Don't Panic , I am Mostly Harmless

IPL is not for me

2011-04-30T02:02:00.000+05:30

I just came back from a Bangalore-Pune IPL match. Bangalore won. Being a stern Bangalore fan, I should feel very happy right? I did not even feel like standing up and appreciating the team's effort after we won. The culprit, I never thought, was capitalism.

Vijay Mallya owns the Royal Challengers Bangalore cricket team. He wanted a winning team. He had a lot of money. He thought he would go out and buy as many established foreign and Indian players as the salary cap would allow him to do. In doing so, he screwed around with the local players that were already playing in the RCB team in the first 3 seasons. Not that they were bad. RCB in fact ended up as runners up last season. But, he did it to do this so that he could be certain his team will not have a problem with talent and experience. Did he do anything wrong in doing this? A capitalist would say, "Of course not. How else would YOU run YOUR business?"

Here is my problem. IPL was in theory about getting the local talent to play in a sensationalized version of Cricket, see if they can perform, see if they can be selected into the national team etc. Cricket was, if not central, an important theme in the bigger scheme of things in IPL. Or so I thought.

I completely think that this is not true anymore. Its all about cheerleaders, celebrity owners, lots of black money, scandals and my favorite from Pooja - lots of drunken men falling on women while walking out of the stadium. I do not honestly think people come to the stadiums for the game either. They just want to see a lot of drama on the ground - sixes, hat tricks etc. They are spending a lot on merchandise in turn helping RCB build its brand and franchise. However, this has got nothing to do with helping the local talent do better. None of this money is going into making the infrastructure of local academies better. Its purely a privately held firm that is working for its gains.

I am thoroughly disappointed at this. Of course, I am complaining about RCB more from a philosophical stand point. I am sure no one - RCB owners, players or the fans, give a damn as long as everyone get their money's worth. I am not sure if I would ever go to an RCB match again just because its RCB.

If you really have to go

2011-04-17T00:54:00.001+05:30

If you are on Vittal Mallya road on a 2 wheeler and really have to pee, what would you do? As any Bangalore male with self respect, I instinctively started thinking of an open area/wall where I could pee. The first and the only place that came to my mind was Cubbon Park. However, there are multiple reasons why you cannot pee in Cubbon park.

You cannot trust anyone these days - Gone are the days when adult males would stop their scooters/mopeds without turn turning them off, go to the wall adjacent to the road and pee in peace. That (supposedly funny) cliched movie scene in almost every Indian language in the climax where the hero steals one such scooter is not so unimaginable anymore. Of course, the chain of larceny that follows is still, luckily, bullshit.
Cops hide in random places - Ever since that new commissioner dude made the rule that cops cannot stop anyone who has not broken a law, cops have started hiding in the weirdest of places. Now, they are not only hunting for offending drivers, but also for unsuspecting couples with no money to go to a hotel for the night, unemployed/lazy people who cannot think of a better place to sleep than the park, Vataal Nagraj supporters and sometimes, people who are half done peeing. In the event that you get caught, however, do not pay more than 50 bucks. That is the standard bribe rate for most petty offences. Also, do not forget to say "Saar, student saar. Please saar" irrespective of how old you are.
Dogs have a tendency to bite - There aren't that many dogs in Cubbon park, but I have seen an odd dog here and there behaving, well, odd. And of course, snakes bite too and there are plenty of them in the park. But, I would say, be more careful of the dogs. Snakes bite you, you die. Dogs bite you, you take a lot of painful injections and not die.
It gets windy sometimes - Most men who have been to windy places can tell their experience about peeing there. Its not fun if you are not into having pee all over your legs. Murphy likes playing cruel jokes as well. Things would be completely calm and still and the moment you start, so does he and the wind blows right into you. Its not fun.
People apparently care - Last but not the least, there are people who apparently do not approve of this right of men being able pee anywhere in public. They, apparently, also have a habit of hanging around in Cubbon Park protesting one thing or the other. They as well tend to work with the hiding cops sometimes. Only, they do not get a cut in the (hopefully) 50 bucks. Sad bunch really, but pretty dangerous. They sweat these simple things.

Anyway, given these constraints and the fact that there was no other option within 3 KM range, I went to Mocha, ordered a coffee and used their restroom.

Now, why was I there on Vittal Mallya Road and what happened in Mocha is a different post. The question Why did I want to pee might come up in the more curious reader. The curious reader might want to try out drinking 2 liters of water just before leaving her house.

PS: 12.34% of people who read this blog actually thought I pee against trees and walls in the city whenever I get a chance

Lets take a trip

2011-04-03T23:18:00.000+05:30

It had been a long time since I had been to a wildlife sanctuary. 5 years to be exact. When I was in college, I typically went to one at least once every 6 months. Ever since I started working disappearing into forests without knowing how long we would be gone for is, well, a luxury that I couldn't afford.

Recently I ended up going to Kudremukh and Bhadra with her. I was there only for a couple of days. An outside observer who listens to the incidents on the trip would call it a disaster. But we had a lot of fun. We sat in a reclining chair and read for most part of the trip (or were driving which was a little tiring), listening to hundreds of birds making their distinctive calls. We could identify a few, others we decided were birds which were just being boisterous and having a hell of a time during that warm March daylight.

This trip made me realize how much I missed the starlit sky of a western ghats forest, the myriads of sounds one hears in a forest, how exciting it is to investigate things that seems out of the ordinary or how it feels to not have any artificial ambient noise. When was the last time you experienced all these and more? My last time had been a little too long ago. I am hoping my next trip would be sooner.

How do you feel after marriage?

2011-02-27T00:56:00.000+05:30

People have stopped asking me how I feel now that I am married. I guess they think, "Oh the poor bastid has been married for 16 months (hit that mark yesterday) now. I am sure he has made his peace with it by now". Funnily enough, I think only now, I am starting to feel like I am married. Finally sinking in, that supposedly scary fact that. Not that its a bad thing. OK, let me explain.

When you are going out with someone and not living in with that person, you will have to plan doing things together. When you are married, you pretty much can do things with a lot less advanced notice. You can plan to do more things than you would normally do. You have someone staying with you most of the times (note: this is not as bad as it sounds) because of which there is one person who has a very good context of what the heck is going on with your life. Its easier to talk, crib, bitch, admire, randomly talk about most things with this person.

I think marriage on the whole is a net positive thing and people should try giving it a shot. Irrespective of what happens, you will find it to be an experience!

Back to my original point on how people do not ask me that question anymore. Instead of a fake smile, canned answer and felling annoyed within, I would be able to give a lot more thought out answer which is at least some what insightful and meaningful. Or may be that's why they don't anymore. Hmmm.

Annoying book lovers

2010-12-12T16:24:00.000+05:30

I want to you sit back, close your eyes and imagine.

Imagine that you are madly in love with a book. You have read it so many times that you know every single line of the book. You complete every dialogue of every character in the book. You are madly in love with either the protagonist or the antagonist of the book - whatever turns you on mate. In fact, you are 98% sure that the book is the reality. You just need someone to come along and spend less than 4.33 seconds to convince you to leave everything and go in search of the one you love.

Now imagine this book is made into a movie and you decide to watch this.

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW ANNOYING YOU CAN BE? You laugh at the silliest of things, get scared at, again, silliest of things, critique every single scene as to how the book is better and heave every time your favorite character comes on screen and do it all oblivious to who is sitting next to you.

I hate you.

This happened to me when I went to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 1. There was this girl who sat next to me who was, if possible, more than what I asked you to imagine. I have not read any of the books. I just watch the movies because of Hermo.., I mean Harry Potter. Luckily the theater was relatively empty and we went as far away as possible from that crazy person.

Me & Her

2010-12-12T16:06:00.000+05:30

Yet another day in the life of Mr & Mrs Me.

M: Can you please make me some coffee?
H: Or we can just go out.
M: Oh, OK. I thought you can make me some nice coffee. That's fine, lets go out.
H: OK. I will get ready.
M: Wait, this is strange. You are never like this. Reverse psychology always works with you.
H: Ha! OK. Chuck it. I will make some coffee and then we can go out.
M: OK. Cool.
H: Damn it, now I tried reverse psychology. Something is wrong with both of us today.

Problem of abundance

2010-10-11T09:04:00.002+05:30

As it is, Bangalore roads have massive issues – be it crazy traffic or crazy dogs, crazy auto drivers or crazy begging eunuchs who sometimes get very touchy about not being given money. Literally. Now, I have no idea why I should pay a eunuch. What do they lack that I need to pay them money for? Or is it a religious or a superstitious thing that I am thankfully not aware of?

Yet, the government (I am not even sure if this comes under the center or the state which clearly shows how it does not matter) seems to find ways to pose new challenges to the already dumb, road raged drivers. This time in the form of 6 lanes! Yes, 6 freaking lanes! What do they expect - that we’ll all of a sudden get our acts together, follow lane discipline, not honk, don’t drink and drive, live and let live and be happily ever after? Don’t they know us _at all_? I feel cheated from this presumptuous act. I never thought they would put us through the horrifying experience of too many lanes in Bangalore. EVER.

The road I am talking about is the newly constructed segment of NH4 from Yeshwanthpur to Nelamangala. It’s awesome and we don’t deserve it. Drive there once and you will see why. Sad.

To die or not to die

2010-10-08T18:56:00.003+05:30

I saw Anjana Anjani a few days back. The movie has committing suicide as a main theme in it. Among other things. That reminded me of one of the many TGIF conversations I had with Hakan.

The general consensus of that discussion was we would prefer joining a Tibetan monastery as a monk to committing suicide. Being dead is, well, kind of limiting! Don't you folk agree?

I had been quiet

2010-09-24T18:21:00.006+05:30

Have you ever tried playing some game like Wrestling, Basketball, Badminton, pillow fight etc after a long time? You will realize that:

1) Everything is working out perfectly for whatever freaky statistical reasons and
2) You can count the exact number of muscles you have (left) in your body the next day.

Not writing a blog in a long time is exactly like that. It leaves you sitting idle in front of your "New post" window wondering what is it that you actually wanted to write but somehow end up writing something and finally feel tired. You also tend to look back at the 100 odd posts that you have done so far and go "How the hell did I manage to come up with so much non-sense??"

Pooja and a bunch of you have asked me more than once why have I stopped blogging. I crack a cliched joke about being married and having no time to write. Actually, that is only partially true. I like noticing little things and then try and put them into words that well, may not be profound, but is still pleasant to read. Of late, I have not been able to notice these little things that I used to get amused about. I still think once I notice them, I can pen them, well, key them , down, but the actual noticing bit is not happening.

Lets see where I go from here.

One year and a little more!

2009-12-18T10:24:00.005+05:30

Just more than an year ago was when I stopped living in Bangalore. It was supposed to be a 2 month gig out of India. I was supposed to go to Beijing. After an year, I am in San Francisco following where Cruise goes. Being a strict vegetarian and what not, I was not sure how I would cope up with it. Actually, not as much that, I was not sure how I would cope up with living alone. I guess I have survived it somewhat OK. What with almost dying with no money and crazy diseases? There were ups and downs, lots of ups in fact and steep downs as well. Of course, now I am married and have someone to clean up my mess. Literally.

There are a lot of things that I remember about staying in Beijing and now in San Francisco but one of the most interesting (Interesting is an interesting word, it being subjective definitely makes it very interesting. Don't agree? See?) memory is that of coming out of the plane in Beijing for the first time. I had totally underestimated -10 degrees. I was wearing a puny cap and gloves with a lot of holes in the "wool". I almost froze to death in fact. Then, I had to get to the baggage claim but had no idea where it was because guess what, everything was in Chinese! I tried asking around, but no one knew English well enough to help me get to the baggage area. Not that I did not know that language would be a problem, but it hit me like a generously rolled up snow ball accurately aimed at my groin. I had this brilliant plan of remembering someone's face in the plane and then see where that person goes but it failed miserably because to my untrained eyes, all Chinese looked the same! I finally managed to get to the right conveyor and got my luggage and got to the taxi which was outside the heated area majorly adding to my utter discomfort.

Thoughtworks China is brilliant. Based on a lot of feedback from all the expats staying there before me, they have this thing called welcome kit which basically has "Take me to my home" and "Take me to my office" written in Chinese and English along with the address which I could use to show people or taxis if I get lost. It also had an "Insider's guide to Beijing" which is essentially an expat's Bible and the most important of all, a phone so that I can call home! I finished talking on phone to my then girl friend now wife, my then and now parents and brother. And I looked around only to find...

Bare trees. There were hundreds and hundreds of trees for the next 25kms from the airport through the 6th to the 3rd ring road and they were all as bare as Penelope Cruz's breasts in Elegy. It was 4 in the afternoon, nearing sunset and very gloomy. It was -10 outside but no sign of snow as there was essentially no moisture whatsoever in the air. It was essentially depressing. I reached my apartment complex (I am in love with that place now) but the taxi driver (who I befriended quiet well by the time I left there) left me in the basement of my building. He just took out all my luggage, told me something in what now sounds courteous Mandarin and left. Here was the problem - the basement was insanely dark and had these lights which turn on when you walk in front of it and off when you move away. I essentially did not know where the entrance to the building was and once inside how to get to the eight floor. I spent a good 6 minutes, almost panicking by that time, before I finally figured out where the hell was the lift. I entered the lift and made my way to the most depressing apartment ever. It was ill light, there were no neighbors, there was no internet and only Chinese channels on the TV. I just knew within an hour and half in Beijing that this was the biggest mistake of my life.

Now, come to think of it, that was one of the best decisions I made. I still have loads to write, more experiences and incidents than about travel. Hopefully, will get to jot them down. All that said, Bangalore is where home is. I am coming back by the end of February. Looking forward to catch up with my life there again.

Post engagement woes

2009-10-11T18:07:00.004+05:30

Pretty much everyone I know have been asking me how I feel about getting married. To the ones I am not close to, I lie saying I am feeling scared and weird. Ones that I am close to, well, I tell them the truth. I tell them that I actually am not feeling anything at all. I think after 3 months or so, one fine Saturday morning, I will wake up in cold sweat realizing that I am married. Or may be I wont. But as of now I am pretty numb. Pooja, on the other hand, not only gets questions but also advice. She gets pretty annoyed (I pretty much copied her title). I think both of us will be relaxed and back to normal once the event is over.

Also, never get into the mess of getting involved in planning a wedding from a different continent. Its very inefficient and frustrating, like working in a waterfall project for a big organization. I am sitting in the Hong Kong transit and pondering as to how much work I have left to do. If you want to console me with a bachelor's party, I will be more than happy. Go ahead, plan one.

Food Scene

2009-08-31T10:58:00.003+05:30

So, I was living in China for 8 months and now in SF. Being a vegetarian, I had to cook bloody everyday to survive in China. SF is a different ball game. Pretty much every restaurant here has at least one vegetarian and one vegan option. Unlike other parts of the US, vegetarian doesn't mean just cheese between bread here. Its pretty healthy. People here are very health conscious as well. Anyway, I don't feel like a single working mother taking care of myself now. I just feel like a working "bachelor" again.

So, now that I don't _need_ to cook for survival, I go easy on what I cook. I experiment. I even went to the extent of letting Raghu, my colleague, cook today. Not that I knew if he was good or not. But, generally, I was prejudiced against him (I am old now. I don't beat around the bush anymore about these things. If I am prejudiced against/about something I say so) and hence hadn't let him cook. But today, he convinced me that I don't need to work and that I can relax and do the dishes! I had a momentary lack of control and before I know, Raghu was in control of the kitchen.

He asked me to cut spinach, onion, 3 different varieties of salad leaves, coriander, curry leaves, some carrots and green chillies. He boiled Moong daal in an oven. He fried some sprouted fenugreek seeds, mustard, chillies and asafoetida in a generous amount of vegetable oil. I had a feeling he also had something to do with a lot of cummin seeds and powdered coconut. Somehow, the very acetic smell that was coming from the pan was not reassuring. When the dal just wouldn't become soft in the oven, not before all the water in the bowl had overflown onto the glass plate (which apparently is the expected behavior. Software engineers never learn how to speak normally), the whole of the said contents were transferred into a big, evil looking vessel and copious amounts of water was added. All this was followed by the official covering of the lid and the infamous, "There is nothing left in our hands now" sigh. The fact that both of us were now talking to our girl friends over long distance calls helped only a little in getting the cooking done. He hurled statements like "All this smoke (aka steam) is not letting me see inside to figure out what's happening", "I will add lemon. It will definitely help" and "You add the salt" which did not do much to improve my confidence in the whole fiasco. Even by Indian standards, 3 PM was pretty late and I was hungry. Within 5 minutes, Raghu called it and pronounced the dish to be complete. And then, I took the bold step of taking the first serving...

It was fucking awesome. I have no idea how he managed to pull it off, but he is apparently pretty famous in Thoughtworks for his daal. The confused statements and requests for random ingredients are all to mislead the partner to increase the overall experience of the daal. This succeeds so well that you actually start imagining the daal to be more good than it may actually have been. Also, the careful planning of cooking late and making his friends very hungry never fails as well. All in all, it was a good eating experience today.

