Deadly secrets about me

According to Jiby, tags are a good way to come back to blogging with a bang. Here is one passed on by him.

1. LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATER: I don’t remember. I know I haven’t watched Jodha Akbar, Race, Michael Clayton or anything else in the recent weeks. So it has to be that all time crap Om Shanthi Om. Pathetic movie it is.

2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING? Haven’t read anything for months. I just browse through ‘Randaamoozham’ every once in a while, going through random chapters, especially when I go to the loo before the day’s newspaper arrives.

3. FAVORITE BOARD GAME? Quit playing board games long back. Used to play Chess as a kid.

4. FAVORITE MAGAZINE? OutLook. Can’t stand India Today or The Week. Used to love KalaKoumudi of olden days when M.Krishnan Nair and all used to write for it.

5. FAVORITE SMELLS? Shucks!, is it alzheimer's or am I getting older? Can’t think of anything special.

6. FAVORITE SOUND? Revving of my car when I take a spinning turn.

7. WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD? The one you get when you are turned down by close friends.

8. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE? Is it a weekday or a weekend?

9. FAVORITE FAST FOOD PLACE? Used to love most of US’s breakfast chains. Since every other blogger has included Thattukadas in this answer, so be it. The ones near Medical College which used to be open till early morning.

10. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME? Dhridharashtrar or Drishtyadhrumyan

11. FINISH THIS STATEMENT. "IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY I'D...? Buy all the cars and bikes I want and a house with a MLPL (Multi Level Parking Lot). Mr. Ambani, is your under construction house for sale?

12. DO YOU DRIVE FAST? Yea.

But since everybody else has taken this question as an opportunity to proclaim their philanthropy and safe driving practices, let me follow suit. I speed only on clear roads when I am sure I won’t cause accidents.

13. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? No. I have a feeling that this is some kind of a trick question though.

14. STORMS-COOL OR SCARY? Cool (as long as I am indoors).

15. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR? Hyundai Accent.

16. FAVORITE DRINK? Vodka with Coke. Vodka gets removed from the answer when I need a politically correct answer.

17. FINISH THIS STATEMENT, "IF I HAD THE TIME I WOULD ..... be doing more or less the same things I am doing now. I am not hard pressed for time.

18. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS ON BROCCOLI? I don’t even eat Broccoli, forget about the stem.

19. IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR CHOICE? Nothing prevents me from dyeing my hair any color of my choice. But since I haven’t done that, I think that’s how I like my hair to look. So with you Jiby, BLACK!

20. NAME ALL THE DIFFERENT CITIES/TOWNS YOU HAVE LIVED IN. Pala, Mangalore, Trivandrum, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chicago.

21. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Cricket, football, tennis.

22. ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU. The courage to attempt to follow his dream.

23. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED? Nothing.

24. WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE BORN AS YOURSELF AGAIN? I don’t know. May be no.

25. MORNING PERSON, OR NIGHT OWL? Night. I just can’t get up early. Staying back as late as it takes has never been an issue for me (for anything other than studies)

26. OVER EASY, OR SUNNY SIDE UP? Sunny side up. Partly because that’s a safe thing to say in most of the breakfast joints when they list down before you the innumerable egg preparations.

27. FAVORITE PLACE TO RELAX? Couch opposite TV.

28. FAVORITE PIE? I hate pies.

29. FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR? I don’t like ice creams.

30. OF ALL THE PEOPLE YOU TAGGED THIS TO, WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND FIRST? I tag Rat, Sand, Vimal and Surya. My guess is Rat.

Randaamoozham

A drifter.

That’s what I am.

I drift from places, people, ideas... I keep moving from pasture to pasture. My attention spans have become shorter and shorter. My priorities keep changing. Often I burn the bridges behind me.

Its been a long time since I posted something here. I guess I am regular here only when I am comparatively free elsewhere. So does that mean blogging has gone down in my priority list? May be yes. But I don’t think I can say I have picked up some new activity which replaced blogging. Its just that it moved to the background on its own.

I had seen this post from Thanu some time back and thought of linking it up here and saying "Ditto". But then on second thought I wanted to keep my options (and my blog) open.

