Vignesh Anand - Insert smart header here

Penn diagram

2012-01-08T04:07:00.000-08:00

I love graphs, charts and the likes - especially Venn diagrams. Here is a Penn diagram (#thamizh-pun)

For earlier graph based nonsense, look for the label Graph-hic. And before you hurl stones at me, you can always refer to the disclaimer on the profile. Peace.

Of course, more of these later. *Scratches head*....

Random thoughts on Afreaka (#2)

2011-12-24T01:23:00.000-08:00

This post ain't named so cuz it's a sequence of the previous post, but when SRK names a movie Don2 with no relevance to the first one, so can I...

With each step, bus journey, matatu ride and a random conversation with an African , you come to realize that you're in a different continent and all the travel is quite fatal to prejudice. As any other travel experience, you will be baffled at the diversity of the people - Nigeria alone has 510 live languages with 250 ethnic groups. And within Kenya, there are 42 different tribes with several thousand different clans who do not speak the same language. And overall, I've never seen a race of people who've got a better sense of humor than the Africans.

Some random observations and #TIA moments (in no particular order, just like my room)

- A guy at the Maasai market guy saw my t-shirt (that read "Being Human") and chased me yelling "Hey brotha, if you really wanna be human, why don't you give me some cash?" - I figured Karma is a bitch, given that Salman Khan killed the "Black Buck". Just saying...

- As I heard about the reversed dowry system in most parts of Africa, I could not stop but imagine a Reddy daddy with 2 kids, a girl and a boy where the son marries an African woman and the daughter, a Telugu boy. Jokes apart, I would love to see that happen.

- Everyday, as I walked back from work, I would notice a cool gang of friends chatting with each other, sitting on their motorcycles. Only when one of them approached me and asked if he could drop me, did I realize that they were actually "transport". The "boda-boda" is an insanely phenomenal system in East Africa where people drop other people on a motorcycle or a bicycle for a fee. Legend has it that when a machaan was approached by a boda-boda, he told him poda-poda. And yes, the name stuck.

- And everyday, as I walked back from work, I would also notice a cool gang of women at the crossroads, waiting to get into new cars, everyday. You get the drift. But unlike in (most parts of)India, women in Nairobi choose to do it themselves for an extra buck. Although some things like an extra dash of lipstick, high heeled boots and gawdy dressing remains consistently the same.

- Modern day African women change their hairstyles every week. Got my bubble burst once when a random chick said hi to me and then I realize I failed to recognize my own colleague. Accra, Ghana has more salons/sq km than any other place in the world. Speaking of Accra and shops, they have phrases as names of their shops and it always is, in praise of the Lord.

- Safaris don't get any better anywhere else - waking up to see zebras and wildebeests a few metres outside your tent and chasing down a cheetah chasing its prey were probably the best parts of my trip.

- During the safari, we went deep inside the wild in search of lions and we ended up seeing a Maasai dude chilling with his cattle, unarmed. Take that superheroes! Maasai tribes kill lions but live in fear of termites. They literally, scale new heights, in securing more girlfriends by jumping as high as they can.

- Africans are the best dancers. Ever. A personal must-do recommendation is to walk into a bar and witness Africans dance for Shakira's waka waka song. The speed at which women can shake their butt, rivals the hummingbird's wing flap. Interestingly, slow reggae dance is also amazing to look at. Overall, I think they are the most uninhibited and awesome dancers.

- If you thought the movie Madagascar was funny, you should read the story of a former DJ who organized a coup there to became the president of Madagascar. Can you imagine that happening in India?

- India will look like a reasonably honest country with not so many issues, if you end up here
> Nigerian cops will simply stop cars and ask for money, without a reason
> When asked why I was being charged for an extra $30 for my visa to Ghana, the
woman simply said "Do you wanna go to Ghana or not?"

Weddings, food, religious practices, clothing and many other aspects are mind blowingly different and unique out here. Guess there is only so much I can recollect today...Can't wait for Tanzania feb '12.

Of course, more later.

Those evil returning winds...

2011-09-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

The final pain of a mother's yell
the end of a hiccup you can't tell
The final seconds of the exam,
the confession of a friend's sham
Scraped knees, broken chin,
those wounds on the skin
Gone with the wind...

The final vision of the breathless,
as the mortuary's ajar door passes
The untasted drops of the vintage,
as the glass shatters on the floorage
The last rice that nourished the departed
the last ice that unfulfilled the besotted
Gone with the wind...