We were thinking of cooking some new food. Random cuisine. Lets see how well can we do it. Suggestions are most welcome.

I am back, I guess

2009-08-25T12:05:00.004+05:30

I guess blogging is about discipline just like most other things in life. Sad but true. Most people who know me knows that I can't be the least disciplined about the conventional things, say, formal attire for a formal event, not reaching out for food from others' plates, treating my clothes properly in my room, to say the least. These things are, well, you know, so, useless. Then there is sticking to deadlines and being on time. This is I take are pretty annoying to people, but most people know that Indian Standard Time is an addend of an hour and a half anyway. Anyway (used twice in a row for an "not quiet clear what but I am sure it wont be bad" effect) now that I have established without any hard evidence that I am undisciplined which is not that hard to believe though, I will get to where the heck did I disappear.

I got engaged. To a girl. To the girl even. I went from Beijing to Bangalore to Beijing to Bangalore to San Francisco in a span of 5 weeks. And I got engaged while this was going on. I was on a 15 hour a day customer support for 3 weeks which ended up being the biggest deal for our product so far. Yes, we were supporting before they had actually paid. I have packed and unpacked a lot in general. What little time I have been getting, I have been spending it between home, girl friend, friends, movies and hackery. Its been crazy hectic but its one of those nice hectics. The one after which you are happy that the phase is over, but you have no regrets whatsoever. In fact you are happy you went through it.

This being a come back blog, should traditionally be without any interesting things at all and one can basically ignore it, much like the rest of my blogs I am afraid. But, since I am not happy that one will ignore this blog, much like the rest of my blogs, I will add something almost but not entirely useless.

I have had more than one friend tell me that home is not just the house you own/live in. It is a bigger concept. The shops, people, annoying dog next door, kids playing in your street, the freaking annoying traffic jams, the rains, the summer, the power cuts, fighting to get cinema tickets or a parking space and many more. They all add to what is home. Comfort zone I guess. You of all the people, my dear reader, of course know this in theory. You might have read enough books, watched enough movies even had enough friends who have left home to do whatever it is that they are doing wherever you have met them tell you the same. But, its not until that you have experienced yourself that you realise what is home. The feeling you get when you do go back home, let me tell you, is something that you have to experience. No amount of theory is enough to make you understand how good it feels.

It will be a while till I come back home, but Bangalore is definitely where home is.

Quick Suggestion

2009-05-13T09:57:00.003+05:30

I have a proposal to the Kannada, rather, all Indian movie makers. I watched about 4 movies now and all of them waste about 2 hours to show how the hero and heroin fight and then fall in love. EVERY GODDAMN MOVIE. So, please, spare me the horror of sitting through the same damn thing and lets just get to the point of the movie. That's right - THE POINT OF THE MOVIE. Oh wait, YOU IDIOTS DON'T HAVE A POINT!

Well, being a confirmed bad movie addict, I have a need to watch Kannada, rather, all Indian movies. So, please cut me some slack. Pretty please?

I am sure in about 2o years, I will look back at this and go, "Well, it was worth a try".

Missing Elections

2009-04-22T13:17:00.003+05:30

I am very sad I am missing the elections this time. On the bright side, I can blame an estimated 69,99,99,999 voters if, rather when, something goes wrong. HA!

Idiots

2009-04-20T08:33:00.004+05:30

I am so fucking glad I was not in PESIT. I mean, seriously, look at this! I am a fucking grownup when I am in engineering. Treat me like one ass holes.

The Law that no one talks about

2009-04-09T17:53:00.005+05:30

I don't know about you, but I follow this unstated rule while using the Gent's room. I have seen a lot of other guys follow it as well. Its as if we have an unwritten understanding of the "Least distance of distinct urinal" rule. It goes, "You always choose a slot such that you are at a maximum distance from all the people who are currently using the urinals and any new person that comes in can choose a slot which is at a maximum possible distance from everyone else."

So, basically, if you have 3 urinals and all are empty, you choose the one on either end and not the one in the middle so that the person that comes next can choose the one at the other end. Similarly, if there are 5 urinals and 2 people, chances are that they know the rule and are at opposite ends already and you choose the one in the middle. Even if they don't know the rule, there are always legal slots that are optimized for given the situation. However, its a big problem with even number of urinals. That's when you face one of the most difficult philosophical questions of our era - "Do I go next to the guy who is humming softly or the guy who is wiggling a little?". It is a hard one really and there is no "Do I go next to the guy who is humming softly or the guy who is wiggling a little? for Dummies" book that has an easy answer to this. Every time you have to take that call and every time you have to repent your decision. This is what we go through. Seriously, these folks should cut us some slack!

Anyway, a really annoying thing is when you know the rule and some one comes in and starts unzipping right next to you even though there are a lot of legal slots. Its as if time slows down and everything is happening in slow motion. You think you are going on forever, as if you have had 2 liters of water, a coffee, a diet coke, some orange juice and green tea in a span of an hour (you are pair programming basically). The sound of the zipper feels a loud, prolonged, shrill shriek on your ears, physically hurting them. Soon enough, the pain becomes so unbearable that you go numb. You don't feel anything, even the fact that you are done or that you are being billed by the hour. You just stay there paralyzed. Annoying and painful.

And oh, you guessed it right. There is a formula that calculates the discomfort experienced by a person who knows the rule and the next person coming in breaks it. Its "The amount of discomfort caused when the rule is broken is directly proportional to the number of legal slots that were ignored and indirectly proportional to the square of the distance between the given slot and the newly occupied slot". The constant of proportion is called "Yuri's constant", named after the famous, "Yuri Gotta-go-ri". He was very infamous for his strange bladder condition (he had to go once every 15 minutes for 45 seconds while humming softly and wiggling a little) and was inspired by the not so famous Kannada poet B L Lakshman Rao.

Anyway, now you know how to annoy the hell out of someone you don't like and who you know knows the rule. Be warned. I don't mind biting you if you break the rule with me.

Quick Question

2009-04-09T15:35:00.001+05:30

What do you do when you realize someone you are related to, like your father, reads your blogs? Do you feel strange at all?

Pavan the thief

2009-04-03T20:12:00.002+05:30

So, when you are in a country where you don't speak the language and not know the culture, it is very hard to understand what's going on around you. But, over time you feel confident enough to make simple assumptions as to what's going on and try to pitch in. Especially, when you understand the odd word here and there, you think you know what's going on. Boy, can you be more wrong.

We went out for team lunch to the same place from where I order lunch everyday. Going to the place itself is nicer. Like most of the restaurants in Beijing, the place is filled with people who smoke and yell at the top of their voice "Fú wù yuán" which means "Waiter". This is completely accepted and in fact, the waiter attends to the one who shouts the loudest. So, its like an yelling competition which is so tempting that you do not want to be left out. Anyway, we finished our lunch and everyone left while I was still collecting my coat and drinking water (read forging for the remaining pickled peanuts). I wear my coat, which was under this head resting silk cloth, the kind that they put on fancy chairs to avoid stain from dirty heads, one of those. They apparently think putting a coat on a chair reduces the aesthetic value of the noisy smoke filled, its allowed to smoke in public here, restaurant that smells of pork, fish and a myriad of other dead animals. So they just remove the cover, put your coat there and then put the cover over it. I just thought "Hmm. Weird" to myself while munching on my, oh, drinking water and pulled it out, put on my coat and started to leave. When this "fú wù yuán" came running and said, while smiling, something with an animated body language. I had no clue what she meant, but like a jack ass, went "shá ma" (what)? . Then, she repeated the same words very fast thinking I actually understand what she is saying. I just assumed that she was asking me if I liked the food, gave her a thumbs up, said "zài jiàn" (Goodbye) and left. She was confused, but finally said "zài jiàn" herself. I happily walked back to office having a good time in general and reached back the table and removed my coat when...

An yellow silk table cloth fell down my coat. Here was the problem. There was an extra one of those things that was stuck in my coat and the waitress was trying to tell me to hand it back or she will call the security. When I said "What", she said that I really don't want to be stealing in daylight, especially when China and India doesn't have a good relationship and things can turn ugly. Also, that Chinese prisons are not a nice place to be in and that she was sure I am not here to visit them. Finally, if I leave the table cloth as is, she will not report it but then, I could never go there again. Ever. All with a smiling face. At least, I am convinced now that this was what she said.

Anyway, I did get it back with me and now, it sits on a chair, the chair of dishonesty (going by the theme of Forbidden City) which no one uses. We are planning to decorate the chair further. May be I can pull it once more. May be.

Breakups

2009-03-16T17:24:00.003+05:30

One of the second toughest thing a person goes through in life is a breakup or heart break. One of the toughest, however, is going through your best friend's breakup. Now that, let me tell you, is a real big bummer.

When its your breakup, you are allowed to make mistakes, to do stupid things, to not be responsible or responsive. You are, but of course, depressed and heart broken. But if your best friend is going through a break up, then you have no excuses. You have to make sure that your friend is not smoking a lot, not drinking herself to death, not doing drugs or if was doing has not stopped, doesn't take sleeping tablets to sleep, doesn't binge nor fast, doesn't hit on random people - men or women, to get back at the bitch who broke her heart. No sir, you can't let your guard down. The worst part is not to get ticked off when you try to make the guy look bad by telling her how pathetic he was and be yelled at because you are judging him. Oh, how could I forget - Make sure your friend goes to work, not picks up fight on the road or the mall, make sure she goes out on to the road or the mall in the first place, skip work with a very short notice and sit at home with her, keep talking to her once every 4 hours (frequency depending on how crazy she was about him) and in most of the cases, not let her parents or any others know that she is going through all these and cover up. You basically have no room for mistakes else something bad would happen about which you would feel guilty for the rest your life.

Trust me, your best friend's breakup is the most demanding phase of your life. It doesn't happen because of your friend's sin. Its your sins, my fellow reader, that cause your friend to breakup. You are responsible for it.

Spring - Finally

2009-03-16T17:19:00.003+05:30

Going from -4 deg centigrade to 20 deg centigrade in 3 days is awesome. Awesome enough to motivate one to go to the Great Wall. Also, to randomly roam around, looking at shops one'd never seen before and shopping in them. I feel courageous enough to go out on foot. Spring. Finally. Yay!

All Chinese are Buddhists-a?

2009-02-15T12:05:00.005+05:30

People ask me a lot of questions about China - standard of living, religion, lifestyle, culture - so many things. What most people don't know, I think, is that China is huge. I mean HUGE. Its like asking someone from Finland staying in New Delhi for a couple of months about intricacies of India. I am not sure how representative is it of the whole of India. Anyway, I cannot say this as an answer to almost any of my uncles or aunts. So, I say - "Vegetarian food very difficult Aunty. No Uncle, they don't speak a word of English. I know Uncle, they are not better than even our villagers. Yes Aunty, I get Indian groceries there and I cook, though very difficult Aunty. Yeah Aunty, everyone is a Buddhist there. Yeah Aunty, they are all communists. I am not sure if they are arrested for it Uncle, I mean, they don't look like naxalites." and so on. To be honest, I am not sure I know the right answers to any of these questions! I just answer them based on my mood! Tricky and annoying.

Note to self: Start compiling a "Book of myths on China".

Self Destruction = Balls

2009-02-15T11:37:00.004+05:30

I am not sure about you, but me, I really cannot understand how people can go on a spree of self destruction. What convinces them that hurting themselves is the answer, better yet, the solution? What in the world makes them delirious enough to believe that immersing themselves in an ocean of self-pity and feeling a self-imposed helplessness is good? Actually what they need is this.

I am sure you you know what I am talking about. You know - cutting veins, drinking to death, smoking up to glory (or not), killing people, kicking cats, voting for BJP/Congress/CPI/JDS/{$any_freaking_party}, inventing Scientology etc.

The Law that no one talks about

2009-02-03T15:54:00.007+05:30

I am not sure about you, but I follow an unspoken, implicit rule in public Gents' room. I have noticed that a lot of other guys follow the same rule as well. Its like we all have a shared understanding of the "Least distance of distinct urinal" rule. So, the rule is, you always choose an urinal such that you are at a maximum distance from all people peeing and the next person who comes in can choose one that is furthest away from everyone else.

For example, if there are 3 urinals and all 3 are free, you never choose the one in the middle. Either one on the ends are cool because if a second guy walks in, he would choose the one on the other end. That way, you have the maximum distance between you. Similarly, with 5 urinals, 2 people, chances are they are at either ends and you would go to the one in the middle. Even when they don't know the rule, you can still find a legal place. Its the even number of urinals that are tricky and pose one of the most difficult philosophical questions of our era - "Do I pee next to the guy who is humming softly or the guy who is wiggling a little?" Its always a judgment call and there is no "Do I pee next to the guy who is humming softly or the guy who is wiggling a little? for Dummies" book that gives you an answer for this. Every time you have to make that call and every time you have to repent. This is what we go through. These folks should cut us some slack.

Knowing this rule, one of the most uncomfortable feeling ever is when someone comes and unzips right next to you even though there are a lot of legal slots available. Its as if time has stretched and it seems like everything is happening in slow motion. You seem to be taking for ever to finish, as if you have had 3 liters of water, a coffee, a diet coke, some orange juice and green tea (an hour of pair programming basically). The sound of the zipper appears to be like a loud, elongated screech with a high pitch causing actual physical discomfort. From there on, the intensity of the pain becomes so much that you don't feel anything anymore. Not even the fact that you are done or that you are billed by the hour. You just feel numb, weak and abused.

And oh, you guessed it right. There is a law which governs the discomfort faced by a person who knows the rule but the next guy coming in breaks it. "The amount of discomfort faced when someone breaks the rule is proportional to the number of legal slots ignored and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between your slot and the newly occupied one". The constant of proportion is called "Yuri's constant" after the famous "Yuri Gotto-go-ri" who had a severely abnormal bladder and had to go every 15 minutes and was inspired by B R Lakshman Rao.

So, now you know how to annoy the hell out of someone you dislike and who you know for a fact knows the rule. Be warned I am ready to bite if you break it with me.

Sleep humming

2009-01-29T14:11:00.002+05:30

I get very annoyed when there is a tune struck in my head and I don't know of what song it is. Its very hard to search songs whose tune is struck in your head. Also imagine you forget the tune as well. That's a bummer now isn't it? You know there is a song out there in your head somewhere which you don't know except for the tune that you now don't remember. When this happens to me, I get so fidgety and annoyed that I get on the verge of shouting. I was in this state from the past 2 weeks. I had forgotten the tune of a song which I did not know. Yesterday night when I was almost asleep, I remembered the tune of the song that I don't know! I automatically switched on the recorder in my phone, hummed the tune and went back to sleep. I did not think I actually did this, until I saw the recording now.

Interesting.

Down with Pneumonia

2009-01-27T08:20:00.002+05:30

Pray for me. Please! I have 7 days off for the Spring festival. I will be spending it sitting inside my apartment. Damn!

I aint no villain!

2009-01-20T15:27:00.004+05:30

Anyone who watches Indian movies knows that people from Pakistan are the villains. Is there a bombing in the movie? Is there hijacking? Is there an innocent heroin shamelessly raped? Our hero's family was brutally murdered is it? Who else would have done it other than our monstrous neighbors? Well, of course, I was wired up with this default as well. Then, one fine day, not so long ago, it struck me that there will be movies in Pakistan that have as villains in, that's right, us! That made me go, "WTF! How can _we_ be the villains? After all, its good ol' us! We are not the villains! We have about 700 movies in which _they_ are the villains. Isn't that proof enough to show what hideous monsters they are?" Well, guess what? That is in fact not proof enough.

So, the next time your blood boils after seeing your favorite hero/heroin going through agony and you judge a whole nation, make sure you remember that there are people similarly judging you as well.

Agile and Objectivism

2009-01-04T18:01:00.004+05:30

There used to be a time when I was an Objectivism geek. I believed that ideals are, well, IDEALS. You know? They are set in stone. You stick by your ideals not matter what etc. Then I joined ThoughtWorks. Here we follow Agile and Lean for a living. I am not sure if you are familiar with either of them. A very important concept which forms the foundation for your thought process here, at least for the people I know, is "There is no silver bullet". I knew about this from Mythical Man Month when I was in college. But then, I failed to think from this perspective at all, I guess. The more I think about this today, the more I am convinced that Objectivism is waterfall.

I am not going into the details of either because both of them are so huge a topic by themselves that there are more than one 1000 page books on either of them. So, assuming you are interested to know what I have to say (not a safe assumption) and would know the essential of both, I am starting off.

Meeting sensible people is very important in life. Not everyone is as lucky as folks in Shaolin to have true masters around. Rather, I am talking about those people who have been there and done that or know someone who has and tell you their experiences in a productive way. I am talking about those people who make you think through their thoughts. I have met, lucky me, quiet a few exceptional people at ThoughtWorks who do that. One person in particular, thought me the most obvious, yet the most difficult things to follow in life. I say life because even though it was a thought experiment during a pairing session, it could be easily extrapolated to apply to any aspect of life. The lesson being, "Question everything." Now, I think this is like a corollary of there is no silver bullet. Only when you assume that there is no silver bullet, can you start believing in the fact that you have to question everything, well because, there _is_ no silver bullet!