I have come back to my page after a long time. Read some of my previous posts once again. Felt like deleting most of them :). Since it wasn’t that entertaining to re-read my crap, I decide to go through my friends blogs one by one. Nice to see most of them are still active. Found the latest post on Jiby’s blog. Was truly amazed to see a mention there.

I can identify with most of Jiby’s posts. When I read about the way he feels about his college life, his US life, his present, I often see a black cat moving (ref : Matrix). This latest post got me thinking. I agree with him, I was active in blogging because of the community. It was to keep that friend circle alive that I used to blog. Like how you often go to a Coffee Day for 'Conversation' rather than 'Coffee', even though they tag themselves 'Coffe and Conversations'. The gang was great - Sharing happenings, news, thoughts, view points, stories with each other. Now after reading Jiby's post, I feel like starting it all over again. I don’t think I will be that regular now, work steals most of my awake hours. But I still want to hang around here, with an occasional post now and then; so that I will still belong to the ‘gang’; I wont get cut off.

If I don’t thank ‘the gang’ members -Poison- and Kickassso for their help, it will be an injustice. I wanted an acco for my bro and his friend at Tvm for a month. I tried through some of my other contacts but couldn’t manage to get anything convenient. I contacted Poison through mail, I saw him forwarding that to Kickasso, I gave a call to Kickasso, kickasso in action, swift and fast. Acco ready in flat 2 hours. Thank you very much guys. Really really appreciate your help.

About my latest coordinates: Changed country, continent, client, account, company, marital status among others. Back to Bangalore for the time being.

Life is beautiful. :)

Geo the brat!

Ok. Quills the princess has ordered me to write about my childhood :) Its called ‘The Wonder Years Tag’. The tag is to list 8-10 things that you liked as a child (0-12 years) and 8-10 things you disliked. I don’t remember too much about my childhood, guess I am getting old. Just some vague images flashing…


1. When I think about the happy times of my childhood, the best memory I have is about a Christmas Eve night journey. I was very young. All my dad’s siblings and their families gather together at my ancestral home for all the major occasions. So this time, for some reason I couldn’t reach my ancestral home until the day before xmas (I don’t remember the reason now). All my cousins were enjoying there. My dad’s youngest bro came to pick me up late in the evening, and that night journey to my ancestral home, where all my relatives were waiting for me, all the houses on both sides of the road decorated with stars and lightings, all the people on the roads and junctions celebrating xmas… that journey was too good. One of the best memories I have about my childhood.

2. The next thing that comes to my mind is about the time I have enjoyed on play grounds. As a kid, I (and my friends) used to play cricket in the rubber plantations, football in paddy fields (after harvest), shuttle in our courtyard and then a lot of other simpler games. We used to play till our moms practically dragged us in.

3. Theres a somewhat big water stream near my place. Its not as big as a river, but it still had enough and more adventures packed for us kids, especially during monsoon. We used to spend hours and hours there taking bath, swimming, diving, and fishing with our towels etc.

4. Daytime was entirely dedicated to games or water sports :_) When I was doing neither, I was cycling. I used to go cycling through the inner roads, ‘inventing’ a new route whenever possible. Used to enjoy those cycle rides through the countryside.

5. I remember the school annual celebrations. It used to be so much fun. All of us participating in something or the other… Me being the shameless exhibitionist I am, I used to be part of as many events as I could. I still remember those dramas with painted faces, skits etc… One added advantage was the prizes and cash awards which we used to get on the annual day.

6. In line with what I have written as point 1, the time I have spent with my family is truly priceless. The thing that I miss most these days. Whenever we all are together, it’s a real festival.



Now the things that I dislike.

1. First and foremost – Sunday school :_) Used to have endless negotiations with my mom to arrive at treaties where by I was to attend one, and then bunk the next two and so on :_). The threat that they wont let us marry if we don’t pass 10th grade catechism was the only factor which motivated me to drag myself in ;_) (Looking back, I should be proud that I was very clear about my priorities in life from a very young age ;)

2. I used to hate it when we were forced by the school authorities to attend ‘first Friday’ prayers, retreats or any such religious activities.

