoon sun, I wondered whether the events of last night actually happened, or was it all a dream? As I cleared the cobwebs in my head, I remembered the pretty face, beautiful smile, the glimmer of anticipation as I walked towards her... What had happened then?

As I racked my head to remember the culmination of my walk to fame and started adding toothpaste to toothbrush, the answer stared back at me from the palm of my left hand. Whatever my pick up line was, it must have worked...

9156867890

Hmm. Now, if only I could remember her name...

I started this flash fiction while drunk, and couldn't remember the end when I woke up (had only written the first 3-4 paragraphs). Have been thinking about it for a while, but couldn't think of a good punch line. The good folks on #xkcd-love helped me finish it.

[Flash Fiction] The Mugger

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:03:27 +0000

Why was he staring at me?

Well, not really staring, but more like giving me shifty looks. Whenever I was looking out of the window of the rocking bus, I could feel his eyes on me. But every time I looked at him, he looked away.

Suspense novels, thriller movies, the internet and my overactive imagination had given me an unhealthy dose of paranoia. I could think of at least five different reasons why this dude would want to mug me, and not all of them deserve mention in polite company. Needless to say, I was very uncomfortable throughout the half an hour long bus ride. I was hoping he got off before or after me, so I could put my mind to rest.

In any case, I went over every scenario that could unfold in my head. I revised my Blue Belt katas in my head, confirmed that my pocket-knife was accessible easily. You see, said paranoia had ensured that I was somewhat prepared for any emergency. Now, I hadn't ever had the chance to test my self-defense skills in real life, and, being the peace loving personality that I am, didn't even want to test out said skills, but if this dude wanted a fight, I would totally show him a fight.

My fears were magnified at the end of my journey, when he got off the bus at the same stop as I did. As I started walking away from the bus-stop, he was following me at a distance of a few paces. I kept an eye on him using reflections off the glass paned buildings, passing cars. By the next ten minutes as I navigated through the crowded city streets, hoping to lose him, I became fairly certain that this incident was going to come to a violent end.

As I stepped into a deserted lane, en route to my office, I made up my mind to end the torment. Without the support of the reflective surfaces surrounding me, I had no way of knowing whether the footsteps behind me were his, without looking back, and I was determined to not do that. I slowed down, and waited for him to catch up. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins, and my heart was throbbing. I half shut my eyes in anticipation...

As the footsteps came closer, he went past me, turned around, and said to me, "Dude, I've been noticing since the bus.. Your fly is open.", and walked away.

As I walked into my office, my breathing had calmed down, and I had relaxed to the point of the whole incident being funny in retrospect. The HR chick came up to me and reminded me of the interview I had scheduled, and that the candidate had just arrived moments ago....

[Flash Fiction] The Geeks have inherited the World.

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:18:17 +0000

I opened my eyes to a splitting headache. "Some game, huh?", I said out loud, but received no response. The bed next to me was warm.

Something was wrong. I was usually able to approximately locate her within the apartment by the assortment of sounds accompanying whatever she was doing, but I couldn't hear anything right now. The glowing green digits of the holographic clock were blinking 2106:10:06 WED 0203 in a fashion that usually irritates me.

My reflexes kicked in, and I pulled out the mini-blaster from the drawer, and was at our room's door by the time I had released the safety catch. After ascertaining that the hallway was clear, I got to work at the control panel in the passage.

Three individuals, dining room. One female on the floor, warm, still. I release a breath I did not realize I was holding. She is alive, albeit unconscious. Two males, pacing the room, along with two Curie signatures. Armed. Heavily, looking at the Curie counts. Looked like I was a goner.

Except, they forgot two things. (1) Never attack a geek on his home turf. The overactive imagination ensures that they have rehearsed and prepared for various unusual scenarios in their heads. (2) Never ever attack a geek's girl without taking out the guy first. An angry geek does not lose his cool, he only gets more determined and will hurt you worse. These guys were dead meat.

