Thursday, April 29, 2004

There's practical jokes

And then there's practical jokes that go wrong. I am at work still and its 11pm. This due to the fact that precious hours were lost in trying to figure out who Murali from Bombay was who had a gift for me from a dear friend in London (who, by the way, had no clue who Murali was or that she had sent a gift through him for me). No surprises for guessing it was Firdaus. I am not pleased and someone's brownie points have been revoked (twice over) for this.

Firdaus lands tomorrow for a weekend of what he hopes might be blissful moments together. Guess who has a surprise in store for himself when he finds that his girlfriend is in fact, out with "Murali" for a drink to collect the gifts he has brought her from London. Its the battle of who gets me better gifts now I think... (hint hint.. no less than 42 separate gifts would do)

|

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Panic Attack

The following events today have led me to believe that the world, as I know it, is coming to an end. Doomsday is upon us people.. run, hide.. only the slimy shall survive (ref: cockroaches can survive nuclear bombs). Okay okay, for the more impatient among us let me tell you what has happened today:

1. Neil did not blog today
2. Firdaus did. My boyfriend is unhappy and I have no clue what to do
3. Silver Tassles cant have sex for a week (?)
4. Pramila's blog has disappeared (??)
5. Sarah feels like her life is ordinary and is coming to terms with the idea that she may not be president one day (as am I)
6. Nina's written in a language other than English (or Hindi, which to be honest I didnt really expect her to be fluent in anyway despite Sarah's efforts to educate the world on words like gori and others that will not be mentioned on this blog for their unparliamentary nature)
7. A very good friend (also one of the most attractive women I have ever met) - whose blog link I cannot put here for she wishes to remain secret - thinks she is "invisible" around men
8. I am at work still... its 10pm and I dont see myself leaving before 1.30am AGAIN.

Only 8 reasons you say? Rather significant reasons I would say. No nuclear bombs you might add.. no sign of violence.. and yet, I would argue, a sense of nothing being right today. Maybe its just today... and maybe we should all seriously consider hiding in underground bunkers NOW.

|

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Its been a while...

A dear friend of mine sings this song by Staind beautifully. Why am I mentioning this, you wonder only to see the title of my blog - "whatever things". If you didnt know you could expect randomness by now, my sympathies are with you.

Its 11:34 at night and I am at work. Sad really, isnt it? No no.. dont cry for me just yet. The heart-rending tale of a girl working alone till the wee hours of the morning is yet to begin.

I miss the endless cups of coffee at business school with flat-mates who were insomniacs (or became insomniacs once they reached there). Crazy days of listening to stories of exam-tension, heart-ache and general drama... and now I am back to my insomniac days. I am sleepy as ever during the day and can just about stay awake while my boss dribbles on about processes and blah blah for 2 whole hours (this is a real story.. any resemblance to chracters real or fictional is completely intentional).

Notice how lately my posts have been about staying late at work and today, to my utter horror, my boss sends a mail to everyone defining the "development activities" (read dribble about crap for hours on end) that need to be undertaken given that this is a "relatively slow period". If he was around when I read this, I would have manually lifted my desktop and flung it at him. Nice show that would have made. Of course, laws of physics dictate that the desktop would not have landed too far from me and the laws of dilbert dictate that the broken computer would have had to be paid for through my salary. Luckily for all concerned (which is basically me), the boss was not around.

Which (the fact that the boss was not around and is not around right now either - surprise surprise) basically brings me back to the original message I wanted to convey. Its been a while since:

1. I slept a good 8 hours at night
2. You read a new post from me
3. I spoke to my boyfriend (12 minutes actually)
4. I vegetated in front of the tv (48 hours of that completed just today)
5. I read a funny book (please suggest- suggestions like wodehouse will be immediately disqualified, and I plan to go looking for Mil's work this weekend)

You think I can make a song out of this like Staind? Do I have volunteers to sing the song? Come on.. dont be shy..

|

Friday, April 23, 2004

1am

And I am just leaving for home... ah sweet bed.. I am having visions of climbing into bed and sleeping like a baby (right after a watch a bit of the telly.. hee).