The final step of the vagabond,
the last sex with the blonde
That final puff of the last cigarette,
those promises that you unkept
The end of an indulgence,
the beginning of temptation
Gone with the returning wind...

My 2 paisas:
Humans have always known to deal well with things that they know have ended. They could end so well or end so bad, but that doesn't matter. What bothers mankind are those things that can be had or done again, for one last time. That last time, which comes again, and again...and again. Aaah those evil returning winds

The first random thoughts on Afreaka

2011-07-25T04:54:00.000-07:00

I definitely did not feel like the white guy when the Kenyan immigration officer reduced my visa from 3 months to a month. Wonder what the Patels did to Africa. Surds, though stick to their culture of driving gypsies in any part of the world.

The city's cost of living is freaking high. Given my limited per diem....

60 Rs. for a bottle of water (Strategy: Camel up and drink water from the office)
100 Rs for toothpaste (Strategy: Squeeze tube mildly from bottom and flatten slowly as you go up)
200 Rs. for a beer (Strategy: No compromise on beers)
120 Rs. for a small hand sanitizer (Strategy: Who the fuck wants a sanitizer. Use jeans pant to rub)

Nairobi is a very interesting city with 50% of their population living in slums and earning less than 40 Rs. a day. If that wasn't enough, they occupy only about 5% of the area thanks to deforestation and urban settlements.

Crime is inevitable in this city. Although one dude was polite in letting me know that I need to give him my bag. He gave up after following me for a few steps. Hordes of people come physically close and ask(beg) you for soda, cash or whatever you have. I do not quite blame them. The police is corrupt (more than in India) and a cop stopped my van and asked my driver for money. A beggar with uniform and authority. Period. My driver simply said he has no cash and drove ahead.

My service apartment is comfortable with one exception. No a/c or fan and the room temperature is what I get to live with. Bright spot: Shereen looks hot and attractive (one of the 3 caretakers of the apartments, on rotation basis).

The city is crazy about football. About 500 people filled the streets and screamed their lungs out in the center of the city[Video link]. Kenyan beer tastes good. The toilets have no separation. In India, I wouldn't hesitate to open my fly out, but here, I prefer using the enclosed loos, given the certain projected inferiority complex - thanks to Russel Peters and others.

Happiness for dummies

2011-06-25T04:04:00.000-07:00

Hang on.
Move on.
Stop.
Turn back.
Laugh,
aloud.

Hence Proved.

Laugh on

2011-03-06T00:09:00.000-08:00

Deep inside my head,
I burn you alive.
You don't flinch,
you don't scream.
Did you just think,
you deserve it?
Or did I just hear you laugh,
watching me burn…..
…..your effigy.

Laugh,
for that will be your last.

No seriously, I'm freakin busy

2011-02-20T05:03:00.000-08:00

I logged in to check my leave history and it got me thinking. And then it made me happy. It then made me appreciate the life that I have.

I've been working for Google for 3 years now and I have been out of office for 60.5 days. This excludes all the weekend holidays which amount to 312 days(for 3 years). It's not over yet. We get roughly 12 Govt./National holidays and most of them fall on weekdays. So another 30 days. That makes it ~ 403 days or 1.10 years of not working in the last 3 years.

Happiness turns to guilt if I think about how I split my time at the office during the remaining 1.9 years.

So what did I do with the 1.10 years?

Thanks Google (For keeping me busy, that is)

The Holy Rail....

2010-11-08T01:50:00.000-08:00

75% of the railway infrastructure that exists today was built by the British dudes and it has been half a century since they left. Talk about rapid progress. In a research done to estimate the total delay in trains over a year, it was established that India proudly topped the list with around 2 years. India beat Japan by miles who had a measly 40 seconds to their credit. In your face Japs!

Railways has been a vital lifeline for the Indian Junta and the Indian train has been an integral part of my life. The diversity in a train is almost completely representative of the whole of India.

AC first class - The rich but complete fools who pay 2000 bucks for an overnight journey when flights cost ~3000.

AC 2 Tier/ AC 3 Tier: The regular upper middle class middle aged blokes who need a comfortable journey

Sleeper Class: The smart middle middle class who promptly book train tickets for the rest of their life in advance

General compartment - The "men" who hop on to just any train that would take them to their destination, Beggars, Dogs, Chickens, College students who forget to book tickets, cockroaches, hawkers, peanut men, puffed rice dudes, musicians who flap the wooden blocks for "Tujhe dekha to yeh jaana" song, which I regard as the National Railway anthem.