Cant think of anything else. I don’t remember hating any specific food items, or studies or anything like that. I don’t even regret having a lot of ‘street fights’ ‘school fights’ (corrected after Venus's exclamation) with my class mates. That too was fun. I think I really enjoyed most of the other things about my childhood.

One around, two on top

I know I havnt been so regular at blogging… had loads of work… tuff days… conf calls… dead lines… escalations… all typical stuff of software industry.

Now the first phase is over… I will be here for some more time, dunno if its for good or bad. :-)

Another long weekend. July 4th weekend. Since 3rd is a working day for us and our project kicks off on that very same day, I cudnt take a day off and plan for a trip… So I am stuck here.

Since I didn’t have anything to do for the evening, I thought of getting a hair cut done. By the way, I got up late, and was watching both the soccer matches, so it was 6 when I left my house for the haircut. Since this is a long weekend, most of the saloons remained closed…I wandered a bit and finally managed to find one… I checked the timings and it was supposed to close at 7:00 PM and it was already 6:50 PM. The lady allowed me to sneak in even though I didn’t have an appointment. Thus far things were working fine.

Ok, so this “hair stylist” wraps me in a black coat, and looks at me for directions… I said “Just a regular trim”. She replied “Just a regular cut?”. If only I had answered in the affirmative, everything would have gone well. But at that split second another conversation flashed through my mind. Sometime back I had asked my friend abt hairstyles here, and he had said something like ‘One around , two on top’ – which I understood to mean something like they make it somewhat close on the sides and allow double of that on the top.

So this bit of information was retrieved by my brain cells, processed at lightning pace and was delivered as output to the hair stylist. Should say I was trying to impress her by showing my knowledge about the ‘in-style’. (Heck, this one around thing is something which every T, D and H knows. So there is nothin much to show off in that) Anyways, I proudly proclaimed ‘One around, two on top’. She gave me a quizzical look and offered “That would be too close, should I try one around and three on top?”… I was like, well, err, ok, fine, go ahead.

The action that followed also took place in lightning speed – She took out a trimmer, put size 1 blade and mowed the entire left side of my head in one swing :-(. Before I cud respond, I saw the skin of my head on that part of my head :-(. It was bad enough. Then I thot – Ok, may be she will now trim the hair on top with a pair of scissors and adjust it a bit… I was waiting for her to finish off the side job and then instruct her on how to trim the top floor. I saw her changing the blade. I thot she was going to make sides smoother or something, but what she did was changing form size 1 to size 3 and mowing down a part of the hair on top of my head :-(. Its not as close as the sides, but then having 1 millimeter hair at some part of your and having 3 millimeter hair at other parts looks almost the same. :-(

Now I look almost like I did a clean shave. I wont forget the way my roomie was rollin on the floor laughing when he saw me after 'the cut'. Dunno how will I show my head in the office now. Have decided one thing – no more going for ‘in-style’ things. “Just a regular trim” is all I am going to say in any saloon for as long as I remember this.

Oom-pithe-tal

Oom-pithe-tal (OPT) is a French phrase which can be loosely translated to mean ‘the state where life is ordered and tranquil’. I have been experiencing OPT ever since I landed here in Chicago…

1. When I landed, I was supposed to be here for a week (for the initial kickoff) and then move to Troy for my onsite assignment. But then the plans got changed and I was asked to continue here. My house lease plans went for a toss and I had to intrude into one of my friend’s apartment. I didn’t know that was just the beginning of things to come.

2. The apartment complex where I decided to stay had strict rules about its tenants and guests. They didn’t encourage guests using the tenant's swipe card for admittance (yea, we had to swipe a card each time we entered the building), so my friend had to see me off and pick me back each time I went out and returned.

3. I couldn’t receive my parcels as I didn’t have my name on the apartment mailbox.

4. My project work sucks.

5. I applied for an SSN, and when they sent the card, it was bounced because I didn’t have my name on the mailbox.

6. I applied for a bank card. The first card which the bank sent had the same fate as that of my SSN card. I applied again, and asked them to send it to the local branch. I went there and collected it, started using it. On the third day, when I swiped my card after buying a cold coffee, the cute lady at the counter smiled at me “This card is no good”. Transactions were declined on that card. I checked with the bank, they said there was a ‘lost or stolen’ reported against the card. The lost or stolen was in fact on my first card. Somehow they messed it up. I had to wait for another week to get my third card.