Very little energy left in me now. Been a 15.5 hour day. Just have enough energy to thank... my... fans.. for... all... their.. love.. and.. support... must.. mail... boss.. before.. i.. pop.. it... *incoherence due to sheer exhaustion*

|

"Are you from Delhi?

I encounter this question all the time from individuals in this village town (pretending to be a city) called Bangalore. Initially I would respond proudly and say yes. Is it not amazing that you can tell that I am from the capital of the country - the city everyone loves to hate? Slowly, much Delhi bashing later I realised it may not be such a good thing to be recognised without provocation as a Delhi-ite. Very often described as brash, rude and loud, us Delhiites are really a fun lot you know.

This post was instigated by my most recent asker of if I am from Delhi - and this one was from a phone conversation about my laptop!! I mean.. do people just guess generally that if you dont have a south Indian accent you MUST be from Delhi? Do Bombay people encounter this too? I dont think so.. Bombay people cannot really be defined I think. I dont hear people saying - oh yeah! you look like you are from bombay... or "something about you tells me you are from bombay". Usually, such comments are meant to insult since Bangaloreans pride themselves at being gentle creatures with benign characteristics like ummm.. err.. yeah the south indian accent.

Is it not puzzling that what you may think is your individual personality is, in fact, the personality of a whole city? That everyone from that city behaves in such a similar fashion that people look at you and see a flash like its written on your head - Delhi-ite. When I speak hindi they say to me "ah.. its just the way you speak hindi.. so delhi like". When I speak English they say to me "ah.. its just the way you speak English.. your accent is so Delhi". And then there was the guy who guess I was from Delhi because I had nice hair, was carrying a smart leather bag and smelled nice (didnt say much for the women of his own city though I thought) like that was a BAD thing. I almost felt bad for a moment until I realised he was saying nice things in his own twisted yet gentle (NOT) Bangalorean way..

|

Thursday, April 22, 2004

How Cool Am I??

Next time anyone ridicules me for NOT being god, this is what they will be directoed to - I AM GOD!

Grammar God!
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

|

Baby Got "Back"

Yesterday I wrote about how I lost the "back" of my earring. In fact, I was so traumatised that I posted that one twice and then had no clue how to delete it. I think once comments are written the post cannot be deleted. But lets not technical here. This is supposed to be a blog about the story of my life.

So, yesterday I bounced about the office a bit- even went to our new office location and checked that out. Had 3 cups of coffee and went out for an extravagant chinese dinner with a friend, where they charged us obscene amounts of money for ice cream and fruit juice!! We didnt even have beer man!! Anyhoo, after all this I reach home to change into something more comfortable for the night and what do I see? The "back" suddenly "flounced" (its didnt quite bounce and is not flimsy enough to flap... hence the word for lack of anything better) out of my clothes. It had faithfully clung to me through all the activity during the day and "flounced" out due to sheer exhaustion when I reached home. Glory be me!!

In all this excitement I have decided to sign up for the Gmail beta testing version on the blogger home page. I am finally a beta tester. I feel like a geek now. For all my technologically challenged self, and for all my tech solutions ranging from "Reboot-now" to "switch-it-off-and-read-a-book", I have finally arrived. I LOVE google and google mail seems like an enormous amount of coolness. As someone I know would say (I am referring to myself in case you were wondering if I had wise friends) the cool quotient is very high on this one.

|

Friday, April 16, 2004

Sleepy

I slept all of yesterday. Woke up briefly to make some maggi for lunch and went right back to sleep. This was not at work (in case you were wondering if you should ask me the secret to my sleep-at-work habit) As if that wasnt enough I overslept again today and didnt get into work till about 3pm. Now some people may say this is a result of depression. Though I have been crabby lately, I think there is a deeper and in fact, simpler explanation to all of this. I needed to catch up on sleep. (Duh!)

Am headed home towards the end of May for a week of extreme heat, dust, pollution and occasional pampering and a ton of lecturing by the parents. I dont know if I should be looking forward to this extravagant move I am making because I know going to Delhi would definitely mean a significant amount of spending on some of the most retarded items ever thought by human beings. Shopping is a joy in Delhi (if you like being ripped off). For all those lectures about saving money, oddly my parents had no objection to my spending 1/3rd of my savings in flying to Delhi. Odd, isnt it?