Another interesting addition to the general compartment is the strong agile man who "throws in the towel" . The Indian version of this phrase is ironically different from the western interpretation of "giving up". It means that a towel thrown into a moving train is a guaranteed seat. No disputes shall arise upon the sighting of a towel on a seat. If thou embarketh on to an empty compartment and see towels placed, thou shalln't covet those seats. This form of seat reservation can extend up to 6 with the presence of 1 kid and 1 towel who can represent the entire family.

Last but not the least,we have the eunuchs who can walk in and walk out of trains molesting men, women in that order without legally offending anyone.

The arrival of a eunuch on a train can be detected with the sound of clapping hands. A "decent" eunuch will talk to you and declare you a King(Raaja) and ask you for money. If you don't give it, he/she will simply say your wife will go to the dogs or worse, your dick will become like a toothpick. If you're the kind who is accustomed to verbal abuses you're fine. An "indecent" eunuch's middle name is determination. He/she shall fondly fondle your cheeks(not just the ones on your face) with their hands and threaten to pull up their skirts if you don't give money.

The toilets are clearly for people who meditate or swimmers who've practiced holding their breath. Certain trains like Rapthisagar express have toilets with inexplicable levels of stinking. Legend has it that a man named kakkaa kaaka once entered the toilet, did his business inside the Rapthisagar toilet holding a cover to collect the poop. Then he wanted to dispose it through the window and so he flung it. It accidentally hit the fan and contributed to Rapthisagar's eternal stench. Legend also has it that the westerners later borrowed this concept to frame the famous "Shit hits the fan" phrase.

The train door is the perfect canvas for budding ~~artists~~ pubists in India.The door also doubles as an advertising platform for pimps. Wonder if anyone dialed those numbers to ask "Hey what are you wearing?" in typical RP style.

All said and done, train journeys are fun and a typical train journey during college days used to consist of a wide range of activities between Madras and Vellore.

Lalu Prasad Yadav, arguably India's best Railway minister gave these lines before the start of his speech:

Sab kah rahe hain humne gazab kaam kiya hai,

Karoron ka munafa har ek shaam diya hai,

Phal salon yeh ab dega, paudha jo lagaya hai,

Sewa ka, samarpan ka, har farz nibhaya hai.

Cheers!

I hear ye ...

2010-10-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

And as I always say, the only chick who calls me is the Airtel customer care woman. I try hard to make a conversation, in vain. I guess I gotta be genuinely passionate about ringtones and discount offers to strike a chord...

Hello?

Everybody yeah...Rock your body yeah

2010-10-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

Get down, quit playin' games with yourself and come out of the closet...

Gym for glory

2010-10-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

I finally hit the gym after a 1 year gap. The family pack has grown into a monstrous entity and almost seems to suggest male pregnancy. Time to tuck the bastard in.

Graphjam seems to be a lot of fun and I wanna dabble with it on my blog.

More comin up...

Remember remember...

2010-10-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

I put down my bag in the traveler's dormitory and looked up at her…and I spoke..

Me: You know Yen, I always dreamed of traveling the world, just like you..Like when I….

Yen: You din't dream hard enough.

I didn't protest. They say it is better to shut up and let people assume you're a fool than open your mouth and confirm it. I was talking to someone who realized more than what one can dream of, someone who lives up to the spirit of traveling. I assumed she must have been used to common boring people telling her those same lines. But if you knew Yen, you'd actually understand how much she meant it. She had been dreaming all her life about seeing the world. And that's exactly what she did and has been doing.

And if I knew myself enough, I did dream a lot about traveling to the ends of the world, smoking the actual Cuban cigar, tasting the real French wine, riding my custom designed bike through coastal India and the list is endless. Literally fuckin endless. I didn't want a girlfriend, I didn't dream about lots of money, all I wanted to do was travel. As time brought it's lovely wisdom, I later realized that both money and a girlfriend(a rich one) would have facilitated some of my dreams. Anyways...

As I listened to her stories, all I could think of was one thing. What am I doing stuck in a cubicle? I can blame a few liabilities, which would include my Dad and a few other members in my family for being financially dependent on me, but that's not the point. I am painfully aware of the fact that middle class Indians, in general, are competitive, insecure and filled with excuses for not chasing their passions.