I got to work on the console, and start getting various necessary items out from my inventory. Stun gun, check. Blaster loaded, check. Both ankle knifes, check. Laser pistol, check. Laser-proof armour, check. Ear-plugs, check. Second pair of ear plugs for her, check. Electromagnetic handcuffs (previously used for interesting activities...), check. Dark glasses, check. Shiny black overcoat, check. Baby, its show-time!

Phase 1: Incriminating Evidence. I've got them recorded on CCTV, and have set a delay timer to send it to Security-ops, to protect me from prosecution, in event of success, and to get them caught in the unlikely case of failure.

Phase 2: Visual disorientation. I set the dining room lights to pulse at various significant frequencies, designed to cause immediate discomfort, blind-spots and headaches. She was safe here because she was unconscious. At the very least I hope she had the good sense to shut her eyes.

Phase 3: The strike. Ensuring their location on the CCTV, I enter into the dining room precisely in step with a particularly high flash of the lights. Stun gun shots take them both down before they know whats happening. This was almost too easy.

Phase 4: Auditory annihilation. I get to her prostrate form, and insert the ear-plugs in her ears. A quick click of the fingers later, an ultrasound pitch of sound blasted through my 9.1 surround sound speakers. It would be a long time before those two would hear again.

OK, things seemed to be somewhat under control now. I tie both the guys with their backs to each other. Now, time to get her in the room. I overturn her to pick her up... Wait a minute, this isn't my wife at all... Suddenly the chick opens her eyes, pulls out my blaster from my hip-holster, and shoots me in the head.

As I black out, I have the grim satisfaction of seeing my name on the high score list, before the ominous "Game Over" splash.

I opened my eyes to a splitting headache. "Some game, huh?", I said out loud, but received no response. The bed next to me was warm.

Something was wrong...

[Flash Fiction] The Best Day of my Life

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:23:29 +0000

I woke up before my alarm rang. This rarely, if ever, happens, but that day was different from the word 'go'. I had a gut feeling that good things were about to happen to me. Now those who know me, know that I have a hopelessly optimistic outlook to life, but today seemed especially bright to me too.

I was shaved, bathed, clothed and ready to roll by the time Mom was up. This is something that only happens when I have an early morning flight to catch, and only half the time then. Then again, Mom only needed one look at the radiance on my face to be convinced that I wasn't ill today.

I was the first one to reach office. This is something that never happens, and my teammates assumed I had been in office overnight, as was a constant habit. No one even took notice of the constant smile on my face since these guys are somewhat used to seeing me smile for no reason. They were a bit amazed at the higher than usual amount of top-notch code that I churned out. They were even more amazed at me packing up and getting ready to leave at the usual time I come in. Its rare for any boss to compliment someone who is leaving early, but I could see the work I had put in that day already impacting the quarterly appraisals.

I pulled my car into her driveway bang on time. This is something that has happened occasionally, but she was pleasantly surprised nevertheless. I'm not sure if she noticed that something was different, but the good mood was contagious, and we were in splits of laughter by the time dinner ended. Clumsy as I am usually, I managed to get through this date without breaking or spilling anything. After all, I could do no wrong today!

At her doorstep, she kissed me. This was not the first time this happened, but this one was the kiss of the lifetime. This was the kiss that tells the guy that this is the girl of his dreams, and awakens in him the desire to move heaven and earth for her happiness. This was the kiss that tells the girl that this guy is going to treat her as a princess all her life, and he's a keeper. Most importantly, this was the moment I was subconsciously waiting for since a long time.

I dropped to one knee and showed her the ring I've been carrying with me since a while. This was the first time this happened, and my only regret for the entire day is that the moment was never captured on camera. No words were necessary. The shocked look on her face, followed by the most beautiful smile I've ever seen was enough for me. As I transferred said ring from the box to her finger, her eyes misted over, and she gracefully fell into my arms. We held each other for a long time that night.

I think its okay to be late all the time. The odd day that you do everything on time, good things happen.