The timing of my little holiday coincides well with one family holiday of the boyfriends in Europe. Now many of you may not find it a superlative feat, but in India, it is not very common to go to European sojourns annually (except for you Re!!). Hence, although my holiday may not be spent traveling through Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Paris, Scotland and what not... I will relish walking through Greater Kailash, eating chaat and gol-guppas at Bengali Market and Evergreen and kulfi at Moti, Butter Chicken and Kathi rolls... oh how I miss all of that. So there!

|

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Mating Theory

My batchmate from b-school has a theory about mating rituals of the urban human species. Its quite an interesting theory when you think about it. The theory goes like this:

Categorise all males and females of the species into hot, not-so-hot and just plain ugly. So women, it is believed are suckers for persistence. Its not the best man who wins a woman's heart- its the most persistent one. We'd like to believe its the best man and who is to assume the most persistent is not the best for her? So anyway, before you made me launch off into this tangent, I was talking about the categories of men and women. The hot men and women have significantly larger egos than the others and so you will find the ugly males are are persistent with the hot chicks. What do the ugly guys have to lose - they have no egos - right? I thought you would agree with me. So essentially through sheer persistence, the ugly guys win over the hot chicks. That leaves the not-so-ugly chicks with the not-co-ugly guys and the hot guys with the ugly chicks (since the hot guys are least likely to persist until only the ugly chicks are left on the scene).

Personally I do not like referring to women as chicks, but this theory demanded it of me. So, if you are single right now - which group are you part of? And if you are a couple- who was the persistent one? Please note that this theory was proposed by a single man (with a significantly high blood alcohol level at the time), who I suppose believes he is single because he is too hot to be persistant with any girl *gag* Which leads me to believe that his destiny will eventually lead him to a very ugly lady indeed.

|

Monday, April 12, 2004

2am

"We live in a cynical world" said Jerry Maguire and I disagree. Allow me to please rephrase that line to "We live in an ignorant world". Its 2.30am and I have finally sent the first draft of the report to the client. Note: This is the FIRST draft indicating that iterations will happen and a lot more work remains before we die - uh-oh! Did I say die?? I meant "reach the end of this project". Right.

So, at this time you are wondering why I pretended to write some profound things about an ignorant world and what relation it might have to my project, my death or anyone else's death for that matter. Ahem. *throat clearing noises* Well, I now pronouce the world asleep and therefore ignorant of the fact that the weather is lovely in Bangalore right now, I am extremely sleepy and there is abso-lutely (could those be 2 words?) no-thing (could those also be 2 words?) to watch on TeeVee (those ARE definitely 2 words).

|

Its been a while...

Its been ages actually since I posted. Everytime I would come across something that looked appropriately blog-worthy I would start writing it in my mind this last week. By the time I got to work, such thoughts had been replaced by complete and utter nonsense about a delayed project. During my most critical project, I found the time to find (get that.. "found" the time to "find".. good stuff that) a hilarious man - Mil Millington He is so funny I had to display incredible self-restraint in order to maintain my disguise as a busy consultant. No wonder then I had to work till midnight everyday to finish this last project. No Good Friday holiday for me and definitely no Easter celebrations either for I was working (and reading Mil Millington's Things I Argue with my Girlfriend about occasionally interspersed with the writings of Rohinton Mistry - Family Matters and Freud - go figure!).

I want to write about this new show called Chai Stop on NDTV and the book I read over the weekend and some theories I devised while I was working 16 hour days last week. Can you tell it does not take too much concentration to do the work here?

So let me begin with NDTV- the people at that channel are simply brilliant (either that or they are copy cats). I have not seen any shows of the kind they show on international news channels like BBC and CNN (maybe they copy them from channels that I dont watch... thwack!). They have a zillion different people voicing opinions- now that its election time, lets hear what each of the billion people in our country have to say about things like road, education, Vajpayee, foreign origin, dynasties blah blah... it was coming out my ears till they interviewed truck drivers. You know, those guys we think dont really do much and listen to the most ridiculous music. Well these were truck drivers and dhaba-walas who had studied till class 8 or 9 at best and had better knowledge of India's political scenario than many people I know personally. The educateed elite says "I am not interested in politics". Well are you interested in governance?? I dont know why I ramble about this when I myself will be unable to exercise my right to franchise. Sigh... ramble.. rant