I stand at a point where I have 2 choices: Continue to work hard and dream that I will travel someday(yeah, that someday that may never come) or tell myself fuck it, and pack my bags..I would rather be a happy beggar than a rich sad 40 year old buggar., who has kids to take care of.

Cuz after all, it boils down to what matters most to you. You exist, you enjoy and you die. The soil microbes follow suit. Enjoying seems to be the only favorable part, so make the most of it.

I am itching to take a decision. But I would let this December dictate my destiny…
Remember remember,
the whole of this December…
Hmmm

And the knob is starting to turn left...

2010-02-11T01:04:00.000-08:00

You know you ain't as young as you think you are when

a) you no longer find people weird when they look at your forehead when they talk.

b) you don't mind the 1 decibel curses from people inside the elevator when you use it for going one floor down.

c) all the chicks you planned on chasing "someday" are getting married..and the reality hits you hard

d) you start using the lame phrase: "but I'm still young at heart" :P

e) kids refer to you as uncle

f) a 3 inch doesn't bother you anymore (Tummy, I meant)

and finally, but most importantly

g) you can't complete a post cuz you ran out of ideas.

The first sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to the left. ~Jerry M. Wright

And the time stops

2009-11-14T01:22:00.000-08:00

Well death completes life. Na? I am not really a person who gets shaken when people around me die under one condition. They were old and had their lives lived.
For old folks, death definitely completes life and that's the way to go. But otherwise...

I kid you not, here is a list of strange and unfortunate kicking of buckets that happened to people around me, not necessarily close to me.

Krishna uncle, 50ish, was walking in a residential street of Bangalore and a huuuuuge lorry(naa not a boring accident story) carrying LPG gas cylinders had its latch open at the back. One wicked cylinder popped out and fell straight on Krishna uncle. Yeah, he died.

A nameless relative from Pondicherry went mango picking on a tree inside his own house, so he could give the mangoes to his daughter. Slipped off a branch and yeah, he died, succumbing to head injuries. Can you imagine if the wife met a friend after a year or so and the friends surprised to see her widowed and goes on to ask "how did it happen??" and she replies: he went mango plucking and died.

Mom's colleague was talking to her husband over the phone. Suddenly, the man mumbles something and there is no sound from that end. They later discovered his dead body in his car (with the mobile phone in his hand) parked in T. Nagar, Chennai.
He died cuz the bubblegum he was chewing entered his breathing pipe(or whatever they call it) and he suffered an instant death. My doctor uncle tells me that a vacuum cleaner would have been the quickest way to pull the gum out. (I am not officially allowed to chew gum moms still paranoid) This story is obviously more lame naa? The widow would have had to answer a thousand phone calls and convince people he really died out of a bubblegum block.

For hard hearted folks, the stories above might have come across as a little funny but I don't think you're gonna enjoy this one.

In the BSNL office, Mount Road, a worker gets her baby to work. A co worker who was super excited on seeing the baby, held it up under its arms and flung it high in the air hoping to catch it, and entertain the baby....Well..

The baby hit the apparently low-ceiling fan and the blades struck the skull of the baby. The co worker was never seen again. He quit his job that day and probably left the city.

Well that's why they say: தத்துவமும் தோற்று போகும் இடம்..மரணம்

(Where even the best of philosophy or wisdom fails, is death)

Ass in the lions..oh wait

2009-11-02T05:35:00.000-08:00

George Washington said, “An army of asses led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by an ass.”

What about an ass in the lion's hide?

The far fickle relative

2009-09-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

Crawled towards,
in all innocence

Walked by,
in assurance

Ran around,
jumped, played
and smiled,
in all ignorance.

Grew up,
in your shadow,
the one that takes no shape now,
or a shape that haunts me.

Lights cast,
the real face out,
what were you?

Sprinting away,
not just from you,
from myself too.

May oblivion prevail,
may memory weaken,
may forgiveness try,
in vain.

Find me not,
for I'm finding myself
Ask yourself,
if you ever found,
you.

August the 15th

2009-08-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

A Tout le monde,
A tous mes amis,
Je vous aime,
Je dois partir..

These are the last words,
I ll eva speak
Set me freeeeeeeeeeeeee

On this independence day, I take freedom beyond what is given to me.