[Flash Fiction] The Break Up

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:03:07 +0000

"I'm breaking up with you", she said, sobbing.

While my world was shattering around me, my mind went to full alert, analyzing the situation at overclocking speeds. Something wasn't right.

We've been happy together. I've never cheated on her, hurt her at all, and there is no reasonable event in the near past that should have triggered this. Of course, she has been slightly lapse in talking to me...

The dots connect. There is someone else. One of my worst fears has come to pass, and my deepest insecurity has been exposed. There have been many guys constantly vying for her attention, and while talking to her, I've always confidently claimed that I don't worry about them much, while secretly plotting to kill all of them in my daydreams.

My heart was burning... Do the years of togetherness matter none at all? Is all the joy that we've shared worth nothing? Where did I go wrong?

But she always accused me of thinking with my head rather than my heart. Time to put that head to good use.

Why was she crying? Is that something girls just do when breaking up? I don't think she would. She's being prompted. The infinitely optimistic part of my brain fires and tells my heart that it can still salvage this.

"Really?", I say into the phone after barely five seconds, putting everything I feel for her to make up for the thousands of miles between us, "Why don't you tell me the same thing over dinner," and after a strategic pause, "without him present?"

"So, you're back together?", my best friend was looking at me intently over his steaming latte, "But will you be able to forgive her?"

"Of course I will," I said, meeting his eyes, "I love her."

[Flash Fiction] End of a Relationship

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:16:53 +0000

It has been nearly seven years now. We've seen the best of each other. We've seen the worst of each other. Through good times and bad, we've been constant companions.

We started out together in college. We would go together, come back together. What started as a simple companionship soon grew more, and we would go out with friends for movies, coffee or pool. As we started spending more and more time together, we grew closer, and started having a lot more alone time. Often, we would go out on a whim, get drenched in the rain, and enjoy it tremendously.

Of course, I would be lying if I said that everything was perfect. Every friendship has bumps, and ours had its fair share along the road... Jealousy, anger, mistrust, betrayal; we've survived it all. Honestly, there were mistakes on both sides. I can't even count the number of times I have been stood up. Likewise, I'm somewhat ashamed (in retrospect) about shamelessly drooling at other options. As I grew more involved in my work life, I had less and less time for the random excursions that we both used to enjoy so much. Still, the important factor is that, even after all had been exhausted, we were there for each other.

Once, we had an accident together. It was a serious one, especially for me. My injuries were so severe that I don't even recall the details of how it happened. Yet all through the agonizing torment, we were concerned for each other first. The next six months were terrible. Each day, we would see each other, but both our injuries prevented us from being out together. That period taught us the value of our company. We came back from the injuries changed, especially in the way we saw each other.

Still, seven years is a long time for such a relationship. There have been others before me, and there might be others after me, but I'm certain that this has been, and will be, the one partnership which will leave the deepest impact on us. All good things must come to an end however. These days, there is no joy left, it's all just routine. We have both come to the silent realization that it is time to move on. Even the time that we do spend together is mostly by necessity and not by choice. Maybe parting is the right thing to do.

Yet, I'm still having trouble letting go. After all, selling my first motorbike is not an easy decision to make.

Happiness in a phone call

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 11:44:15 +0000

Sometimes so much happiness is derived from a phone call which lasts only a few minutes, and all conversation is whispered, that it just makes the day!

Who knows this better than me!

The long, dark tea-time of the soul

Wed, 24 May 2006 13:22:59 +0000

Char din ki chandni thi, ab andheri raat hai

The four days of moonlight are over, now the long dark night begins...

A hopeless optimist usually, I've never felt this hopeless before

Yet another blog.

Wed, 24 May 2006 02:03:07 +0000

This is my fourth blog/journal. Given my past records of regularity in updating stuff, I don't think that anyone should be holding their breaths for content here :)

Why am I here?

Because I found a couple of friends on LJ, and I figured I might as well sign on, to let other people find me a bit more easily ;)

What am I going to post here?

I don't know, haven't figured out that bit yet :(