On to the most interesting book I read by Rohinton Mistry called Family Matters. The man describes how orthodox parsis can be well... as orthodox as anyone else. For all their "western outlook", the orthodox ones go to the fire temple everyday and observe all the rites and rituals and refuse to let their children marry outside of the zoroastrian community for fear of "polluting the race". Of course, I speak of the orthodox ones for my boyfriend comes from the least orthodox zoroastrian family ever (at least compared to the book). It was good reading a book written by an Indian for an Indian audience where things dont have to be explained. Like Jhumpa Lahiri explains how "jalebis" are yellow squiggly dough fried and dipped in sugar syrup (I am sure those werent her exact words.. but somewhat on those lines) in Interpreter of Maladies. Yawn... thats where I lost interest. Now I know it was for a wider audience that may not know what a jalebi is and I can skip the bit about the jalebi explanation for the book is full of depth and profundity- yet I like fast moving, captivating stories without descriptions of food items. Its a personal opinion. Deal with it.

This has been a long post indeed. About time I wrapped up... maybe I will post again later today from the comfortable confines (thats aliteration for those of you who missed it) of my home.

|

Monday, April 05, 2004

A little bit of perspective

Someone today asked me: What do u do when ur just sick n disgusted of the place ur working for and cant take it anymore?

Strangely enough I felt as though I had words to say to such a person. Words that, perhaps, would have made me feel a lot better about my job itself through all the days I have wanted to quit this awful place. Here is what I had to say:

You grin and bear it. You come into work everyday, and maybe take a day or two off every now and then, and you thank them for paying you to come in and be as unproductive as you are being. That is your revenge. Only your conscience wont let you be unproductive for too long so you wallow in the pain and futility of it all some more. Then you come to the conclusion that we need compensation for work simple because its so distasteful. That being said, I would recommend you hang in there and on a day that you are feeling generally cheerful, try to think of this day and figure out if you want to quit of this day or stay for the day you are generally happy... it will be much clearer then- trust me :)

As for myself, on days that I am cheerful, I want to quit for the days that I am not. Its clearer then, but I still have not quit. Wonder what thats about.

|

Friday, April 02, 2004

What is it about the place you love?

Was reading Nina's Confessions when it suddenly occurred to me that everyone I know is living away from the city they love. And all of them talk about their hometowns as the best places in the world. I think maybe its just the memories we keep from a particular place you know- like the time that auto-walla almost kidnapped me in Delhi... oh no! I was meant to block that memory out! I adore Delhi for all the awesome shopping, for the yummy food you can almost anywhere you go (to me it seems like good food is everywhere in Delhi), and for the crazy punjabis. I love every bit. From the traveller to the city I hear complaints like the weather sucks (who cares, we live in airconditioned comfort right?), everyone tries to rip you off (builds character I think), people are too loud (aggressiveness is a GOOD thing I say) and swearing seems to be a part of life (ah, the language.. I miss it).

A very dear friend of mine who has lived most of her life in London, one always hears of the awesome clubs, the smashingly handsome men and many cupsa tea.. and yet another friend who has recently moved there complains about the grey weather, the prices of everything and the tube. Fido loves Bombay simply for the pace of life and how the city is always awake. I know people who cant stand the lives they live in the city with distances that should ideally be across cities (not within a city), crowds to make you want to curl up by yourself and a mad pace of life.

Bangalore in itself is a lovely city but for the fact that nobody (and I mean not even a single person) knows how to trim hair here. They have fancy salons and yet every frigging time I have been to a different one recommended by some Bangalorean or the other, I have had to get it fixed the very next day. I may have to carry a picture of myself in Delhi next time I go to get my hair done and ask them to try to do my hair the way it looks in the picture. Thats not it- nobody (and I mean not even a single person) knows how to make iced tea. Its hot here dammit and that should be when everyone is having iced tea- but not the Bangalorean... they have iced tea that tastes either like lemonade or sugar syrup... Oh and did I mention that nobody (and I mean not even a single person) has any clue of how much time anything will take.. their guesstimates drive me batty!! Rant...

Theres just something about home.. and I cant put my finger on it...

|
Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com