7. I still havnt applied for my driving license.

8. I applied for a credit card. It was declined. I know you are not surprised, so here is the rest of the story. I had citibank calling me three times, conducting a session for me and my friends before I left for US, educating me about the benefits of the card they are going to give me. They even followed up with a mail after me reaching here. I finally applied and they promptly rejected.

9. I used to stay at the 46th floor and the reception for my cellphone was pathetic to say the least. I used to get connected once in a while; I tried drawing a pattern between the connection availability and the strength of wind, but cant say I was successful.

10. My friend fell ill.

Finally to take care of 2, 3 and 9, I shifted to a new apartment.

11. After moving in, I realized that my new place has absolutely no connectivity for cellphones. Before this, I used to get calls, only problem was occasionally my calls were dropped. But here, I don’t even get connected, so don’t have to worry about dropped calls any more.

Now I am eagerly waiting for the next bazooka my way :_)

Settling down

Today was our home-setup-day… rented out a SUV, Saturn VUE from Nationals…went to Wal-Mart. What followed were the normal (expected) shopping scenes when 3 guys shop for cooking utensils and grocery… “Should we buy 3 frying pans and a round bottomed flask like cooking vessel or is it the other way?” “What should be the height of the frying pan? Suppose we cook some long wide vegetables, will the height of the pan be a problem?” “When we cook, should we be using plastic spoons or metal spoons?” “What kind of mat we put outside the toilet door? Is it kitchen mat or toilet mat?”

We could finish the stuff in around 2 hours at Wal-Mart. One thing which helped us to finish it so fast was the fact that I had prepared a detailed checklist of things to buy (which included just 2 items by the way, 1. utensils 2. grocery) which I forgot to take with me when I started in the morning. Once done with our utensils, bed and general shopping at Wal-Mart, we headed straight to Devon Street, which is kind of a mini India out here, for our grocery shopping. Thanks to google maps, we didn’t have any issues in finding our way.

Any Indian will feel right at home when he/she reaches Devon Street. Mughal-E-Sheriff restaurant, Naina sari shop, Bombay electricals, Shah’s jewelers… the place is full of Indian shops. You find people crisscrossing roads everywhere… We even found a Patel brothers eatery and an Udupi Restaurant there. More of typical guys-shopping-grocery scenes – “What daal do we use?” my roomie asked me holding three different varieties in his hand. Personally I am not a big fan of cooking my own food. The fact is I don’t know the art of cooking :_). {How many of you have met someone who has landed in the US of A without a single cooking utensil, a pack of curry masala or even a single bottle of pickle in his baggage? ;_) } I was just accompanying these guys in their shopping trip as a cart pusher… and in the middle of that, if he asks me what daal to use, what am I supposed to answer? Then they had this confusion as to how much onion/ginger to buy, how many tomatoes to pick… :_) one of em came back with 2 tomatoes and a bag full of ginger which was enuf to feed a battalion for a couple of months… we told him it would be better if we get it the other way arnd… then there was a confusion as to how many rice bags to pick.. my friend checked the weight of a single bag…unfortunately it was in pounds… we three engineers had a tough time converting pounds to KGs…then one of my friends attempted calculating the amount of rice needed for three people for a single serving and then multiplying it by the number of days in a week or some such number…seeing that all three of us were equally good/bad in maths, I suggested to pick 3 bags as a starting point, which was accepted happily by all…

When we went to pick up the car in the morning, the temperature outside was 2 degree Celsius… It was my foolishness to bank on the weather prediction (which said 10+ degrees) and venture out without even grabbing my jacket… anyways, the Saturn was comfortable and we had a nice day… :_)

Small World!!!

you might have heard of the news of a global banking giant outsourcing its IT work to some IT giants...yours truly is part of that much talked about deal and has now landed up in chicago...