Ssshhhhh,
Au revoir

Everything is coming

2009-08-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

Loud trucks,
noisy fucks

No not another poem...just that my blocked right ear is all opened up and everything around me is noisy

Secrets cease,
Deceased secrets.

For people who spoke stuff I shouldn't hear, well screw you all!

Ear drops,
Drop of decibels.

For everyone who realized this is consecutive crap,

happy hearing,
happy reading,
my ear is back,
two in a pack,
wish me another year,
of blogging nonsense.
everything is coming...
everything is coming...
everything is coming...

Nothing is coming...

2009-07-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

Loud silence,
Silent noise...

No not another poem. Just that my hearing system is fucked up
and I cant hear anything right on my right ear!

Rightly screwed,
Screwed on the right...

For people who thought I was ignoring you, well you were probably
right and I gotta good excuse now :p

Deaf applause,
Applaud the deaf.

For people who think this is such a kickass way to talk about ear pain,

You're mistaken,
or worse,
you're probably a mistake

For all others who realized this whole post is gibberish,

You're right,
but I'm left,
with one ear only,
another year gone,
of blogging nonsense.
Nothing is coming...
Nothing is coming...
Nothing is coming...

Kun wei Tis

2009-07-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

With Hellos at the tip of my tongue, a frozen jackass smile, an eagle eye view of the seemingly low humans around me and a parachute heart, I tried living the Chinese way for a month.

Perfecting "Ni hao maaa" qualifies you as 1% Chinese. The final syllable maaa triggers a graceful boomerang of words from the native tongue.

After the Hello, it is pretty much a gibberish exchange of sounds from each other made to appear "real" with the masked happy faces.

The dessert clearly is the "Xie Xie" promptly followed by the "Bu Kuchie". I realized that speaking in Chinese plus Gibberish is way more fulfilling and makes you think you had a meaningful conversation THAAAAAAN a Chinese trying to speak English!

The hutongs are shooting spots for short films/movies and tv commercials.

On spotting the first of those kind,

Me: Whats going on dude?

Chinaman: Its ass.

Me: er..ahem..okay..

Few steps later Chinaman tells me: In the hooo thoang, people shoot lots of ass.

Me: Exploding and imploding at the same time..after realizing he referred to ADS!

Time injected its glorious wisdom into me as I realized "excel shit" was not a slang for excellent shit but instead referred to Excel Sheet(You'll be fine Gates!)

A collector's edition of possible Chinese statements:

English: That can't be right
Chinese: Sum Teeng Woang

English: Who is the fugitive you're harboring?
Chinese: Hoo Yoo Hai Ding

English: Amaaazingggg
Chinese: Soo Paaah

English: Maintaining a low profile
Chinese: Lei ying Lo

English: Don't eat here
Chinese: No Mun Ching

Does not take rocket science to decipher the title as "Convey this", but not everyone visited Chaiiiiiii Naaah!

Zai Jian laaaaa :)

Machina

2009-06-30T19:30:00.001-07:00

A wonderful trip coming to an end, I thought I must blog about Beijing as a city and its culture. From the day I knew I was going to Beijing till now, I have not looked up a single web page about the city or "what to do" or "where to go". The idea did pay off with every day coming as a surprise.

Cliched style but..You know you're in Beijing if..

(a) you wonder what couples do after going home. They seem to 'finish' everything on roads

(b) all you see on TV are Botox and Cupping Ads. The 'before' and 'after' are outrageous. Like a corporate boss throwing away the papers brought by a woman cuz she you know..and after the botox application, the boss keeps aside the papers and says "yayyy". Wtf, I mean wtf :)

(c) you see street music being appreciated with utmost passion anywhere in the city.
Just anybody can set up speakers ANYWHERE and perform. Sure to get an audience. the variety of unique instruments will just blow you away.

(d) food is repulsive to look at and smells like shit. Most of the food tastes good though. The Chinese are known to order more than what can be eaten. Restaurant tables are full of left overs all the time and Chinese accept the fact themselves.

The worst thing I had(surprisingly) was the eye of a fish. the damned thing is sooo hard and you need to chew it slowly. Tastes bad and unless you're trying too hard not to, you will puke.

(e) you find the women beautiful(PERIOD)

(f) you see people who like they are in a loo. But thats the way they sit. In bus stands, while playing Mahjong in the night and a lot of places. Mahjong is a gambling game and old folks play all night long and beat their wives if they lose dough.