Now, coming to Objectivism, you are objective about everything in life. You know what is right and what is wrong and stick by them, either of them. You just know what is right. You are always sure of it. But sadly, for mere mortals, life is gray. It just is. So, here we are, trying to do this whole lot of upfront deciding about what is right and what is not. We are creating all these rules and boundaries because we are just sure about it. We choose one thing and dedicate our life to it. Now, my million dollar question - what if you are not sure? I haven't found a convincing answer for this yet. Am not saying there isn't one, but I am not clear with what it is. See? I am unsure about Objectivism itself! Compare this with continuous improvement and constant feedback ideals in Agile. I think it makes perfect sense. Things are in a constant flux in nature. A person you know today is not the same if you meet after 3 months. The way you had felt about someone wouldn't necessarily be the same, say, after an year. The food you savor, the clothes you wear, the music you listen to, they are all so very varying. How can you make up your mind as to, say, I will only listen to Led Zeppelin (I would) and nothing else? Or everything that is similar to it?

You evolve over time. You like somethings and don't like some other things. Some stuff, you don't have an opinion on. Its not not-caring, its just lack of knowledge about those things. You don't need to know what is right or wrong. You can afford to do small changes and get to know if its right or wrong.

I guess I completely missed the point there is in Objectivism. I am not saying there isn't one. I think I failed to see a practicality in it. Then I came across this diametrically opposite way of leading life. It just makes so much sense.

I can imagine it without any difficulty, sitting with you and you (though I don't think it may ever happen, you two talking out the way you used to) in Koshyee's drinking Iced tea, Coffee, beer or Vodka, (not) eating whatever dead animals it is that you guys used to eat and talking about this for hours and not coming to a consensus. May be, we never wanted to come to one I guess.

(This is as concise as I can write about this. Though there are so many things I want to talk about, I think I wanted to compare them on the face value.)

24 and somewhat going

2008-12-24T13:06:00.005+05:30

I have never had a birthday outside Bangalore, without family and friends around. I thought I would mind being away from everyone and everything I love so much back in Bangalore, that too to stay here in the freakishly dry and cold Beijing. But, to be honest, I did not have time or the energy to even think about that!

I cook here in Beijing. For a living. Rather to live. So, Chinese do not have a concept of vegetarian. It looks very boring to them. Why eat those stupid roots and leaves when you can eat that succulent cow intestine instead? The problem for me, who doesn't even eat eggs let alone bovine esophagus, is now I need to find vegetarian food in this place. That would be have been easy, if people spoke at least one language (including sign language) that I know. Sadly, we don't share any tools or modes of communications with each other. That makes it all the more hard to say, "Sorry, I don't like pork blood along with my cucumber. And for God's sake, take that egg off my rice!". I have actually said this mind you. Anyway, amidst all these, I barely have time to think about anything.

A good thing that happened this birthday was that my colleagues knew my food restrictions and actually surprised me with a cheese cake towards the end of the day. Till then, they hadn't even reacted much. Honestly, I thought it was a cultural thing, like Chinese don't really bother about birthdays a lot. But then, it turned out, they were just being hush hush about the whole thing. It was a nice birthday after all. I came back and cooked and for a change, it tasted some what close to what my mom makes. So, except for the fact that I turned an year older, nothing tragic happened on my birthday this year. Nice.

Jai People's Republic

2008-12-13T15:21:00.003+05:30

I am now in Beijing working on Cruise. Its insanely cold here. Looking forward to stay here for sometime. Let me know if you are accidentaly here because of some freakish space-time wrap.

Sadly, I can't say no!

2008-11-17T10:53:00.004+05:30

I suck at saying no. When a sales person asks me if I am intereseted in the thing he/she/it is selling, my brain goes - "I would much rather buy a '101 things you did not know, or for that matter never wanted know, about that old dude from Astha' than this shit" but my mouth goes "OK" helplessly. If it were not for my mom, I would have bought about 23 vacuum cleaners . I would also have a gazillion kind of biscuits, all sort of new washing powder, a million MODI products, a whole lot of ear buds, polish cloth and ad-mags.

I hate sales people. They can sense your weakness and they attack you like a lion hunting out a young wildebeest. They are all ears all the time. They sense the modulation in your voice - that single millisecond pause or hesitation in what you are saying and boom - before you know, you are sitting in a barber shop on a Monday morning, already late to work, with a thick sticky paste on your face, thinking nothing but, "Why am I getting a fucking facial??"

YES! I am Pavan and I got conned into getting a facial! A fucking facial. For no apparent reason. I debated with myself for 2 weeks as to post this or not. Now that the effects are wearing out and I am not freakishly, unnaturally fair, I thought I will write about it.

I walk into office the next day. A team mate goes - "Dude you look fair" and I go "I had a facial" and the entire team laughs for the next 15 seconds. Let me tell you - 15 seconds is a long time. Long enough for me to realise that I should laugh as well to make it appear like a joke!

So, there it is. I blame it all on the dude who conned me into it. I just can't say no. Come to me wearing a tie and fake smile and you can sell me a dead, blind rat after most of its kidneys have rottened. Damn!

Feed addict

2008-11-11T18:08:00.003+05:30

I never thought I am a feed addict. But turns out I am. I was not in touch with the actual real world for about a month owing to this. I had shit loads of feeds to catch up on - XKCD, Blogs, articles, memes - so many things. My Google Reader had around 200 odd unread items. I was tempted, more than once, to mark them all read. But somehow, I just couldn't get myself to do it. After 2 weeks of concentrated effort, I just finished the last unread post.

Finally, I feel I have a bit more control over my life.

(I had this typed out and ready to publish 5 days back but then, got distracted and did not actually do it. Today, I have about 70 unread feeds and I am feeling completely restless. Even as I type this out, I am sure the count is steadily going up! GOD!)

iGeek?

2008-11-10T13:02:00.003+05:30

I have to confess - I was a Geek when I was growing up. Well, actually, I have to meta-confess that my confession is not all that accurate. I confess that I am a Geek. I have spoken about an organization that I started here (towards the end). For a more elaborate (and almost funny) narration, read this. It talks about me - though in a condescending tone!

Police Suck

2008-11-10T11:58:00.004+05:30

Recently, my friend's mother got kidnapped! In Bangalore!! A good friend of mine actually, he is. She was napped very close to Marathalli. This happened on a Saturday evening and after escaping twice from the bastards, she got away and reached safety - but not before she was taken to Mangalore! Totally horrifying incident. But what is even more horrifying is what the bastards of Police did to "help". The donkey-raping shit eaters.

Not only did the Police not take a complaint until there was pressure from an MLA and someone high up in a famous newspaper, but also they registered the complaint as a "missing person". This is a famous trick Police pull on you, more so in Bangalore. They don't register a theft complaint for example, if your mobile is stolen in a bus. They register it as a "lost and found" case. This is because anything to do with kidnapping or things getting stolen in general is a criminal case and they have to follow up the case and generally do a lot of work - for which they are paid. Instead, they just register petty cases so that they can file a "B-report" (which is basically that the case cannot be resolved as there is nothing that the Police can do) and close the case without even clenching a single butt muscle. So, a missing person case, which was not what my friend had in his complaint. When he finally came to know the where-abouts of his mother, he went to the Police station to get them to inform the hospital to which she was taken to that there was a complaint already so that they can treat her without a fuzz. Here is where the Police here completely went bonkers. They went offensive against my friend and started accusing him that his mom basically ran away because he was tormenting her. It is totally outrageous that he was not let to go to Mangalore and held up in the station for about 3 hours - this is with the MLA and other dude's influence mind you!

Basically, the very very little trust I had in the Police is now officially gone. This is the 4th incident I have seen where Police have gone hostile against a victim so that they don't have to do any work. And the sad part is there is no one who you can complain to without being harassed by other Police dudes. So, my advice - "Be sure you get on with your life as if you are on your own." Sad but true. And Bangalore is not what it used to be - a safe haven for everyone. Even more sad. Hmmm.

Figment of Imagination

2008-11-05T18:39:00.002+05:30

Or not.

Anyway, have been listening to this song since 2 days. Over and over again. Just can't get of this. Or this.

As for a real blog, soon sirs and madams, very soon.

Yay!

2008-10-10T10:07:00.003+05:30

3 months long "death march" - Twist is officially beta. 18 months of effort, some need not have been put in. But still, Yay!

Brother getting married in 2 days. Extension in family and what not. Yay!

First time outside India. Good fun. Yay!

Sleep deprivation from 4 weeks - Jet lag and what not. But not without realizing that I have "pragmatic laziness". Yay!

No posts for September. Alas! Always wanted to use "Alas!" in real world but have never been able to pull it off. But used it here. Yay!

One Chota Break

2008-08-31T20:55:00.003+05:30

(Long blog after a long time)

I have never been on a beach late in the evening where I haven't seen the Sun set down into the sea. I have never been to the East coast in the evening.

I had the pleasure of going to Chennai last Friday. I went there in the morning to get my visa done. Not having gone out of Bangalore ever since March (the get away being the unforgettable Goa), this was a very nice change, albeit lasting just about 18 hours. I left quiet early in the morning and reached the new BIAL around 7.45 AM. My flight was not up for the next 1 hour. So, I just had my breakfast in the transit and sat there reading Bourne Ultimatum (a must read). I was already feeling relaxed. The fact that I was going out of Bangalore was more preoccupying than my Visa interview itself.

I went to Chennai without any incidents. Our office in Chennai is in Guindy and I took a cab to the place, who ripped me off for sure. We have a single room over there where there is an office of about 20 people - very warm and welcoming. I just felt at home. I was plugged in into the network and all set to work (I have mentioned already I am pretty busy these days). The first half of the day was, well, normal. My interview was at 3, so I packed up and left to eat around 1 with a plan to reach the consulate by 2.30.

The fact that I do not know Tamil did not seem to be of any significance at all to me. I felt like kicking myself - standing in front of the queue, having bought a food coupon and the order placed and being completely ignored by the Chinese dudes serving and the Tamil owner. Soon, my hostility turned towards the owner who was pretending to not know English and the time was 1.45 already(I waited for about 30 minutes. I have serious issues with fighting with people or rather with not fighting - especially when I don't share a common language). I thought chuck it and went to a Subway, got a sandwich packed and went out to get an auto. I was told it would cost me around 120 bucks and take me about 45 minutes to reach the consulate. By the time I reached the auto stand it was 1.55. I was slowly getting concerned. And then...

I found an auto guy who immediately agreed for 140 bucks. Now, I understand Tamil to some extent but cannot speak for nuts. I had to tell him that my interview starts at 3 and I had to be there by 2.45 and to ask him to go fast. God, did I struggle telling him that. Then, out of no where, he started speaking in HINDI! In Chennai! An auto driver! I thought Chennai auto drivers were more fundamental than The Prophet himself! I was so happy that I started speaking in Hindi myself. Or I thought I will. People who know me know that I cant speak Hindi for nuts. Basically, I cant speak anything but Kannada and English. My Hindi is as broken as Shahid-Kareena's relationship. Not that this dude was speaking kick arse Hindi. So, both of us agreed, silently, upon conversing in whatever Hindi we could manage. He kept asking me not to worry, though that somehow seemed a bit of an overkill - it wasn't like I was sitting in the auto and weeping away to glory. I was happily eating my sandwich and looking at a very hot and humid city. We reached around 2.40 - but on the other side of the road than the consulate. Now came the hard part. I was telling him to stop near the sub way but he kept saying he has to go a long way to take the U turn. I was telling him hence he has to stop or else I will be late and he was saying if I get down I will be late as in Late Pavan. Finally I gave up and let him spend another 10 minutes to take a U turn and come back to the consulate. It was around 2.50 and just as I was about to go into the consulate...

A really sorry, sadistic, furstrated son of bitch of a guard just sent me out saying I am not allowed to take my bag inside. I asked him if there was a place where I could keep it and he gave me a sick smile and said "How would I know?". I knew he was enjoying it and just swore under my breath and came onto the road wondering what to do when...

An auto guy from nowhere just came really fast and halted in front of me and asked me if I wanted a locker. I just asked him how much would it cost and he just asked me to sit inside. I asked him where is this place and he was like I was wasting my time asking all these questions. He was talking in English and was just asking me to trust him. I somehow had a bad feeling about it. He asked me to pay 150 and I thought screw it and got in. This bastard guy takes me exactly to the other side of the road to a Pan shop and asks me to keep the bag and pay 150 to the shop guy. I had no choice, it was already 3. So, I just paid him and got into the auto again. While taking the already mentioned huge U turn again, he asks me to pay him 300 bucks - as a gift! He is like I am going for my visa interview and he helped me when I was in need and the least I could do was pay him 300 bucks. I just laughed really hard at this and gave him, much to my dissent, a hundred bucks and went in. The actual interview itself was pretty nice and I got my visa with no trouble.

I reached my office back, packed, bid good bye to the people there and headed to the Besant Nagar Beach. I reached there around 5 on a Friday evening. I was expecting it to be completely crawling with people. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. It was whole of college kids and couples. I played "Shoot the balloons" and shot 7 out of 10 balloons and then found myself a nice place towards the South end of the beach where the fishing slum starts and started reading again. I think I sat there for about 2 hours and read and only finally realized that what was missing was the sunset that I am so used to seeing at this time of the day in the west coast. There were 2 huge groups of college girls, I think in their first PUC but I may be completely wrong, who were making noise in competition with each other. It was interesting to see these kids act kiddish and listen to their banter. It was stupid to the point of being funny. I then went for a walk on the beach road, from one end to the other, grabbed some food and headed for the airport.

All in all, it was a nice day long break from whatever I do everyday. I liked Chennai. The areas I went to looked pretty nice. Especially, I went around on my own after a long time. The only thing I just couldn't get used was the humidity. I kept sweating the whole day. I guess that's how I have always remembered Chennai anyway.

Next Blog

2008-08-20T20:33:00.003+05:30

Is my relationship status on Orkut correct in being single even when I am heavily committed to my work? Well, I am more than committed to my work. I have a fully occupying, demanding, ugly relationship with my right now. How I ended up there is the story of an year. So, it all started with.... kidding! Not even I would go to the lengths of narrating that.

I have never worked hard in my life. I consciously avoid working hard. Hard work, me, no. I like keeping it that way - simple and monosyllable. But of late, my work has become harder and harder and I am putting in more and more effort by the day. I just hate doing that. I believe in working smarter, not burning the midnight-weekend-national-holiday-and-what-not oil to get things done. I literally don't have time to waste. I find it so devastating. I always, as a rule, keep most of my time aside so that I can waste it. I never learned anything special like I have mentioned before so that I have time in which I don't do anything. I still believe in this, as in believe in making you go to my older blogs. No social life and nothing close to semblance of physical work (you don't start now).

I had about 7 things to write about for sometime time now. But they are about a month old and stale. One was about Radio Indigo celebrating Doctor's Day and someone in my office acknowledging System Administrator's Day. I mean, I was in splits when I heard that - enough to come up with my own list of days to be celebrated and the significance of each day. Most of it I have forgotten, though, sadly. Another one I remember was about drinking and driving - literally. I have seen at least thrice now people drinking beer while driving and not knowing what the fuck it is they are doing on the road. Its insane how stupid people can get. The infamous Vinay from my blogs left to do his masters last week. So, there had been a bunch of things to write about that I wont be writing about. I think.

On a totally unrelated note, I , after talking to someone interesting - because of who (not that the who even knew I was getting into the bus because of, umm, you know who) I got down from a bus 2 kilometers away from my house on a sunny Sunday morning with a lot of luggage at a random place from where I had to hitch a ride from Vinay to finally get home - I will write more about the whole incident if I am allowed to, remembered that I wanted to be a scientist like every kid ever. I even went to the extent of starting an organization to practice organized Science. I started it with him and a couple of others. I was a geek when I was growing up.

Its pretty late at work now and I have to be at 2 other places right now. So, I think I will stop now. In case you were wondering, this blog was just to remember the good old days - when I could sit at office and blog (waste time)!

Swalpa Redemption, Jaasthi Random

2008-07-09T20:13:00.004+05:30

Too many people have been commenting about this. Some go the extent of saying I have become a girl. Some said "What a person thinks about a movie, reflects what the person is" - or something corny like that. Some others didn't even say anything! Enough is enough really! I have been watching some really really good movies. Here's my list. I could have an IMDB link to each of them. I am just too lazy. Here goes nothing:

American History X, 21, The Last Casino, The Great Debaters, The Road To Perdition, A Painted Veil, Into The Wild, 8 MM, Schindler's List and Green Street Hooligans. I did watch some crappy ones like 8 MM 2 and V for Vendetta and OK ones like 300.

I still watch crappy movies in theater, but at home, I watch nice ones. HA!

On a different note, I am addicted to Kabhi Kabhi Aditi. I just can't get enough of it really. It does sound a bit like this towards the end though.