when it comes to planning trips, this trip beats all the trips i have done/planned so far. my trip was rescheduled and redirected at least 14 times... I was asked to travel to Ann Arbor/Chicago/Troy/NJ and even Netherlands. even now i am not sure of this is my final destination. guess nobody can beat my account when it comes to planning and strategies,,,was almost sleepin throughout the flight... reached here in one piece... US looks the same... no no havnt been here before... same as in same as the movies :p

checked into a hotel and called up my close buddy after wasting some quarters at the public call fones... it turned out he too was staying in the same hotel. he hadnt written his hotel name in the addres…he came down to the lobby, we met, we hugged, we talked, walked and talked... 4 years of engg together at CET, 2 years of working together at Mumbai, and a year and a half later, we both are working from the exact same office for the exact same client, but on behalf of two different corporates... this world sure is a small place!!

first day in Yankee land was pretty much as expected... huge buildings, huge automobiles, awsome babies ;_)

funny part of the day was my first US MacDonald purchase...

me and my teammate from bangalore went to one MacD outlet for our lunch... poor guy is a vegetarian and was intimidated by the chicken dominated menu... i decided to play the good Samaritan’s role and approached the MacD counter with my best possible yinglish accent "Ma'am, doo yuHaav anyything in vegggitarian?"... The lady gave me a blank look as if I asked her something in Mallu. I tried again... This time in my normal accent "Do you serve vegetarian burgers here?" She gave me a look (which I have reserved for my veggy friends) and asked "Vegggittaaariaaan? sorry, we dont have"... I went back to my team-mate and passed on the sad news to him... we both proceeded to the SubWay outlet and finally got a veg and a non veg sub...then we went back to MacD to get some fries and coffee... 1 medium french fries is some 1.23 $ and they had an offer whcih said 2 french fries for $2. In the meanwhile, I wanted to call my friend, and I had noticed a public call booth which said "Local calls for 50cents". I had 2 quarters with me and no 50 cents...So wanted to convert those two quarters into a 50 cent. Keeping all these things in mind, I went to the MacD counter and placed my order...the conversation which followed went somewhat like this...

Me: "2 french fries and 2 coffee please"
Counter Lady(CL):" You want F-R-E-N-C-H fries?"
I was confused. I thot may be I asked for 'italian' fries or sth... Not really understanding what she meant, i nodded my agreement.
CL: "That makes it 2$ 84 cents"I was confused again as I knew the price of coffee was above 1 $. But anyways paid the amount and kept quiet. A minute later they delivered 2 packets of french fries. But no coffee...
Me: "I'd ordered for 2 coffee also"
CL: "Waaaaat? coffeeee?? noo sirr... u only ordered FRENCH fries"
Me: "Ok..fine...give us 2 coffee also"
While she instructed her coworker to pass me coffee, i pushed my 2 quarters to her and asked "Could you give me a 50 cent?"
She was damn confused this time and said..."No sirr... its not 50 cents... its 2 $ 46cents..."
Me: "I know...I know... This is separate...I will pay that later"
She was finally happy to understand what I wanted and said "Oh...i now understoooood... you want sepppperaaaate... ok ok..." she placed her hands on both of the coffee cups and said "1.23 and 1.23.... This is 1.23, and this is 1.23" What she understood was I wanted to pay for the coffees separately :_(

What more to say, I just dumped all the coins and $ bills I had in my hand and asked her to pick whatever she wanted, and returned with 2 coffee cups and not really convinced as to whether to be happy or sad about the fact that I myself was acting the part of the foolish indian whom I have seen in so many movies...

So thats how its going. Have been coming to the client office for a couple of days now... got a laptop today... installed some software... work is yet to start... may travel to Troy next week... catch up with u ppl later…

Bangalore (01:35 AM) -> FrankFurt (12:00 PM-02:50PM)->Chicago (12:00PM)

About Me

This is how a close friend of mine described me:

“
Intelligent..funny,.Wild nd crazy..A perfect blend of an innocent lookin face and ‘not so innocent’ sparkling eyes.. A lill bit of sensitivity hidden behind a massive ego.. At times smart..Mostly shy.. All in all 10 on 10 to a sweet ‘gud 4 nuthin’ frnd.
”

Thank you my dear friend... :_)) you made my day, week, month....