(g) you hear the word "Neyygaa" a hundred times(EASILY..no exaggeration). A normal conversation would sound like aaa vignesh neyggaa somerset shru oo neygggaa chan tho loaa shing neygaaaa tsinghuaa nammen??

Me:Neygaaa Xie Xie la neyggaa ;)

(h) you watch people commuting in weird ways.

(i) Piggyback rides for small cute girls is a sight to watch
(ii)Kids on rollerblades racing with cars in traffic is cool. They get a lot of
oooh aaa wow form the girls.
(iii)People walk backwards. I have not found out why yet. Its goddamn funny.

(i) Men walk on roads half topless. The shirt is tucked up to the chest and reveal their tummies and their hands go round and round on the stomach. Worst thing to see but I mentioned cuz you will not get this kind of information anywhere on the internet. Its a trend here and even guys who wear branded stuff like Nike or Kappa do it all the time.

(j) People are very very very friendly and welcoming. They will watch you butcher their language and yet deliver a smile and try to understand what you're trying to say. That has been the best part of my trip. Random walks with random people having conversations that lasted 10 12 mins without understanding a word of what each other said.

Classic example was a cabbie who kept saying "Indo Indo and swaying his arms like a peacock" . I took a snap of his ID card cuz I was freaking out.

After 2 mins I realized he was referring to Bollywood dance and that his kid watches on TV. Hand signs galore.

(k) you wake up cuz its too sunny and bright and go back to sleep cuz the time is still 4 30 am. Day begins at 4 15 sometimes and ends to 7 30 pm. The Chinese here have short nights. Nature's remedy for birth control? Which reminds me. The public here welcome the 1 kid only rule. I wish India adopts something similar.

(l) you realize look much better than you thought :p College girls come and ask you out for Coffee, American women smile at you and what not. In India, I am not guaranteed a second look @ first place leave alone coffee or smiles :)

My trip is kinda made I guess[winks]

Cheers

Don't give a rat's piam to this :)

2009-06-10T05:23:00.000-07:00

The death toll continues to rise as I'm becoming braver by the day.

The casualty list is as follows:

a)Oysters

b)Clams(cooked alive)

c)Pork skin

d)Lamb skin

e)Duck's tongue (Imagine a serving tray gull of tongues!)

f)Rabbit's foot

g)Fried Eel

For (e) and (g) It felt just like how Karamchand felt , something moving, shouting, wriggling and dancing in my stomach :)

Since Domino's served a Chinese version of Pizza(Peee Saaaaan: jus kiddin :p ) I gave up hope on Western (customized) food.

I was expecting KFC grandpa assuming new avatars like

or probably some pirated version altogether like:

But KFC was a life saver :) With the exact same recipe and a Chinese girl announcing, much to my delight, that the bill is thatty fouuu fif tee(Exactly), I had nothing more to ask for :) Excepting that Russel needs to know I connect a lot to his jokes :p

Well, the title! Let me tell you something that requires reader discretion.

People in China have a strong belief that eating piams will enhance their sexual experience. What is a piam?

It literally translates to "animal's whip", whip being the slang for well...a penis.

Their logic goes this way. Wilder the animal, more precious is its piam and the better you feel while "doing it". They kill tigers and sell the piams, for it gets sold like hot pancakes. So domestic animals can feel safe :) Castration happens to "the wild" only! Complete removal, rather.

Talking on rats, there is another "game" sort of thing called the "3 screaming mice".
They put 3 new born rat babies(alive) on a plate with sauce. new born cuz they are considered to be cleaner.

The rat screams 1st when you poke it with a fork, 2nd time when dipped in sauce and 3rd when when you put in the mouth. Thats what they call 3 screaming mice. A delicacy! It should be 9 in all logically, but I was way too grossed out to ask for an explanation there.

A southern destination called GuanTong has their own way of having a feast. A live monkey is pushed from beneath a table with a small opening and suspended that way. The head is believed to give superficial powers. Boiling water is poured on their heads to clean the germs and a chisel/hammer is ued to break the head and its eaten alive while screaming.

No smart names for this. How about 1 sad-fucked-up-screaming monkey?