A few days back I saw an ad in my cable TV about someone wanting Blood. There were no details except for a mobile number. Now, don't get me wrong, but I somehow don't buy that. I actually think its a vampire, a peaceful one may be, but vampire no doubt, that has ordered the blood. Why else do you think there were no names mentioned? Vampires don't have names. Its a famous concept. Angel is a fallacy. I am sure if I had called the number, I would have been asked to drop the blood at the end of some dark alley in the night. I would also be advised not to make any quick movements, whats with all the dogs in Bangalore? A recent Bangalore Times article about what famous celebrities thought about blood sucking humans is a huge smell. They followed it up with a bit about an earlier survey which showed how people with an urge to drink blood have their lucky number as 8 and how a recent survey is trying hard to find out about the converse of the earlier survey. But the biggest give away of all has been the deadly shortage of sun screen lotion of late in the city.

Also, if you go near DG Petrol Bunk, try looking at this huge building that's coming up to the north of the bunk. What you will notice about this 4 story building is its windows - or the lack of it. Yes. Its a 4 story building and has NO WINDOWS! Now, I am sure its some reactionary builder who went "What are windows? They are, but of course, holes in walls. Now, how do you build holes? Build the bloody walls and then make holes I say. QED". Yes, he said it with the hyper link and what not.

Ayyo! Dogs!

2008-07-05T19:45:00.003+05:30

On one hand you have male Software Engineers whose average sperm count is slipping down like Dimple Kapadia's clothes while on the other you have dogs who seemed to have become almost as potent as the great Dhritarashtra. Bangalore is going to the dogs. Literally.

I generally come home after 9 in the night. Around that time dogs start trickling in onto the road in twos and threes, like students going into a network management class, if you remember. Every freaking road seems to have at least one pack of dogs - a pack generally varying from 5 to 12 dogs. As time passes and the number of people on the road go down, the dogs become more active. Soon around 12.23 am in the night, dogs take over the road. The worst thing about these dogs is that they have now established territories like Vatal Nagraaj's defeated MLA's union. A pack of dogs is the second most dangerous thing in the nights on an urban street, only second to tempting damsels who gave one unsuspecting yet completely wanting person too many, a momentary happiness and a not so momentary gohnerria, which is not to be confused with this.

From what I have noticed, just the way one notices a verbose instruction after 4 Long Island Iced Teas, which means I may be wrong, dogs are not dangerous because they establish territory. That's the easy part and is achieved naturally i.e. by peeing. The danger is because they end up defending it, like any civilized man would defend his toilet. But the civility ends as soon as at least some 4 dogs decide to chase any vehicle that goes on the road so that they can bite a leg or two off or when they hunt down a 3 year old child, almost trying to beat Micheal Jackson's record.

How can I write about dogs of Bangalore and not mention this plausible story I saw on Crime Dairy.

A few days back, about 20 dogs very waiting behind a billboard, all of them together, levitating 30 feet above the ground so that they can all hide behind the same billboard. They were doing so to eat the legs off of the guy in the Gladiator ad billboard to the left and the kid in the Huggies ad on the right. Just before they could in fact do it, a couple of policemen stopped them and asked them for their RC book and insurance. While one dog frantically searched for the said documents, two others brought them to a side and offered them a huge succulent bone. However, the strict policemen declined the offer and said all twenty dogs will be booked under SPCA violations if they don't pay them 3 bones. Not to mention the possibility of declaring a section 144 just so they can be chained. After a lot of frantic calls and high level influence, the dogs were left off the hooks. Loads of rain, which was later found out to be one dog too many salivating, made them all call it a night and left to the nearest KFC dustbin.

Chilling story I must say. Basically, there are way too many dogs around and its about time we got the sadistic castrating bastards out of our tax collectors.

Pavan the Crap Watcher

2008-06-27T23:00:00.003+05:30

I went to the movie De Taali last. Or something like that. I have become a habitual "Crap Watcher". Yes. My name is Pavan and I watch Crap in theaters.

Sometime back I watched Muthsanje Maathu. It was, to say the least, CRAP.

Last month, I decided to go to a movie. To cut a long story short, I ended up buying a ticket to Tashan. Guess what? It was CRAP.

I don't have an inherent aversion towards Hindi movies. I am not prejudiced against them. I just think they are all cliched and pathetic. See? I am not even hard on them. Tashan was, OK let me think, a total PISS OFF! It was really really bad. It was so bad that it would make Sanjaya sound good. It was so bad that it would want to make you seek out a skunk to smell something fresh. It was so bad that you would rather listen to your Uncle Ramdev's "travel experiences".

Tashan was something like this. There is this dude who teaches English and works for a call center. When the fuck does he sleep? That aside, he decides to teach this mafia lord as well. All fine. Shit loads of useless songs and fight sequences later, enters Akshay Kumar. He is from the banks of Ganga - which means he can pretty much do anything. He can fly, dodge bullets, eat shit, hump rabid dogs and yeah, can also talk with a straight face to Kareena Kapoor who, Kareena not the rabid dog humper, wears a bikini in one of the useless songs. Then, after a painfully long wait, about 8766 minutes later I think, comes the last fight. By now, you are wishing to hear some Vogon poetry instead or eat your own kidneys and hope to die from blood poisoning or something. Now, this is the best thing ever, the fight is. It is so pathetic that it is actually hilarious. The director actually means it to be a serious fight sequence. Saif Ali Khan is incinerated with an Acetone Flame thrower. The mafia lord is trying to kill Kareena with, take a guess, water from a hose. So, there she is, Kareena in a wet shirt and "trying" to escape by bending over a lot in front of the camera and off comes Saif from fiery death on a freaking jet boat in a ditch of some sort inside the mafia dude's lair. Yes. He comes ON A freaking JET SKI riding in a DITCH! And from then on, it was ROFL funny. Actually, I still felt like selling my, rather the director's, liver to make up for my lost money and time but it managed to cross the lower threshold. (The lower threshold is that phase below which something becomes so outrageously pathetic that you stop taking it seriously. That's why you, the sane and normal person, find numerology funny.) That was Tashan.

Muthsanje Maathu was, well come to think of it, it wasn't. The movie was just wasn't there. Rather there was no story, screen play, direction, action or acting. However there seemed to be shit loads of songs and heroin's clothes. Heroin hears hero sing in a train and misses meeting him. She listens to the song once in a while on a radio. She is in love with him. Or not. Will she ever get to meet him? Especially before the movie ends? She ends up meeting him 10 full minutes before interval! So, thought we, at least 2 people are going to die towards the end of the movie and because of lack of an antagonist in the movie we thought it was going to be someone important. Turns out, after 80 more minutes of optimistic hoping that someone would get cancer, AIDS, bleeder's disease or at least bird flu, we realized that we were way too close to the movie to be finished. Nothing had changed yet. It now had to be a hideous accident of the ugliest sorts that wipes out the hero and the heroin with her well covered body. Turns out the point of the movie was that nothing good ever happens in this world. So, the hero and heroin actually end up marrying each other and just live. To think of the fact that there weren't even some serial murderers just fills me up with disgust. Yuck.

De Taali was OK. It was mediocre. But to go to a theater and watch it would sort of make you feel you wasted your Sunday morning to watch that crap.

So, there it goes. These and a whole lot of other movies I have watched and am much embarrassed to talk about just leads me to conclude that I truly am Pavan the Crap Watcher! Alas!

First Joke Ever - Not mine

2008-06-26T20:32:00.002+05:30

I suddenly remembered this out of the blue.

I think I was 7. My brother used to read these books. RD I think. That was when I read my, as in not my own but one that I did read, first joke ever. It went -

Baby Snake: Mom, am I poisonous?
Mother Snake: Yes you are honey. Why do you ask?
Baby Snake: Gosh! I bit my tongue.

I had no idea what it meant. I knew the concept of jokes. I think. I knew people generally laugh at the and of it. I thought I should as well. But I just didn't get it. I did ask my mom, who did laugh. So, I though it was safe to laugh and did, though I did not get it.

I wonder how sense of humor is developed. I am sure some jobless person in MIT has a research paper about it. I think there are 2 even.

So long and thanks for all the fish

2008-06-18T23:01:00.003+05:30

I would say I am friends with 80% of all the people I meet. Some are acquaintances, some are friends. There is the other 15% who I don't like. Both these are safe categories. I don't really mind them a lot. I am just a nice guy, apparently, with these people. I don't have anything against these people. I don't have any reason not to be so. Then, there is the other 3% who I hate. Hate is a strong word. I detest them. I don't want anything to do with them. And then, you have the remaining 2%.

Its very rare to find people who can tolerate me when I am not nice. Especially when I am, umm, myself. Someone who likes me for what I am and not for the person that I can be. Someone who can tolerate my random bullshit and better, build up on it. Someone who trusts me and generally not break my trust. Someone as, but not better, good as me(ME being the best). Someone who is not OK with being my sarcasm target but doesn't show. Someone who gave me a chance through 2 straight years of sadism. Someone who was there during my roughest patches. Someone, someone, you know, someone who is someone.

I have found a few someones till now. One of them, I have personally managed to piss all over, not literally though. The person is managing to just keep me at a safe distance. I wouldn't blame that person. Now, that person is leaving here for, I think, evermore.

This post is really about wishing you an all the best for your future, you. You be wary of people like me and do everything that you always do. Live your life the way you want to. Cheers mate. And oh, Happy Birthday.

Cut please

2008-06-17T23:39:00.003+05:30

I have never really minded being a sort of liberal-orthodox South Indian Brahmin. No, really. But there are times when things can get very messy to say the least. For example, consider what all I need to consider to get my hair cut.

I cannot get my hair cut on Fridays and Saturdays. Tuesdays, generally barbers don't work. The day of the week on which I was born is a strict no no. Birthdays, I don't need to say anything about. Then you have the full moon and the new moon. 11th and 12th day from a Full Moon or a New Moon. About 50 festivals in a given year. That rules about 337.45 days a year. All these are, um, fine. But then there is also a rule that from a house, only one person can get a hair cut per day. That means, if my brother goes to get his hair cut, neither me nor my dad can get our hair cut.

Oh look. I can cut my hair in November. You better not interfere.

Still Growing Up?

2008-05-26T21:38:00.002+05:30

I was brought up in a not so dysfunctional set up. I was almost always surrounded with people and circumstances that were, I would say, normal. Like, I did not have friends who hated their parents or wanted to run away. I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. I was always used to power cuts, without being frustrated about them. I was used to traffic jams in Cotton Pet during peak hours. I was used to counting on people to do what they say they will do. I was used to eating Idly at a rupee each. Like I said, pretty normal.

Only recently did it dawn upon me that I now live in an almost-but-not-entirely Metro. I was exposed to people who were not from middle class only when I went to college. That itself should have been a smell. I understood that there are people who don't necessarily think Rs.10 is a big deal quiet only recently. I started getting over the fact that girls smoke only a few years ago. I never thought there will be people around me who will go to lengths to dis stupid things like infrastructure. But all these, I guess, are a part and parcel of a town transitioning into a city. However, what I was not prepared for was the fact that people from other places will start coming here.

Actually, I was and am quiet happy that people from all over India and even around the world have started coming to Bangalore. However, what I had foolishly not realized was the fact that they are here to leave - at least most of them are. A good number of people, who I call friends, are not from Bangalore. A good number of these friends are ones that I now know are here only to leave soon. Come to think of it a lot of people from Bangalore, people I know, are going abroad to study and make some money. Most of them, as far as I know them, are the type who want to come back and settle in our good ol' Bangalore. Its only fair that these friends of mine who have come here are leaving back. This is not what they call home. Its a place they are in currently which incidentally has a stupid 11.30pm curfew. I am sure all of us get home sick one or the other time after all.

I generally think I am, well, may be not completely yet but at least somewhat, grown up. But every time something like this hits me, it takes sometime to sink in that I am after all growing up. And no matter what, I may never be old enough to know it all. Or I may be.

Quick Question

2008-05-26T16:07:00.003+05:30

Is there a research paper somewhere which talks about the science(or signs. Oh, the punster that I am!) of asking your best friend out? If not, I will write one. I have done enough "research" to write 4.66667 books without any bathroom breaks. (Too much information?)

Pavan the Myth Buster

2008-05-23T23:02:00.003+05:30

2 of my colleagues went to Australia recently. I was totally excited. I could finally get so many things cleared about Australia. I had so many myths to get clarified! The first thing I asked them to verify was to see if the water goes the other way down a sink when filled enough i.e. whether it goes anti-clockwise instead of clockwise like it does here, in the Northern Hemisphere. Oh, for some of you tube lights, that was the origin of the myths about Oz - it being in Southern Hemisphere. I am essentially talking about it this.

So it turns out that water does rotate in the same direction in both hemispheres. I actually have asked my friend to take photos and he has. I just couldn't hold back till I got hold of the photos. So I will do an edit and put up the photo soon.

This opens up a very interesting path now doesn't it? I now want to start "coming up" with potential myths about various places. I know it is kind of wrong, but what the hell? As to whether these myths are true - your guess is as good as mine!

These are my 5 myths:

1) There are teetotalers in Sweden
2) Along with other tricks, people are taught to do XPath in Russian circus
3) There are more people in Great Britain than the number of virgin men in India
4) Gorge Bush is tolerated in by human race
5) Amsterdam is a good place to bring up your(hopefully) kid

These just came to the top of my mind. Of course, there are a million more like these. SO, I tag you, you, you, you, you, you and you to come up with 5 myths each. Have Fun!

Non-Verbal Diarrhea

2008-05-22T21:54:00.003+05:30

I am pretty weird. I generally try to be. But sometimes, in those moments of weakness, I somehow stop being. Then, it happens.

Whenever I ride, I generally give a speech. In my head. Yup. I generally think of something and speak about it in my head. I would think aloud inside. I would make a case for or against it and talk vehemently without a single word leaking out of my mouth. Sometimes, I even argue for the other side and see to it that my first argument is shred into pieces.

For some reason (my brother's loud alarm - Stupid thing) I couldn't get enough sleep today. As usual, I was thinking about something while riding to office. I was pretty groggy when I reached the office in the blazing sun around 11 in the morning. I go in and go to this person's table to get my chair. Now, this person is one of the very few people who could actually kick me out of my project/company if he wanted to. Very nice guy. And then he said it - he said "Hi".

I don't know about you, but I find it very difficult to reply to this one. Actually the reply to this itself is pretty simple. I mean, duh, its "Hi", of course. Sometimes, I even innovate and go "Hello" or even a bold "Hey". May be if I am in a rebellious mood I may even go "Yo". As you notice, I try to amuse myself with what to reply to the culprit "Hi". This, along with my constant thinking about random things which are in no way related to the current thing at hand, makes it very difficult to strike a conversation. Now, like I said, "Hi" itself is pretty simple to answer. But since I am always so preoccupied with so many other things, I almost always never expect to hear "What's up?". This is where things start going out of my hands. Going back to today morning, I just mumbled something to my boss' "What's up?". He was like "What"? And I ended up saying something insanely incomprehensible. I don't even remember or understood what I said. It was hilarious actually. I tried answering the question "What's up?" 5 times and failed. I just shrugged and he was just nice and asked me if I was feeling all right. I said I dint have enough sleep and slipped away.

Now, I am sure I am not the only one with issues.

Small Pleasures

2008-04-29T19:17:00.002+05:30

As far as I can remember, middle class families in Bangalore are used to gaining pleasure and satisfaction out of small things in life. Be it the first rain of the summer, Ganesha celebration at the corner of their road, flying kites, playing tops or cheating in cricket - a lot of small things that become an indispensable part of most people's lives here. I am going to write about one such thing today.

About 12 years back, when Cable TV was like Gwyneth Paltrow's breasts, non-existent I mean, we used to relay on our good old DD for "quality entertainment". Every Sunday, by 12.45 pm, my mom used to make sure all of us started off with our lunch without fail. My grand mother used to make sure she was done with her pooja. There always used to be a sense of urgency in their movement. I always found it odd. By 1.15 my mom would have her lunch. And then it would happen. The TV would be turned on.

Now, for those of you who don't or don't want to remember what used to be aired at 1.15 pm on Sundays, it was the news for the deaf and dumb. That itself wasn't a big deal. In fact, it was a nuisance for my two beloved ladies as it used to just annoy them and make them wait for what came next. And what came next, at 1.30 pm on Sundays, was this. THE REGIONAL MOVIE OF THE WEEK. This was apart from the Kannada movie that would be aired at 4.30 in the evening. You may ask what was so special about the regional movie of the week anyway? It was important, my dear reader, because there was a 1 in 27 chance that the movie would be a Kannada movie. 2 Kannada movies on the same day! Cloud 9, icing on the cake, little drops of honey from heaven, Eccentrica Gallumbits - whatever it is that you use to describe joy, 2 Kannada movies on the same day was one of those things at my home.

My biggest problem with this was the fact that the movie at 1.30 was a "National Award" winning movie. If you know what sort of movies get the Indian National Award issued by the BRFIINA - Board Responsible For Issuing Indian National Award, you will know why I hated them. This is how BRFIINA works.

The most important prerequisite for a movie to get a National Award is that it has to be tragic. The movie should generally have

At least 3 people with terminal illness, generally blood cancer.
A weird pyromaniac mother-in-law who wouldn't think twice about setting her daughter-in-law on fire.
A man who blames his wife because his sperms aren't motile.
A war where a woman looses her husband, sons, brothers, father and the family dog.
An alcoholic husband, a perverted family friend and a good looking wife.
16 songs

These and much more. Note that a good looking woman is also a liability for a movie in terms of getting a National Award and even more so in terms of being aired on Sundays at 1.30pm.

All these meant that the movie invariably left the 2 women at my home weeping for a good part of the movie. They used to sob for all the misery in the world. They used to bitch about how unfair life is. They used to lament the male domination and female oppression. They used to feel completely refreshed, relaxed and rejuvenated after the movie. Like I said, small and strange pleasures.

Century!

2008-04-19T23:57:00.003+05:30

I have completed 100 posts. Its been quiet a good experience writing over the past 18 months or so. I was motivated by Swaroop to take up writing in the first place. I did enjoy writing about random stuff for a while. A pinch of politics here, a tad of computers there, a whole lot of personal musings on all things useless. I hope to write more and hopefully make it generally more interesting than the climax of the all too famous porn "Deep Inside".

Some people have actually urged me to write more often. There were times when I have actually not sucked at writing. And there are posts which I am quiet proud of and some which have actually helped me a lot with a lot of things. So, all in all, I think me starting to write was a good thing!

Keep visiting this place children.

Wait... Damn I forgot

2008-04-14T12:36:00.002+05:30

You know how people make a to do list? I don't make a list as such, but have this way of mentally making a note of all the annoying things I need to do in the day and crib about them. Today, I realized there was something really annoying I had to do. After a few minutes I forgot what it was. Now, I am really annoyed. I remember only meta information like it was really important and I had to do it and I couldn't get someone else to do it etc. I have been worrying about it since morning. Any ideas how to deal with it? Has this happened to you before?

What the...

2008-04-11T17:40:00.004+05:30

Good looking friends who are girls are getting married. Good friends are leaving town. Not that I am complaining!

I don't have anything interesting to write about. My friend Swaroop keeps saying that to write interesting stuff you need to be interesting yourself! I don't think a lot of interesting stuff is happening from where I come from. Lets see:

I am reading a fiction on Math. A really good read. I suggest you read it.
I went to a wedding in Kerala for a day. First time in Kerala and just loved it.
Started playing basketball again in life.
Trying to use the word fuck less than 3 times in a sentence while talking.
Reading this regularly.
Trying to come up with lies to put in this list.

See? Quiet boring. I am planning to change all these soon though. Behold - Pavan 5.0 (The previous 4 releases were fucked up).

Let me actually write something soon. Until then...

Assorted

2008-03-07T14:16:00.004+05:30

When we were in college, people used to discuss what they would say for their "weakness" question that was asked almost always in campus interviews. We used to say, "I take work too seriously" and used to have a good laugh at the thought. Now, it looks like it is actually a weakness! I have been very busy and frustrated at work from sometime. I love it. I hate it. Anyway, it has been occupying about 12 hours of a day. And about 7 hours of sleep gives me very little time and energy to do other things. I am tired.

Most of the people who know me well, all the 2.5 of them, know that when they ask me how am I doing, they should be prepared to get a fairly lengthy answer. I mean, you ask me how am I doing and I would expect you to expect "Bad" as an answer. Also, I would want you to listen to me crib, bitch, wine enough to annoy you. Remember that I generally am not looking for solutions. They are most of the times obvious. I am more looking at being cynical and pissed. I am also looking at being completely negative for nothing less than 45 minutes after you ask me how am I doing. Generally, I give a fake smile and nod and say, "Good". I am toying the idea of catching hold of the next unsuspecting scapegoat and put him/her through my cribbing.

It suddenly stuck me yesterday as to where I may get into a bad accident in life. There is this satanic intersection on the way to office that I take everyday. Its this hideous intersection with 5 roads joining together with no signal or circle around. The intersection itself is about 30 feet wide and there are BMTC buses going at least 50kmph all the time. In fact, I will draw up a map of the whole thing. Its shit scary. That will be my next blog mostly. If you think I am missing then probably makes sense for you to go to this particular intersection. Also, I suggest that you not go there in your own vehicle. Obviously, it makes sense for you to be inside a bus than under it. However, you will be crossing the said intersection at at least 50kmph with people flying because they are hit by the bus you are sitting in and there is blood and screaming all around. So, be sure you are pretty attentive. If you are into sadism or Nazis them probably makes sense for you to grab some pop corn while you are in the bus.

I am very allergic to dust. So, while going on my bike, I make sure my face is mummified. Over that, I wear a helmet just to be sure. This helps me in reducing the frequency of my cold attacks to once a month. It so happened a few days back, I was standing in a traffic signal and singing. Now, for me, I think I am very soft and with all the layers of clothes and very strong plastic between my mouth and ears, those poor little cartilages and sensitive sheath of tissue that are abused by the oh-such-cacophony of the Bangalore traffic ambiance, of other people I think I am barely audible. Turns out I am wrong. About 5 people who were standing all around me started looking at me in a "What the heck is wrong with this guy" way which I generally give to people-who-dress-up-like-mummies-and-sing-loudly-in-a-signal-while-standing-next-to-me myself. It was quiet amusing. I can sing bad and loud. Its now time to take part in some reality show.

Free Bollywood Songs

2008-02-10T11:22:00.000+05:30

I like music. All sorts. But whenever I want to access Hindi music from work to get some nice song, I either end up getting a "Meet College Girls" on my screen with 2 girls making out voraciously or the site fakes an icon to install a trojan or two on my computer. Almost none of the sites out there are office safe. Most of them have pirated songs, which makes it all the more difficult to use. And none of them have an one click away music. They all have hidden agendas.

I found the best site ever! SunoMusic. Its single page interface is awesome. A clean Web 2.0 site which makes it a pleasure to use the site. It has a wide range of Bollywood songs and they are not pirated. So, I can stream them just like online radio/casts and listen. All in all, I rate it 9.5 out of 10 in terms of quality and satisfaction.

And oh, they have an iGoogle gadget. You can listen to songs now using the gadget from your personalized Google home page. For a geek in general and a Google geek in particular like me, its amazing. Enjoy your music.

Another Normal Day?

2008-01-23T11:09:00.000+05:30

It was yet another normal day. Actually, no it wasn't. Why would I write about lying down reading Debona, *coughs*, Relativity explained simpler? Or making fun of people with accents and, even more, of people trying to pick one? Or about busting a move to some imaginary beats? Or about having an internal conflict as to kick or to not kick the baby? Or about watching this video and rolling on the ground laughing and thinking about, and not attracted mind you, that day when Sharath started humping a window in a class filled of retards who couldn't appreciate the brilliance of the King Lair adaptation, while the vice principal was watching, to his horror, through the door? Or about thinking how this world is a cruel place to live in for paranoid androids? Or about thinking how it is crueler given that 22 year olds are thought to be 25? Or about idly sitting one evening and trying to consciously realize how it feels to go mad and achieving it for about 10 seconds and realizing how maddening it is to loose realization and reasoning? Why would I write about any of the things that I would do on a normal day?

This was the day of Vinay's sister's engagement. I will write about the whole experience sometime soon. This particular post is about how I was judged to be evil! Me! Please!

Vinay has a good mix of people in his group. By that I mean, unlike this group, there are people from both the sex. I was taking pictures of everyone in the hall and I took a picture of all the girls sitting together. And of a girl I know relatively well. Relative to, say, Amanada Yeates. Boom. I become the evil pervert! Being a nice guy is wasted on some people. I don't of course blame them. Given the freaks that guys are in general as I have discussed with you many times, girls can be excused for being as prejudiced as they are when it comes to this. But still, me?

Completely unfair.

Oh Bloody Hell

2008-01-13T12:50:00.000+05:30

For my standards (ideally this should have been a link to a post which talks about my standards but unfortunately none exist! May be the next one) last 2 weeks have been crazy. Especially the week before the past one. I was going to write about this, when I got side tracked to write this! I don't regret it one bit though. So, coming back to this post, 15 days ago, a Swede who quit my company was here for a week. His last week in Bangalore and in our team. So, it was a lot of discussing while at work and a lot of eating out and roaming around in Bangalore while outside. Given my laziness and "I cannot be bothered" attitude that I have developed lately, this was a bit too much for me. Especially, how it all started -

Monday evening. My freshly serviced bike which looked like a cherry and ran like a horse in heat, came, as in the perverted word which means "had an orgasm" and stopped. I couldn't do much because it just stopped reacting to any of the few User Interface components, viz, the switches and the buttons. This, to my displeasure, happened right after I was back to work after being down with a flu for 4 days and right in the middle of the airport road with vehicles all around me. In simple words - Me on my bike going at 70 an hour with the bike running one second and me on my bike going at 70 an hour with the bike not running the next one. 70 became 30 in a few seconds and within a few more, I was stuck in the middle of airport road, literally, not being able to change track, being all vulnerable to the cruel people with a raging road rage. After an heroic effort I got to a relatively safer and by no means actually safer place on the airport road and started pushing my bike, wearing my helmet and a sweater. Because I started sweating while feeling sneezy and cold, a very annoying combination, I tried removing my helmet while pushing and boom - My leg was wedge between the footpath and my bike. I was stuck so bad with the heavy bike being very heavy that I just couldn't lift the bike. I was just lying there for more than 30 seconds, just like that, when this good souled Tata Sumo guy stopped his cab and lifted my bike only to be yelled by other people for stopping car in the road. So, he just had to leave me and my battered leg to go back to yelling himself back at them giving random obscenities and feeling good about it. Amidst all these things, when I thought things could not go any worse -

They dint. One of Vinay's friends, in fact 2 of them, Aabhi and Sumathi, were coming, luckily, on 2 bikes. Aabhi was kind enough to see that it was me who was pushing, now in my t shirt and shorts and a very heavy bag, my bike. He took me till a mechanic and after about an hour, we decided to take my bike away from there. Now this is where it gets interesting. Aabhi decided he will help me tow my unusually heavy bike. He himself had a Fiero F2. But given how "well" he is built and how much my bike and I would weigh together, I had some serious doubts about this. It was either sheer muscles or "he had committed himself to resolve my problem and it was about 10.00 in the night, 2 hours since he met me, and he just wanted to get the hell out of there and if it meant he had to push my fat assed bike with his legs, so be it" feeling that made him do an awesome job. He put his bike into 1 gear and started pushing the bike and we made it to Richmond circle from Airport road within 10 minutes. I parked my bike at my brother's office and called it a day after 3 hours of hassles.

Now, this was just the Monday. Then there were 4 other days.

EDIT: Added the links I forgot to add. :)

Totally Random, like New Year Celebrations

2008-01-03T16:28:00.000+05:30

Happy New Year.

Not that its a big deal or anything. I mean, I know it gives people a sense of something different. Like when you change a physical calendar because they have just 12 months in them for some weird reason or pay an insanely huge amount of money to get into a party with desperate drunk idiots all around, I am sure people feel happy. But I am not sure if that is what people have in their mind when they want to feel happy. I am not even sure what people mean when they wish others a Happy New Year. Its become a mindless routine these days. Anyway, this post is not about that. Nor is this going to be a positive post. So, you can stop reading right now if you think you don't want to read about random dudes talking about their special abilities.

[Purposefully doned grammatical mistakes followed from presently onwards]

Talking about special abilities I, as a random dude, have none. Now, that is what this post is about. I have seen a lot of people in my life time. I have seen most of them have special abilities. I have seen people do paint, do music, do pretty chicks, do eat, do sleep, do play sports, hell even do nothing. I, however, cannot do nothing. I cannot do something or even anything. I have no special abilities. Its pretty interesting to put me under a microscope and see myself. Of course, its pretty interesting to think about such a thing. A parasite seeing itself being put under a microscope in real time. See what I mean?

I could have used the time spent on this blog or even more specifically, the 5 minutes I spent on the meta problem of parasites' anatomical introspection, to do more special things. Of course, you may come back and say not being special is also special. I am a big fan of anything that is meta because that acts as a silver bullet to give closure. Here, however, I am not sure if it adds anything other than some academic values.

I will go back to wasting time. You, you keep being special.

I don't like him that way

2007-12-25T21:18:00.000+05:30

I am an ambivert. About 5 years back, I was an ambivert. Going into my engineering college, I dint expect to meet nice people straight off. In fact, I knew I would end up meeting people trying to put up an act to prove to everyone else that they are the best left, right and center. And everyone else, I knew, would go, "I see your 'I can play a Guitar' card and I raise you by, (the ultimate mind you) 'I got 400th rank in CET'" etc. But what I saw in RV was a totally different scene.

It was exactly along the said lines, only, in an astronomically bigger scale! What I saw, I couldn't comprehend. What I heard, I couldn't assimilate. I was totally lost in an ocean of inferiority complex for no apparent reason. I became completely silent - the cynic in me dying to spit at stupid people but the stupid person in me stopping me from spitting at them. It became an almost deadly conflict, being torn apart between my split self. I will talk about it some other time.

Today, however, I would like to narrate an incident that happened on the 2nd day of college, that easily forgettable Friday it was, when I seemed to be acting as if I wanted to show everyone I was superior. In fact, it was me being normal. I am sure you, my regular reader, would in fact agree with me when I saw I was actually innocent when I did what I did. And what I did was this:

It was MG's class. Basic Electronics. Every lecturer in the first year has this annoyingly bad habit of asking people to introduce themselves. A very lengthy, slow and boring process. We already had done that with, I think, 54.5 other lecturers (I consider that chemistry lecturer as being only half human). I remember being totally irritated. Everyone would stand up, say who they are (unfortunately no one said why they are who they are), where they are from, their earlier schooling and why they are in this college. I can understand everything else, but what the fuck were all the lecturers thinking about asking everyone why were they there? And being the imaginative reader that you are, I am sure you can imagine that everyone went - "I want to become a good software engineer". Some people were like, "RV is the premium engineering college. I want to be placed in a nice company." Then you had some who went, "Its cool. I could've gone into Electronics, but dint". I thought, "That's it. I cant take this shit anymore". When my chance came, I got up and said, "I want to put Bill Gates out of business" and promptly sat down as if it was what I did everyday just before having my breakfast. And the next class, I think it was the first English class, I went "Oh my favorite subject? Theoretical Quantum Physics". I did in fact like it and had geeked out completely on it. But I did say it as a joke on everyone who were being totally banal.

Unfortunately, some Biharis find it difficult to get a joke. And one of them was, our very own, Manmeet Jha. Now, this was the kind of person your mom had in mind when she warned you about not talking to strangers on road when you were young. After about a week, I was coming back from my first game at the RV Basketball court and this guy pounces on me from nowhere and takes my hand and pulls me into the hostel complex. Gautam, who was with me, was dumbfounded and later I found out that he was just standing outside not knowing what to do. Meanwhile, this guy was leading me to his hostel room, where he said he had a big poster of Bill Gates. I remember mumbling that I dint particularly like Bill Gates, especially not in that way. But he looked like a guy who dint take no for an answer. And why should he? He had to live up to the expectations his looks generally built up. Finally a mess boy stopped me from going in because I dint live there. And after apologizing to both of them, I just hurried back without looking back. After that day, I used to be in a big group of people whenever I saw him. I just managed to live to tell this story. I will talk about the other Bihari some other time.

I think one's life is all about people. Most of the things you remember are with respect to people around you - how different people are from you and what motivates them to do what they do. A friend reminded me of this post I had written an year ago. It is fun to read my own posts from way back. More posts on my college days soon to come.

Cool Crayon Game

2007-12-25T21:15:00.000+05:30

Insanely nice game. Very good. In fact, please go there now and download it. 5.43 MB of worth it stuff. I finished it in 2 hours. How much time did you take? Just the demo version I mean. Real fun. Can't wait for the full version to come out.

Assorted and 23

2007-12-24T14:50:00.000+05:30

Modi will rule again. Bitch.

Wildcraft seems to be hiring like hell. Every where I see these days, there are people carrying bags which say "Wildcraft" on them.

I turned 23 yesterday - 23rd December, 2007. First time ever. It was a good feeling. Though, I felt exactly the same on 22nd and feel the same today, the 24th. Ergo, I always feel good. I cut a cake for the first time ever, illegally in Barista on MG Road, with 3 of my closest friends alive. I have platonic relationships with all of them - 2 guys, good for me and a girl, unfortunately. (I like to digress a bit. The second most cheesiest pick up line according to me - "Would you like to have a non-platonic relationship with me?" Cheesiest - "I have brotherly feelings towards you"!) The 2 guys were the nice good friends as they always are and the girl, beautiful, elegant and well, but a lot, spoken as she always is. I had a wonderful time, having been given good flowers! The thing is I am as literate about flowers as most of you are about "The effects of capitalistic regime of 19th century Britain on the erstwhile USSR, if any". If you in fact are literate about "The effects of capitalistic regime of 19th century Britain on the erstwhile USSR, if any" can you please tell me where can I find Fox, as in 20th century Fox, on a map?