Shall update with another post on eating snakes and reptiles later. Sounded like a plan for the weekend :)

Ping pong and blogger's gone

2009-06-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

They shut down blogger for Chinese IPs and my post disappeared when I tried continuing at home.Now back at office

I have a weird feeling that the Chinese think I'm either a eunuch or a girl.
Cuz everytime I play ping pong with Sun Wei and 2 others walk in, he asks them,

"Doo yoo want to plaaai mixadubbles?"

Me:(wtf?!) Dude you mean doubles right? (With a smile assuring him that I know he is just kidding and he aint a jackass)

Sun: Weer already plaaain dubbles. Lets plaai mixadubbles naaow

Me:blank

I gave up.

Lunch was a futile effort at me trying to prove I can be really Chinese by tasting all their food. I put in whatever my colleagues took in their plates.

I think I put some national geographic shows to shame. I had

(a) Steaks (forgot which animal)
(b) Pork with Rice
(c) Clams. This is the best part. The fish inside was cooked alive with the opened shell. So we take some shells on our plate, eat the gooey stuff inside(with chopsticks) and collect those shells for hobby(naaa)

I think this brave effort paid off as 2 of them wanted to try Indian food for dinner. Took them to Ganges, a restaurant which would have shut down had it opened in Hyderabad. Very mediocre food, but making a lot of business here.

One question I was asked by a lady in the office:

Why do Indians not touch their food with the left hand?

Answers anyone?

Being a man. Doing the right thing.

2009-06-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

Grabbed a Chinese newspaper at the Bangalore airport to understand the country better and its current affairs.

The events, crimes, rules and happenings are just way too different. Just amazes me as how people, just few hundred miles from our borders can be so different in everything they do.

Irate husbands trying to kill their wives seems to be a trend here. NRIs are kinda weird too I think. A Tam bram mom was putting her baby to sleep by singing naaka mukka.(In an era where Johnny still sings laaa laa laa laaaaa laaaaaaaaa ley :p )

Other news:

A local Govt. in Fujian awards 10 extra marks to students whose parents purchased a land in a certain area. They needed to boost the local property market! With heavy criticism they are planning to remove it now.

25 people burn to death on the main road inside a public bus. The driver could not open the door and 25 inside charred to death! And no one knows the cause yet.

And David Carradine was found dead in his apartment (in Thailand) with a rope tied to the fan. Researchers later found it was not suicide but a sex act found wrong. He was declared dead due to masturbation gone wrong!

Anyways, the air hostess in DragonAir got her first request for alcohol from yours truly and announced she has only eeeeeeegal.

Me: Whiskey? Brandy? What is it?

She:er..I donno. Its called eeeegal.

Me: Okay one glass eeeegal.

I was like wtf I have had Monitor and it can't be worse.

She brings a bottle of Chivas Reagal and pours it in a glass full of rocks! They call it Reaaaaaagal without the R!

No English at all here. My driver kept talking to me in Mandarin/Cantonese/Some Chinese lingo/ pointing to buildings and smiling. I kept returning the lame "smile+xie xie".

In a quest to taste at least 70% of the fauna here, I started with Chicken and Oysters with Rice. No comments on the taste though.

For now zzz ing in the nice apartment I am put up at.

All in a day's work

2009-05-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

My last day of work at Bye-Bye was going great guns with wishes from many employees. After all, they were happy for a person who had served his sentence and was getting released that day.

The HR lady smiled and signed my documents. Walking out, I was wondering who this woman was. It was time for the Admin department now which would close by 5 pm. They asked for my ID card which I gladly gave away.

All that remained was my status call at 10 pm(9 am USA time). After that, well..

I walked out of the office for a cig and I saw the HR lady drive away in a lancer. It set me thinking: Was I wrong to leave this company? An HR person looked after so well by this company?

Then my colleague said she was the Sun TV VJ whom we see everyday trying to predict our day with zodiac signs.

Walking back into the office, the security guards stopped me and asked me who I was. I did not have the ID card and they did not allow me in. In their opinion, an employee who just quit is of a potential threat than a complete stranger since I'd know where the server rooms are. Why would they always expect a leaving employee to be irate and revengeful?

Well that is Bye-Bye for you.

Anyways, my manager came running down and pleaded the security to allow me in. She wanted me for the client call.

Armed with a temporary card, I walked out again at 7 pm for the nearest TASMAC(Last day treat). Formal clad men with black executive shoes drinking old secret XXX in a shady little cottage is a sight to watch out for.