I got a Nokia N81 mobile from my family. A sweater from my friends. I went shopping for 3 hours, no less, on Saturday to buy clothes and bought some very interesting clothes. One even made my dad go, "What the hell is this?" Somethings are always satisfying.

I am !Social

2007-12-17T17:00:00.000+05:30

Well, turns out I am a total outcast. I am rendered useless in social gatherings. I am screwed.

Yesterday, I was at a friend's place for her birthday party. I arrived a bit early and she had to guide other "lost souls" to her so-way-up-in-Bangalore-North-that-I-pity-her house. Now is the right time that you, as a friend/kind soul/evil serial killer/potential lover/random dude, know that I am very informal in almost everything. I talk, sit, act informally, with total disregard to what the socially accepted norms are for, say, small talk with elders. I am very "lean" in my thinking at least(evil people) and hence believe formality in such things is totally unnecessary. I know this and hence am generally silent, sitting with a sheepish smile whenever there is a big function at house etc. Here, unfortunately, I couldn't do that. And before I knew, the all too famous incessant questioning started. Like I said, screwed.

Excerpt from the freakishly weird conversation I had: (I was the one acting freakishly weird of course)

Uncle: So, Pavan, where does your father work?
Me: Well uncle, he works for the, Aaah (Aaah, a simple one. I know this one. Let me see, he doesn't work in the army, navy, IRS, bank.... Oh wait, let me not eliminate stuff, I have this cached. How lame, its obvious that I would have cached it. Speaking of which, caching domain objects on thick clients may become real evil. Do I want to cache stuff when I don't need to? Is it right to over engineer? Is it all worth it? Does it matter?)
Uncle: Do you need some water kid? You look, ah, angry and also sad... Are you alright?

Well, it was not that bad, but it sure was weird. I took an unusually long time to answer back properly. But I somehow managed to talk through without incidents. This at a friend's place. I cannot imagine how I would scale up to meeting prospective in-laws!

Then when everyone else came, I was totally in for a bigger surprise. I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BOLLYWOOD! I thought I knew more than enough, but the way in which things were being discussed I felt like a total doophus from another planet who just knows how to sheepishly smile for hours, without any emotions.

Excerpt:

Some Girl: Upen Patel is soo cute. He dances so well. But once he opens his mouth, he is a total loser.
Me: Who is Upen Patel?
Almost Everyone: (after laughing for more than an appropriate length of time into my face) You don't know who Upen Patel is? You know that China town song?
(Having stuck with a brilliant idea)
Me: sudo Who is Upen Patel?
Everyone: WHAT??
Me: Never mind..

So, the kind of things that I could talk about without appearing to be an alien robot with a sheepish smile may be XKCD, basketball, dependency injection and example based testing. Right now that is. And oh, music. May be even about Letters to Penthouse, though I don't remember much these days. I must start unlearning certain things from my new company.

Meanwhile, you can
1) Read this nice one from Gagan,
2) Design a Data Structure which has O(1) complexity for push, pop and min operations.

Yippee

2007-12-10T18:07:00.000+05:30

Where would I be if it weren't for this!

I Inspire!

2007-12-08T12:21:00.000+05:30

One of my earliest best friends, Raghu, a regular I must add, has started his own blog. He, allegedly, was inspired by me. So, you can read his blog here.

I almost broke my right elbow. I am OK now though.

22 and going

2007-12-06T14:33:00.001+05:30

Dear World,

How are you? I will not comment about how I am right now. I wanted to know, why are you filled with imbeciles, ignorants and people who lack judgment? Can't you, say, annihilate them? Is it against your policy to "take care" of certain people? Well, do think about it.

Thanks. For nothing.

Yours,
Pavan

Something has been happening from quiet some time now. I have been asked by an elderly priest, God rest his soul now, to call my younger brother for something, when in fact he was referring to my elder brother who is 4 years older than me! I have been asked by 3 different people on different occasions if I was 25/28 years old. Sometime back when I called a friend, some other person picked up my call and asked me, twice mind you, if I was my friend's, no less, Grandfather!

So, apparently, I look 25-28 and sound like I am 80. Thanks and bye for now.

In the Before...

2007-12-05T18:57:00.000+05:30

December 4th 2006: I was pretty confident that day. I in fact had been to play basketball the previous day at National Games Village. Quiet far from my place and had an amazing time. I was mentally prepared and knew that this was it. Till then, I was pretty frustrated and pissed in life. The past 6 months had been a steady, and steep at places, downward ride. My work sucked. There were a lot of issues in general in life which I am sure will take me at least 5 days just to talk about, let alone type! I knew this was one thing that could cheer me up and as they say, "Desperate people are capable of desperate measures", I just set out that morning prepared for the worst.

That was the day of my ThoughtWorks interview. I was having a pathetic stint at my previous company. The worked sucked and I had fought with pretty much everyone that what ever they did was wrong and it can be made better. I realized only after it was too late that I wasn't in the right company to do that. I had a good set of friends at my previous company, but then, this wasn't college anymore.

That day itself was pretty eventless. I knew pretty much all the things they asked in the interviews. Whatever I stammered in answering, I know now, is not even expected out of freshers. So, I would say it went well. After an entire day in TW and especially after how I thought it went, I was really happy. I dint even care, on some level, if I TW dint select me because I knew then that I was right all along about a lot of things. The HR, Mrs.Maria Anita, said the whole thing went very well and that she would let me know in a couple of days. This was on a Monday. However, curiosity got the better of me and I called myself on Thursday and she said she will let me know the following day.

The next day I got a call asking me to go to TW that evening to negotiate terms. I was just flying the rest of day. I don't even know how long it took me to travel 28km on my bike to reach TW. It sometimes seems infinitely long and sometimes I don't think I felt it last for more than 3 minutes. When I reached there, I was asked for a number. Now, I had always thought about getting through TW. I never once, trust me, had thought about what next! I wasn't prepared even after I reached the office on that Friday evening. I gave a lame number and the HR was, lets just say, pleasantly surprised. But she had no idea that I would have joined there even if she offered me less than what I used to get at my previous company, peanuts. I singed the deal and agreed to join the following month.

And that was that. Sometimes, I go back to being as pissed and frustrated, either for valid or lame reasons, as I was during those days and I always try to remember that 28 km ride about which I don't actually remember much. I don't know if there is light always at the end of the tunnel, but then, I would be a fool not to try and light a bulb. I may succeed, I may not. But then, I can do only what I am good at. Trying to light bulbs when in a dark endless tunnel to see what next.

Poor me

2007-11-28T12:21:00.000+05:30

I have a general bad luck when it comes to traveling overnight in a bus . The person sitting next to me is always a huge, middle aged man who snores and has a "tendency" to lean on me at least once every 20 minutes. The person sitting in front of me has a over-working reclining seat while the person behind me is a generally sadistic person who hates the comfort and sound sleep that a reclining seat brings to the person in front of him/her, namely me, and constantly keeps bitching close to me until I give up and just make my seat almost straight and sit through the night. If I decide to sit at the back of the bus so that I can recline well, the roads will be the bumpiest ever with me thrown, at times, 9 inches above the seat! Meanwhile, the uncle/aunty sitting on the other side, of course, doesn't believe in keeping his/her mobile phone in the silent mode and every time we reach a place with network coverage, everyone is invariably informed of it, with complete disregard towards everyone's, especially my, inconvenience.

After I come to peace with myself and get used to everything by about 2 in the morning there, obviously, has to be an one year old baby which starts crying. This, much to my disdain, the guy leaning on me is oblivious towards and snores even more. After scientifically finding a place where the two sounds go through a destructive interference and I am about to sleep, the baby increases its intensity, the bus goes through a big bump and I am literally launched up to a new record of 10.33 inches, my "favorite uncle's mobile" gets a runaway message with a long message tone and as a result of the bump the guy next to me completely falls on me while I am in the air. I give up all hopes of sleeping and play join the dots using my drawn out right index finger, joining imaginary dots.

Some other people I know, Vinay, had a rather interesting experience recently, which I will talk about soon.

Some Slangs

2007-11-27T21:49:00.000+05:30

I was talking to a friend recently and found out that a lot of people, especially girls, do not know a set of slangs which are quiet famous among guys. In case you dint know:

1) Batting: The act of "harmless flirting" carried out by a guy (will use a guy hitting on girl example, but do feel free to read it as it suits your orientation) in a hope to get to know a girl, generally, better. This is the most famous among the slangs that will follow.

2) Risky Single: Batting with a girl, one of the more orthodox/cocky types, towards whom the guy has an insane liking and doesn't want to screw up.

3) Googly: An insulting or witty repartee given by a girl in reply to some obvious and offending batting efforts of a guy.

4) Yarkar/Bouncer/Pinda: A useless reply by a girl who doesn't understand playful exaggeration and obviates the batting efforts.

5) Stump/Bowled: The act when a guy gets stunned during batting because of, more often than not, positive response from the girl and is surprised enough to stop batting and become silent, sometimes, in the middle of a sentence.

I can cook up some non-existent ones and make them famous, but don't want to. Not yet.

Cloud number 9

2007-11-10T13:30:00.000+05:30

Last week, when I was coming back from my vacation, we had taken a coffee break near Maddur, not in the Cafe Coffee Day, but the restaurant behind that, Indra Dhanush. Its pretty famous among people who travel down the Mysore road. Anyway, as soon as we entered the hotel, there was a table exactly opposite to a table with a really hot girl. Obviously, Vinay and I sat at the said table facing the girl, making poor Vasudev(Bosu) sit facing us!

This girl, let me tell you now, was amazingly beautiful. Really good looking, of correct height which I saw when she walked after some time, fair and had amazing hair. To top it, she was wearing a really nice Chudidar with kajal and what not! Basically, way out of the league of anyone I know!

So, I am sure you can guess every once in a while, I would just look in her direction. With each glance I saw she was staring at me. After this happened for about five times, I felt guilty of not giving her her space and invading her privacy read, I dint want random people in the hotel to start hitting me if the girl starts screaming for help. By then, even Vinay was into his food and we had started talking about something interesting.

Now, I felt being watched, if you know what I mean. To my surprise the hot babe was looking in my direction every now and then and I clearly saw that she dint have an annoyed look in her face. I thought I was obviously hallucinating and the fact that I was coming back from a forest after a vacation, I thought I forgot how these things work. Anyway, within a few minutes it became obvious that I wasn't hallucinating after all. This, much to his annoyance that it wasn't him that was being looked at, Vinay confirmed was in fact true. Now, here was the deal. All the while she was with a guy who we had assumed to be her husband/boy friend/partner and 2 others. I could be a confident, daring young man and approach her and talk to her or I could be myself and ignore it as some space-time screw up. Sadly, I dint get to choose!

Within a minute of Vinay whispering, "Lucky ass, do something" in my ear, which she saw, she got up to leave. Now, I had to act fast. With the coffee cup in my hand, I was thinking what to do by which time she was almost near the exit, facing the door walking away as gracefully as she was pleasant whenever she smiled at, I am sure, silly things that the people she was with were saying. And just then...

She turned back and looked straight at me! It was surreal! Vinay and I both turned to look at her for one last time as she was about to go out and she turned back at the exact same time and looked at me for almost 3 minutes. OK, may be for about 2 seconds, but it seemed like forever. And then, she was gone.

If this were a cliched Kannada movie, I would have ran into her in a mall by now and she would have fought with me and warned me not to stalk her. After that, she would have accidentally, based on the budget of the movie, left back her kerchief or an expensive watch that she would have bought in the mall along with her initials on it. Then, may be after a month or so, I would run into her, all the while searching for her desperately and not doing anything else. There would have been a couple of songs by now that I would have sung in Sonu Nigam's voice. Finally I would meet her for good only to find out she is already engaged and her dad is the villain.

All these and more would have happened. For once, I don't mind being in a cliched Kannada movie! At least, for me, I am happy that she turned back and looked straight at me!

Our Hi(e)ro

2007-11-06T20:47:00.000+05:30

All of us, we have been very harsh to this person. Especially some have pulled this person's legs so much that I actually wish I could go back in time and fix it. I may not actually do that if I get a chance to do it, but hey, its the thought that counts, huh? I am talking about one of my close friends, Sudhindra.M.S. M.S not as in the degree but rather initials. I can point you to at least 5 posts about him which talk at length about how "innocent" Sudhi is. For a change, I will write some other facts about him.

A lot of you may be wondering what the hell is wrong with me. But here goes nothing:

Last week I got some time to talk with Sudhi. Not the usual non-sense we talk, rather we spoke a lot about life and work. I realized that Sudhi has been subjected to so much tormenting from us that we have literally stopped talking to him about any sense. As I spoke to him I remembered again why Sudhi became an integral part of our group in the first place. I remembered that he was always intelligent, a good listener and pragmatic in a weird way. Most importantly, I remembered him to be a very nice person. There were, or so I have heard, girls who thought Sudhi was not-so-bad looking. One of the most striking thing that we noted about Sudhi, I remembered, was that he was the laziest person in the group when it came to certain things. Like studies. He would somehow manage to get a very good result even after studying just for about 4 hours during the morning of exams. Every single time. Ask him about anything and he would say, "I have an idea about it". Sudhi had always been an outing enthusiast. One day trips and curd rice were like his 2 eyes. He is one of the best sport I have ever seen. To tolerate all that we have done to him and more, I always thought he had the patience of an owl.

In all, I just realized how lucky we all have been to have such a nice, interesting and entertaining person as a friend. Of course, he has a lot of small, sometimes huge, glitches, but hell, who doesn't? I hope he keeps being tolerant of us.

PS: He looks a lot like Hiro Nakamura.

Screw up in Bandipur

2007-11-05T14:48:00.000+05:30

I finally had a vacation. In fact 2 of them! One was an office sponsored affair to Ooty for 2 days over the last weekend. I enjoyed it very much. Especially going through Bandipur. Now, I have been to Bandipur, I think, 7 times till now. But none of them with about 180 other people I know. At the same time. No way. But this was a different experience. Very different indeed. To see so many ignorants at once is, I guess, a mixture of feeling happy that you dint turn out like them and at the same time a feeling of sadness because they don't see the value in the forest around them, apart from the "knowledge" they get from sensationalist newspapers and news channels and in turn will be directly or indirectly responsible for the destruction of our forests. But, this blog will be mostly about how I screwed up.

So, we were driving back from Ooty through Bandipur at about 12 in the night in a big 45 seater bus with about 30 people in it. We come across a herd of elephants on the road. I was ready to take some snaps of the pachyderms. So, I started clicking photos when some random girl shrieked that elephants will get annoyed by the flash. At the same time, the bus driver was made to stop exactly at a position which was along side an elephant with a baby. Some girls in the bus thought the baby was, "Oh so cuuute". I took a photo and the female elephant immediately let out a trumpet. I told the bus to move and the entire people in the bus started giving me dirty looks. So, here was the deal:

The driver was made to stop exactly in middle of the herd. Only the mother and the calf were on one side and the rest of the herd was on the other side. I should have known better to make him not do this. Over that I assumed elephants wouldn't mind flash. I mean, come on, they are used to lightnings! But its a contrived analogy and for the right reasons. A mother elephant with an infant is always nervous. Especially with a strange light coming from this huge box filled with humans , I am sure it got freaked out. If we had stayed there for some more time, I am sure one or more elephants from the herd would have charged us. Boy, was it a good thing I realized what was going on. And it was a stupid thing I did. Almost cocky. Tis tis.

Anyway, Bandipur is crawling with animals. My advice, go there for a stay soon. And take a ride from Bandipur to Masingudi in the night. And come back. Think of a reason to give at the check post at the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border because I am sure you will be asking for trouble when you return back to the post within an hour or so. Don't tell them the truth of course. And also that you are going to Ooty would make them suspicious when you come back in a very short time. Trust me, the lie will be worth it.

The Wall

2007-11-05T12:55:00.000+05:30

A lot of you know that I am a die-hard fan of Rahul Dravid. Last week there were 2 shows running at the same time with contradicting views. One was discussing "the conspiracy" behind Dravid resigning from the captaincy. The other, brace yourselves, his competence! I KNOW! Bastards! How can anyone, even non-fans question Rahul Dravid's competence??? (This is a 3 question mark question)

Just like you know that a society is going to doldrums when one needs instructions to use a toothpick, you know just the same when one dares question the competence of The Wall. Its insane. You may say I would say so. But look at the stats, look at the performances, look at the number of times he has stepped up for God's sake! Now, don't start with, "But Pavan, he plays so slow. Sure you don't think he should play one-dayers! :) ". Fuckers, have you seen him play in the last 4 years or so? Do you know his average and strike rate? I wont point to statistics. I, for one, don't want to disgrace Dravid's excellence by trying to justify his game. 5 failures doesn't justify axing someone of his caliber from the team. You just can't debate his caliber and competence.

Woes and Mood Swing

2007-10-07T20:30:00.000+05:30

I have these sudden strokes of nihilism and pessimism with a tinge of boredom. Basically, I become anti-social. I am sullen and just stick to books or games or TV. It generally doesn't last for more than a day. In college I always used to go play basketball during such time and lets face it, in college you have so many friends around you that you never get dull.

This time, however, it has lasted for almost 3 full days. The worst thing is I cannot point to the exact reason why this happens and I hate the nagging feeling that I have at the back of mind. I just can't be bothered to do anything. I don't have any issues (touch wood - I am superstitious) at work or home. I am in touch with all friends and I have been going out and having fun in general. Probably it was because of my measles and all, but then, I am not weak and on a nazi diet any more. My mom asked me if I fought with anyone or if I did something and am hiding it at home. I wish! I am sure I had this energy and enthusiasm which has mollified these days.

Bottom Line - I have become dull and boring! Its been about 15 months since I took a vacation. ME!! I don't have enough physical work these days. Guess its time to be more active.

But the point of this blog is am I alone with this sort of a "mood" swing? Is it common to you guys too? My worst fear, am I already burning out, for no apparent reason?

Was this required??

2007-09-25T17:49:00.000+05:30

It is my opinion that almost anything can be taught by correlating it with sex. The best thing is that almost everyone, because of this approach, understands whatever is taught. At one point, I had explained Data Structures with sex. I was thinking of putting it up here, but have decided against it, partly because at stages it gets gross and mainly because I have forgotten most of it! But don't you agree its a relatively better way?

Pavan The Cricketer

2007-09-21T10:43:00.000+05:30

I don't despise cricket contrary to popular belief at my home. My dad and brother play very good cricket and are the typical, in fact, cliched cricket fans watching games for the sake of the game! Eeeww. Anyway, I myself used to play, I like to say, good cricket when I was in primary school. I used to be an opening batsmen and a wicket keeper. Yes, both! My team used to always win against our arch rivals - the B section, that bunch of randy, rowdy rascals. But then something happened that changed everything. Forever.

We as 7 standard kids, being the senior most in the primary school, organized a private tournament. We were cocky and too full of ourselves, loved it, and thought we can finally get a trophy for ourselves for it. So, we organized a cricket tournament and we charged an entrance of 50 bucks. There were 7 teams who registered. We made the ties, so, obviously we went straight to semi finals. It was like true college level tournaments - completely rigged.

But then, one of the teams' captain approached us and pleaded that they have the bye and go to semis because they were a very weaker team and they deserved it. Not that we dint but with our abilities, we thought could even beat West Indies (one of the favorites back then) and 'why not?' thought us. And so, we changed the ties and actually rigged it so that we don't get to the semis for free. And then, on the day of that historic event....

WE LOST! Miserably. We were all out for some 24 runs. They hit it in some 3 overs without any wicket loss. That was the most traumatic incident, well almost, in my childhood. We were the organizers, who were stupid enough to listen to a masterful, dastardly opposing team captain and dug a hole for ourselves. Cricket did this to us! Thus ended my relatively young cricketing career.

Gradually, I lost interest. I thought this game was too much for a naive, innocent mind like mine. On the other hand, I was a big time Dravid fan. Even before he joined the Indian team, my brother and I used to follow his game in the Ranaji circuit. I just continued to follow his game after the traumatic experience.

Now, I just give random, wise ass comments about every one's game, offering tips about how to "improvise". Like I know!!

Redesign the World

2007-09-18T19:45:00.000+05:30

As a professional programmer, one of the things I constantly crib about is the fact that NOTHING fits my current requirements. No single tool, no open source library, no neat application, no nothing. I just get frustrated. Something that I want is automation. I don't want to be bothered with repeating something more than twice. I get all pissed because I have to do it. If its repetitive a computer got to do it. Why in the hell would I want to waste my time and effort??

Sometime back we were using Antlr as a Parser on our project. Given the simplicity of our grammar, we thought Antlr would be a perfect fit. But turns out, it was not! It was so painful that we replaced it with a hand written parser in about a day. With complete test coverage.

Given this attitude of "Redesign the one tends to redo a whole lot of things. The most important thing to keep in mind when you want to replace something that already exists and is very irritating is that it solves the problem. Doesn't matter if its not done well, if its slow etc etc. Because the chances are, by the time you reach where that tool/library is, you would have inadvertently ended up making some compromises or hacks every now and then yourself. Unless of course, there is a very strong reason such as the project productivity/velocity is getting screwed etc. to replace the tool.

What's more important is to be wary of what I call the "Quick-Win" syndrome. When you want to replace, lets say, Cruise Control or Selenium RC, its easy to get carried away thinking, "Its just a freaking while loop" and start off. The chances are you will get the basics quiet right, in fact may be better. But there are so many corner cases and issues that something like CC takes care of which were shielded from you that you just wont be able to "hack it" away to glory in a weekend. You will get a quick win in the sense that it works perfectly well in the happy path and feels Oh-so-close-now to the solution that you wont be prepared to give up until the contrived corner cases start biting you. But its just normal that you think its just one of those things or lets just hack this one away quickly which ends up in something "enterprise" like Selenium RC.

All I am saying is, when you want to replace something once and for all, don't think of it as a weekend hackday thing. Especially if its something big. So, take your time and make some wise decisions before starting off.

Down With Measles

2007-09-18T19:12:00.000+05:30

My head was splitting for 2 days straight and I was radiating heat through my ears. Literally. My eyes were bloodshot and there were pinpricks throughout my body. I knew there was something wrong with me until - (*psycho music in the background*) THERE WERE RASHES!

Yesterday, I was diagnosed *bites lower lip* Rubella/German Measles. I have quiet high fever, cold, terrible pain in the joints, rashes, which luckily don't itch, all over and big time mouth ulcers. Turns out the vaccination MMR was quiet costly in 1985 and Measles/Mumps was quiet rare down here too. So, I was spared of it. Which kicked back just after about 21 years. Quiet some planning and strategy on the part of the virus huh?

Anyway, I have to take a bed rest for 5 days. I will have a temporary arthritis, which may last for about 2 weeks and swollen lymph glands which are moderately painful.

Wish me an early and painless recovery.

And I plan to write a lot. Come back soon.

Me Being good to Friends!

2007-08-27T14:58:00.000+05:30

First things first:

Happy Birthday Gayatri! (From here) And congrats. Vikram is awesome.
Happy Birthday Gagan! Have a great time in general.

Now:

Yesterday Dharshan and I spent quiet sometime talking in general. We also spoke about Ribhu. I wanted to write about Ribhu but never got the time to do it. Then I thought its too late to post now. But then, its never too late!

Ribhu Shekhar is one of those people with who I can never have a fight. No matter how much you don't like some things about him, you just cannot escape his persona. We have had some crazy times, whether its selling id card holders in a relatively full Sweet Chariot or sitting on my terrace and talking till 2 in the night, only to come back inside because its cold and continue to talk. Over the past year, we had cut down spending a lot of time together. I would never say we drifted apart, because we dint. We spoke exactly how we used to speak when were in college whenever we met. Read my testimonial on Orkut (I have written very few of these to people and they are actually sensible, so you may wanna see it. Then again, you may be a guy. Or not!) if you want to.

Coming to the point in case, he left Bangalore on 15th July to pursue his Masters at USC. And left India in the first week of August. Now, after about a month since he left, its quiet sad that he has left here for some amount of time.

I wish him all the best for his future endeavors. And also that he comes back to Bangalore soon. Until then, have fun man.

Fockers

2007-08-27T14:55:00.000+05:30

Fuckers, Mother Fuckers

And then I was flying

2007-08-14T11:15:00.001+05:30

There were a lot of strangers around. Not quiet a time of the day I appreciate. Not to say I was not fully confident and a bit skeptical. Would it be alright? Will I survive? Would I make a total fool of myself? People controlling their laughter so much that their eyes start to water when I pass-by, some freakin cocky losers even laughing out loud after hearing my misfourtune. I couldn't imagine! It would ruin my life! And then, it was all for nothing!

I flew in a plane for the first time ever and survived!

I have a weird Acrophobia. I am not scared of heights, but when I am sitting in a, say, roller coaster, and it moves in all of 45.3 dimensions at an height of 1,23,433 feet and not just stopping at dilating time but other precious organs, I get scared. I hadn't had a reason to go in a plane till now. I was fine with traveling in KSTRC. Now I had to go to Chennai. In a flight. With other people from office. I dint know if I could make it without embarrassing myself in God knows what all ways. When.....

I flew in a plane for the first time ever and survived! Without embarrassing myself at all!

Yes Minister

2007-08-06T14:33:00.000+05:30

History Channel airs Yes Minister. During weekends. Back to back 2 hours. I am liking it.

Bernard: Minister, God works in strange ways.
(Minister thinks for a couple of seconds)
Minister: For God's sake Bernard, Humphrey is not God.
Bernard: Yes Minister. Do you want to tell him or want me to do that?

See? I told you its fun.

I am Sad

2007-07-30T18:46:00.000+05:30

I am sad. I am still Pavan but I am also SAD.

[Edit:] Well, of a lot of other things, one of my high school classmates passed away. When I came here to write, I was just sad. So, ended up writing just that much. A whole lot of people actually bothered to ask me what happened. Thanks to all of you.

Pavan the Forgetman

2007-07-27T15:40:00.001+05:30

These days I am forgetting everything. I had come up with a really good plot for a XKCD like comic. I even had the stick figures and all! I forgot what it was within half an hour of the inception. Then I had this really funny thing to write about. I don't even remember what it was about. I saw this really weird thing on road, as usual, while on my way to office some days back. I was sure it would be a sexy blog post. By the time I reached office I forgot what it was. Damn! I am "Pavan, the Forgetman" - for the lack of memory of any other word!

This reminds, ironically, me - When we were in 8th semester, we had Constitution of India as one of the subjects. Yes. Our lecturer was a cool, yet strict, dude and he used to have these pop quiz with different people teamed up each time. Once Sudhi the bakra, Nithin and Gayatri were teamed up. Gayatri is a good friend of all of us and all and when she sat next to Sudhi, he kept addressing her in third person. Then they had to write their names on a sheet of paper, when she came to know that Sudhi forgot her name. She was a good friend with who all of us including Sudhi have had a lot of fun in college, including a trip to IIT Chennai's Shastra. Now, in the last semester with just 2 more months left before we would part and go on our own ways, Sudhindra.M.S forgot Gayatri Sharma's name! The best part when she went, "You don't know my name??" and Sudhi went blank. Nithin bursted out laughing and kept laughing for the next 2 minutes or so and all the while Sudhi hadn't said a word and Gai was just looking at him. Then, later, Sudhi tells Nithin, "Dude, this sort of thing keeps happening to me where I forget things. Do you think I need to go to a doctor?"

Shit. Its happening to me too!

Equality for all

2007-07-04T12:22:00.000+05:30

Should the haves give what they have to have-nots? May be they should. Its not their fault that they don't have something. God works in strange ways. He wouldn't give some people something extra and make them "special" and others cosmic dirt, would he? May be not.

All people are born equal. Some are more equal than others, is all. If someone has, say, relatively more intelligence than others, they(someone, not others) shouldn't be proud of it. They have something that others don't have. They are the deviants. God dint intend them to have it. Its not essential, not in the basic fundamental plot of God. They should in fact feel guilty because they have something which He dint intend them to have. If it was as essential as, say, breathing or eating, everyone would have had it. This just shows that one is sinned because one is special. They shouldn't be flaunting their abilities, rather have remorse because of it.

The only way to rid themselves off this - all the haves should let go of their ego and start living for others. This is the only way His plot will survive. How can someone like Him devise a "Dog eats Dog" setup? How can He possibly expect everyone to perform? It was, is and always will be about the proletarian. Individual cannot be of any importance. No matter what you think you should be doing, or should be done, listen to the people around you. Work for the greater, common good for the society in general. There is no "particular" when it comes to human life, everything has to be in general. Precise, concise and novel stuff are for the deviants and hence is not of importance. It corrupts the innocence of the society.

Basically, feel pity towards dumb fucks. Fuck up your life so that others can bloody live off off your hard work and brilliance. It doesn't matter what hell you go through sitting in a bleeding cubicle and not doing that one thing which would crack the whole problem because you are surrounded with morons. Who are you to tell them that you are infinitely superior in solving problem than all of them and a few million other people combined together? What makes you so different than them? Why do need the freedom and opportunity? You are already deviant enough. Don't make everyone feel inferior to you. Equality for all is the mantra. Chant it to hell.

[Note: I hope to the same God mentioned here the cynicism is not lost]

Sports Womenship

2007-07-04T12:13:00.000+05:30

Daniela Hantuchova, ah, what legs! Also, what sportsmanship! Serena Williams the evil beast from Mars23 was, for a change, physically impaired in the middle of her match against Daniela, the goddess of legs. The Beast wouldn't settle for anything less than the Goddess' blood but got herself a good old "what saves the gods from beasts" cramps in her legs. What luck! But Daniela, the possessor of not-just-good-but-great legs did not leverage it at all. In fact, she was returning every shot back to where Serena "let me win or die you" Williams was which eventually lead her to loose. But I am sure the winner was Daniela in a cosmic sense. Also on a purely physical sense.

Sacrifice and what not!

2007-06-20T16:45:00.000+05:30

While riding to my office today, there was this car in front of me which had "JESUS died for YOU" written on its back glass. All I wanted to do was to pull over to him and ask - "Forget about Jesus. What have you done for me?" Of course, I wanted to take a picture of that, but then, I have a really old phone which I am planning to change soon and am not yet a creep who carries a camera all the time for "picture-emergencies".

Remember, "JESUS died for YOU".

Whole lotta misery

2007-05-29T10:59:00.000+05:30

Vinay, one of my friends about whom I said I will write but haven't, has been having one bad week after another from the last 3 weeks now. I am sure I can use one of the things that happened to him without worrying about being sued!

So, as usual he gets caught by the Police without any papers on him whatsoever. This time he doesn't even have his wallet et al. So, the constable lets him go after finding out all there is to know about IT industry vs. Call centers for about 30 minutes in the middle of the road. This was when he was going for a team lunch and everyone were waiting for him and he hadn't eaten anything from 12 hours. Good. He finally manages to go the restaurant fashionably late by about 45 minutes. Goes to wash up, when...

Turns out the wash basin in the Guys' washroom is screwed up. In one of the more respectable hotels in Indiranagar. Pity. He has already put on some soap on his palms, one of those glossy thick ones that are common in hotels and offices, and has worked a fine lather before he finds out about the water. He calls the waiter and the waiter says, "You can use the one in the Ladies room Sir. Not a problem at all" and escorts Vinay to the Ladies' room and leaves. Now he finds out that the wash basin in the ladies room too is not working and he is about to open the door and call the waiter again when it happens...

An insanely good looking girl walks in and shrieks looking at him.

Girl - "What the hell are you doing here? How dare you?"
Vinay - "Calm down. The wash basin in the Guy's restroom is broken. So I...."
Girl - "Is that my problem? That doesn't mean you... " (Looks at the thick liquid with a thin white lather on his hand) "What are you doing here? Ewww. Waiter"
Vinay - (Shouts really hard) "Its just soap! What is wrong with you?!"

She walks out and calls the manager. And after about 3 really long and ugly minutes things get settled down. Everyone, except Vinay of course, are laughing their asses off! And the day just goes, trust me, downhill from there! Pathetic.

Kannada Songs Online

2007-05-23T11:17:00.000+05:30

The utopia for listening to Kannada audio media online is here. Kannada Audio. I know, innovative name. The site is just too good. Songs, from almost all famous, non-famous and pseudo-famous movies, Bhavageethe, Bhakthigeethe, Nataka, Harikathe and what not! Especially the dramas by Dheerendra Gopal are really worth listening to.

It uses the real player format and is really fast. All you need is a real player and a moderately fast internet. And you are ready to listen. Too much fun.

Ignorance & Helplessness

2007-05-17T11:38:00.000+05:30

As was previously usual but now a rarity, I was playing Basketball at Madhavan Park with Vinay (My partner in crime. Its about time I wrote about him). There was some orchestra going on in the football ground there. A pretty loud affair. Songs from all of Srinath's movies and there was the general Jayanagar's posh crowd. There were about 200 cars parked there. Easily. After about playing for an hour there was when this happened:

We saw a kid being paraded on the footpath next to the court with this huge guy hitting him throughout with what looked like a deviously big wooden stick, which I am sure was of the same size as the one used by the abominable Mankind. Well, may be not, but that's not the point. Vinay being the socially responsible sorts that he is made a run for towards the scene. I followed him. We stopped the guy from hitting the kid, momentarily, and asked him what was the matter. The guy callously replied that the kid was being mischievous and disturbing the concert so he was taking care of him. We found out the that kid, 6-7 years old, was crying really hard and apparently was beaten from the football field till the basketball court, a good 100m or so. We stopped the guy for good and asked him who the hell was he and to our surprise he was the kid's father. We told him he cannot do this to his own child and after all kids are just kids, to which he gave dirty and said, "This is my kid. I can do whatever I want to him. Get out of my way" and he shoved the kid and left. Ironically there were cops controlling the crowd and traffic all around who saw the whole thing and did not react at all. That was that.

We could have gone and complained to the authorities there. We could have complained in the near by Jayanagar police station. But we were reminded of an incident that had occured in a Police Station where we had gone to lodge a complaint about a stolen mobile. So, we just went back. We know how it works these days. We did what we could.

These days I am noticing people becoming more ignorant than ever. Its either that or I am being exposed to such stuff only now and hence am getting pissed more often. Either way, India, especially Bangalore, is not what it used to be, at least is not how I had seen it before. Its changing. For the worse.

Yet Another Blog I am writing for!

2007-04-12T14:17:00.000+05:30

Well, a lot of you guys know I love Bangalore. I love it the way it was and the way it was and mostly the way it will be. So, I have become a co-author at the new blog Chaotic Bangalore. The name is misleading, but it will be pretty nice I am sure. So, that makes it 3 blogs that I write for:

1) Don't Panic, I am Mostly Harmless - My Personal Blog (Duh, this one)
2) Jobless Programmers' Hangout Place - My Group Blog.
3) Chaotic Bangalore - My Bangalore Blog.

Do visit me at all these places. I am sure you will enjoy them all.

I am back

2007-04-11T13:48:00.000+05:30

Today a colleague of mine found a coin in his masala vada. Yes. As simple as that - a coin in his vada. Anybody who knows me would know this would have made me grin really wide because of all the words that were forming in my mind but couldn't say it out because people wouldn't get it! So, here I am, out from my temporary writer's block and all and writing about this historic moment.

So, if one waits for a moment and think about what a coin was doing in a vada, one can come up with a lot of explanations. A few of them would be:

* The cook was sure there was a nail in the batter somewhere. So, he put the coin there in the hope that the person choking on the nail would feel happy to see the money,

* The cook was a milk vendor and has spent a life time adulterating stuff and can't get enough of it and can't live without it

* The coin was suicidal after listening to Sanjaya Malakar and jumped into the nearest thing it found

* The cook bribed the batter because it was not getting cooked properly

* The batter was saving up for its third divorce when the stupid cook interrupted it and it went into the oil with the coin in its hand, former hand i.e.

* Some freak accident in wire transfer ended up the remaining change in the batter,

* The coin wanted to boldly go where no coin had gone before, but almost ended up going where a lot of coins have ended up - a man's large intestine

* 42

* Usage of an improbability drive somewhere made a pigeon poop a coin into the batter in order to maintain the total improbability a constant

* A parallel universe where the batter was a woman and the coin, of course, was a man interacted with this universe in the weirdest way

Can you think of any other reasons?

Bangalore Sunsets.

2007-03-13T17:29:00.000+05:30

Very few people observe or keep track of stuff like Sunsets. Luckily for the ignorants, I keep track of such things. So, if you dint know, January to March are like the best months to watch sunsets in Bangalore. If you can afford (time and money) to go to some place on the outskirts with a hill/hillock of Bangalore you will be treated with an amazing sight of the sun. Starts off from being white, then becomes pale yellow, light orange, bright orange, pinkish orange, reddish orange and finally disappears, not before making a good part of the western sky a nice shade of orange.

AND, if you dint know the time when it starts, it starts at about 18.10 and goes on till 18.35-18.40. So, make sure you catch it, at least from your house/office terrace. It is very pleasant indeed.

Anatomy of Assumptions

2007-03-05T14:52:00.000+05:30

Assumption is the single, most dangerous thing that any of us do. And we proudly boast that we don't assume things, which itself, I presume, people assume and say without really thinking. Not many people give a second thought about assumptions. I am going to classify assumptions so that it makes your life easy.

Assumptions can be broadly classified into 4 groups:

1) Fundamental Assumptions:

These are the basic, fundamental assumptions which we have the luxury to make. These assumptions, as a rule, will not go wrong. However, you never know.

Ex: Gravity never becomes repulsive in turn making it impossible for two people to have sex, Men watch a lot of sports and women shop way too much, The bike I am riding wont suddenly become a black buck and gets killed as I sit on it and since I am not Salman Khan, I get arrested and jailed etc. Basically with anything that has been around for a long time or is consistent or has something to do with men, women and sex, you can consider assumptions around them as being fundamental as the whole of humanity has the same assumptions.

2) Reasonable Assumptions:

These are the assumptions which some people would have problems with, but most people would consider are OK to have. The assumptions depends heavily on the kind of upbringing, one's society, TV shows, alien sightings, active volcanoes near by, mental health institutes in the city, legal age for alcohol consumption, tax exemption for women etc. One has to make sure to confirm once with other people, if the assumption they have made is in fact reasonable.

Ex: Eminem uses too many bad words for the greater good of the mankind, Dogs are dangerous, Karan Johar movies are monotonous and bad etc. (The key here is most of the assumptions are your own. Some people wont like it. But most people accept such assumptions as reasonable.)

3) Unreasonable Assumptions:

These are the assumptions which portray you as being prejudiced and is never appreciated by the majority of people. In fact a lot of such assumptions generally lead to major law suits and end a person, sometimes literally.

Ex: Fat people can't play basketball, Jews are the root cause of all miseries etc. These are the sort of the things that get you killed or bring out the pauper in you.

4) Group which I missed:

Any other sort of assumptions which I don't know about due to the lack of research effort I have put into this post.

JDB - John Denver Bug

2007-03-05T14:46:00.000+05:30

I am bitten by the John Denver Bug. I just can't get enough of his songs. Damn.

The other day I was listening to some Jazz songs while driving in my car on Radio Indigo - 91.9 . I guess its, Jazz not my car or Radio Indigo, more about the lyrics and the mood you are in than anything else,. You like it if you are feeling all mushy. Then the next second when you snap out of it, you think its just OK and not great.

Interesting.

Wardrobe Misfortune

2007-03-05T11:24:00.000+05:30

I am not a Wardrobe-Nazi at all. I think individually I have nice clothes. But I have no idea how to wear them in combination. Just a week ago, I was arguing with my friend Varsha about how guys shop in general, and how I do in particular. I was proud of all these back then. Yes Sir, I acted like am a cave man yelling, "Me shirt. Me pant. Me food. Me write code.". I dint see this coming.

On a Monday morning, the last thing you want to worry about is whether your pant will last you for the whole day. That too, when its a brand new Wrangler. As a reasonable man, I reasonably assumed that my pant will surely do. I was so wrong.

I got onto my bike wearing the new Wrangler pant I bought in Mega Mart and was riding, when I felt the wind blowing up my left leg. (Sounds like a cheesy line from Letter to Penthouse VII). I thought that was strange because there was no reason for the wind to blow up my left leg like that when I was wearing my brand new Wrangler pant bought from Mega Mart. And then I saw it. There was a vertical slit about 3 inches in length on the left side of my brand new Wrangler pant bought from Mega Mart, that too not in a sale. I was totally caught in a dilemma. On one hand, I was ten minutes away from home and already ten minutes late. On the other, I will feel some serious chilling sitting under the broken AC in the office which is always at 18 deg and not many people would appreciate torn jeans. I did what any reasonable man in my situation would do. I swore, I swore and I swore some more. Then, I went back home, all the way swearing every possible thing that could have lead to this misfortune in general and Wrangler, Mega Mart and money(don't forget, the root cause of all evil) in particular.

My worst wardrobe misfortune ever. Now, I have to search for the stupid bill, go back to Mega Mart, fight with them till they agree to give me a replacement and again spend a full 3 minutes to get a new one. Damn it.

Random thing in traffic

2007-03-02T11:43:00.000+05:30

Bangalore traffic is filled with weirdos. Trust me. To me, almost all the two wheeler riders are weird and its a miracle that they are even alive, given that they have no clue about a single rule. And I am sure they think the same way about me, given that I follow all rules and hence have to be late for every single appointment I'll ever have and hence am like the biggest weirdo ever. Fair enough, I say. I have even stopped noticing weirdness all around me. Today was no different. But then:

I am standing in this traffic jam on double road and this guy on a Hero Honda Passion Plus is standing next to me. He removes his helmet and I see that he is about 30-35 years old. He has ear phones on so I guessed he was listening to music. Just to prove me right, he takes out his Ipod and increases the volume. Weird. You figure out why. He then removes his right ear phone, takes out his Nokia phone, puts the hands free to it, and plugs the hands free to his right ear. And I notice the Ipod is still playing. He keeps the mobile and Ipod in the pocket. Good. Now he realises this plastic cover with something in it that he had kept to the right side of the bike is touching the silencer, which is hot mind you, and is melting. He bends at a weird angle, with the wires and all, and takes out the cover and puts it to the handle and rests it on the tank. Regulation stuff. This guy is getting fidgety now. He shakes his legs, does this, that and 2o seconds later, he takes out a cigarette and lights it. Right next to me, in the blazing sun and the traffic jam. AND, the traffic starts moving. He happily keeps the pack inside, puts on his helmet, holds the cigarette in his left hand and manages to hold the cover when not using the clutch and not taking a puff. Each time the traffic halts, this guy almost falls on me. I thought the better of it and made my way away from him.

Oh, and I think he got a call when I was leaving. Weirdo.

Together we drown

2007-02-26T11:27:00.000+05:30

The eight of us, our group, have started a group blog. Its called Jobless Programmers' Hangout Place. I am sure the posts there will be worth reading. Please do visit us there.

Its Extreme Man

2007-02-23T16:09:00.000+05:30

I was not so sure what extremism meant truly until recently. This had helped me a lot in getting information about Extremism when it comes to religion. I had my reservations about "Hindu Extremism" as I thought it was more of an over reaction than anything. But recently, I watched "Black Friday" (I know I know, you are already cribbing that I should have read the book before etc etc) and I was quiet shocked to see the actual reason which triggered the whole series of violence. I really advice you to either read the book or watch the movie. Especially if you are someone from my generation or younger. Its about time a lot of us got to know exactly what the hell happened then.

In my earlier blogs, I have mentioned that religion is something that is very personal and nobody can comment on anybody's religion. It is true. I stand by it like I supported Rahul Dravid when he was dropped. (I am his fan even since he played for Karnataka when I was in 6Th standard. Don't you dare say anything about his game. He is great.)

Now, what beats me the most, though, is if your religion is something personal to you, why don't you respect the fact that someone else's religion is also personal to that person? If something is forbidden by your religion, why criticize somebody else's because it is allowed? Who are you to tell somebody what he or she can follow, let alone impose? Politics, sadly, is what is screwing up the whole thing. Brits used religion to make their stay here pleasant, so did the politicians who wanted to rule after the Brits were leaving and so are the politicians now. How tough is it to understand that religion itself doesn't spread terror. It doesn't ask you to kill people for their beliefs. None of them do. Its only people who interpret it by "reading between the lines" that are messing the whole thing up for their gains. I cant even believe that we have come to the point where I am writing such obvious things because its lost on people! Read these comments on Roshan's blog and you will get an idea as to why I am even writing this.

I feel like Wonko the sane for writing this. It feels like instructions to use a tooth pick.

I forgot, Swaroop "I dont think Pavan's funny" Murthy, my pal, has this good piece on terrorism. On Sleeper Cell.

Wildlife for Dummies - 4

2007-02-23T11:21:00.000+05:30

That was a long gap indeed. I am sure you, the regular reader, would have happily forgotten all about what I have written till now. You may want to see this. Or, you can just read on. Doesn't matter.

I am writing about some general stuff that you should follow in a jungle if you are trekking. And this, I am writing mainly from what I have experienced and also from what I have read. If you have experienced otherwise, I would love to hear about it. Do realise that all these are for the hardcore, actual, means-business sort of treks in jungle.

1) Please dress for the occasion.

I am sure you guessed that I took that line from the AIDS campaign, but it applies here too. I have seen people go on jungle safaris wearing bright, blood shot shirts, silk saarees which glow in the night, or as Sudhi had worn, florescent green shoes etc. As long as your intentions are neither to blind the animals nor get killed (in that order) please avoid wearing such clothes. Wear sober shades of green, brown or at most black. It mostly depends on the colours in the jungle you are going to trek.

2) If you are more than 8 People, considering going to Goa.

A friend of mine trekked in the beautiful Bramhagiri Wildlife Sanctuary and she said that it was the most disappointing trip ever. They "walked 40 km in all just to see a black baboon". Actually, she was very lucky, because she actually caught sight of the "Nilgiri Black Languar", a rare sight. I was quiet surprised because it is a very thick forest range and apparently it was green, which meant a lot of herbivores to be seen. Then she told me they were 14 people trekking. Of course they wont see anything!! People don't realise that animals make up for their lack of intelligence with other senses being really kick ass. Even the most silent group of 14 people can be heard from about quarter kilometer away in a forest by people, let alone animals. Trust me. You can go to Goa and have a blast like this. Even better may be. But don't bother going to a jungle.

3) Shutting up that chatter-box can be a tough thing. Try it.

If you are trekking in a jungle and would like to catch a glimpse of some animal, please shut up. I know this is putting it crudely, but even after shouting at them all the time, in a jungle people get this urge to discuss something or the other. Or they become poets or start whistling or even bad, singing. All these are cute and all, but you don't want a particularly bad tempered elephant charging at you for all its worth, partly because it heard you but mostly because it heard your poems. But seriously, being silent is the SINGLE most important thing. You have to be silent. Otherwise, best case you wont see anything, worst case you are dead.

4) Motionless and all.

When somebody shows the sign to freeze, generally by holding up the hand and spreading out the fingers and palm, it means FREEZE. Literally. Stop moving even your eyelids. Being deprived of coloured vision, most animals can detect even the slightest of the slightest movements. I can quote you a million examples where people were dead or saved, they got the best picture ever or just a tree, because they weren't or were motionless. Generally, when you are stalking or waiting up on a watch tower etc, you have to be motionless if you have a reason to believe that some animal is near. Animals are so jungle-enabled that they actually know that if there is no wind, there is no reason for leaves to move or grass to shake without being caused by "other" animals. So, be very cautious of not moving at all. Again, that means you Sudhi. Very sad story when Sudhi moved and the bison ran away.

5) Get down and give me 20.

Consider your health and stamina before going on a trek. For Ex: Ketan(a random person if you don't know him) actually ran up almost half of a 300 foot hill because it was getting dark. And he wasn't even breathless! Chethi is a freak too. Having a crisp body is of utmost importance if you are serious about getting some action. Sadly, I am not even close to being in such a health condition. But, some things you have to keep in mind are stuff like, if you know you have a thing for twisting your ankle wear an ankle guard, keep in mind which knee, if any, is weak of yours etc. Absolute life savers. There is no point making the whole group miss something because you were not in a position to do something.

To wind up, keep in mind that each and every step you keep must be calculated, consciously or otherwise. Don't walk over dead leaves and twigs. Don't make unnecessary sounds. Don't dress stupidly. Simple rules followed is what differentiates between a successful wildlife trek and tiring, walk among trees.

Clarification

2007-02-16T15:08:00.000+05:30

In my previous blog I havent made any comment on the Shilpa Shetty issue as you may have noticed because I think its a non-issue! Like I said, I dont care about her winning. I am more interested in how prejudice can still be displayed in the most blatant way and its completely lost on people. I just wanted to mention Shilpa Shetty here. Totally unrelated things. I really had to clear this up!

Pavan the Conspiracy Buff

2007-02-16T14:15:00.000+05:30

Shilpa Shetty won something. I don't know what it was. Don't you go thinking "Such a snob."/"Such an ignorant"/"Such a show off" etc, because, I am sure almost all of you don't know what it was either. Unless you have downloaded it from Torrents, you have no clue what Big Brother is all about. You have heard its about girls in skimpy clothes, gossip, "make belive" fights and cliched situations. Yes sir, it is quality television. AND, she won it.

Now, its time to put this thing under the microscope and make some observations. Was Shilpa Shetty indeed harassed and biased against? Was this rigged? Was it true that Gandhi had this thing for this other chick? (Oops, wrong question. But then, since the question's asked, is it really true? How could he do this to poor little Bha?)

The truth is, "WE DONT CARE". Yes, I am speaking for you too. Collectively. If you really care, you are an idiot. But what I do care about is something that stuck me when I heard about this. Startling stuff. I stumbled on what may be a big time conspiracy.

Let's say somebody is a big time racist. I mean the person's as racist as the sun's hot, as gravity sucks, as Archimedes was naked when he shouted Eureka. So, this racist person, if he wanted to tell the world, let the world know, make the world realise, how racist he was, what would be the simplest way? Think about it, he wants to boldly do this, by taking the higher ground. No clue?

He just has to write a book. Make a character which is racist. Give all sorts of comments through that character. I mean anything, any damn thing, he wants and in the end just get the character killed. Boom. He will be famous as "The Guy who condemns Racism" and "The Saviour of anti-prejudice" etc. He will become the person who knows about racism and also how to end it. He will be rich and famous. He, I am sure, will be the happiest person on the planet. And, also people are stupid.

Do I smell a conspiracy somewhere? More importantly, if I were a Tort lawyer, do I smell a billion dollar suit against someone?