Client call went well with the American guy trying to test the new recruit if I transitioned well enough. I was obviously scribbling down a lot of answers for this guy and signaling this and that(it was a phone conference).

I left at 12 pm immediately after the call. I was done with 25 kilometres(/33) of my journey back on my good old Activa and this battery of Cops stopped to check me.

3 college kids were crying buckets sitting inside the police car. I asked them to calm down and behave like grown up boys. Then this cop asked me to blow. I obliged.

He shouts "D Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"(Drunken Driving they told me later) and another cop started beating me like a madman. He din't seem to stop. He was drunk as well. I was almost in tears when he shoved me in the same car. Finally the 3 students started laughing. You know why.

The 3 kids had to call their parents in spite of persistent appeals. I told the drunkard cop I will pay and parents don't get to know anything. With only 500 bucks in cash, the greedy cop wanted me to draw cash.

He drops me outside my apartment and I sneaked into my house slowly. Tip toeing, I took out my ATM card and began to lock the house when my dad woke up and asked me...

"Do you want to drink Bournvita?" Me: $#@%#$?!>!!

I told him my vehicle stopped and an auto guy towed me so I was gonna pay him now.

I went down and the cop was patiently waiting for me. I withdrew 3 grand at the ATM. The cop took it and drove away. I walked back to the station and took my vehicle.

Booze cost: 500 bucks
Fine:3000 bucks
Thought of having quit Bye-Bye and all is over now: Priceless
The idea of me blogging about all this: Shameless

(This is a very very old post which was stuck in my drafts..Anyways)

Thup Sum Bong

2009-04-05T07:37:00.001-07:00

Day 1:

With a lenient attitude of changing my imaginative perception on Bong women as people with bright big dots on faces and "jataang" lipstick, I arrived here in the Bong land today.

I appreciate my imagination. I was "bong" on target. Every bong is easily recognizable with women sporting this traffic red signal sort of lipstick. Probably to say stop, don't ;) Okay that was rhoshisth (Read racist)

The airport is much the same as Chennai Central with fleas hovering over when you use the loo. (Not kidding). Kolkata airport sure needs an overhaul.

With my broken Hindi, I approach the Taxi Stand and convey I need to go to IIM, Joka. This smart ass comes with a sheet and shows me "Zoka: 800 Rs." and tries to convince me it is the same as Joka.

Jokas apart, I wanted to verify with the official counter and I see Joka: 600 Rs. and this guy says "Oh Joka? teek hai teek hai sorry" and goes away.

So I'm here at the IIM campus after a funny lunch with sugar in every dish I ordered.
The campus is beautiful: Lots of greenery, a nice lake and a bad weather. This place is a bird sanctuary and at around 6 pm, thousands of birds are right on top of your head dropping crap. To try some probability:

If you studied in IIMC for 2 years, you must've got hit at least once.

Enough crap. More later.

Thousand and 1 yens

2009-03-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

Trust not in God,
fall not in love,
believe not in prayer.
Wish not, desire not,
dream not...

For what matters,
are dead presidents.
It's the dead static ones,
that speak for you,
for me,
for the living.

It's the dough,
that kneads us.
A yen without a yen,
as good as impotent men.

Inches of paper,
wrap the globe.
Spin spin spin,
like a woman on gin.

Lit candles,
bring no romance.
It's the bundles.
For beauty lies,
in the hands,
of the shareholder.

Crave till the grave.
Till death,
tears man apart.

*Title crypt: Thousand(M) and 1 (ONE) yens(Y)...Money
Yens=Y,Money,Desire/Longing

Lazy blogger's scrape

2009-02-20T05:24:00.000-08:00

Since I am busy hunting for a new place to stay, I decided to copy paste an amazing piece of write up. Don't want to call it poetry though. Read on...

When I come from office in the evening, wife is cooking
I can hear the noise of utensils in the kitchen
I stealthily enter the house
Take out the bottle from my black cupboard
Mahatma Gandhi is looking at me from the photo frame
But still no one is aware of it
Because I never take a risk

I take out the glass from the rack above the old sink
Quickly enjoy one peg
Wash the glass and again keep it on the rack
Of course I also keep the bottle inside my cupboard
Mahatma Gandhi is giving a smile

I peep into the kitchen
Wife is cutting potatoes
No one is aware of what I did
Because I never take a risk

I: Any news on Iyer's daughter's marriage
Wife: Nope, she doesn't seem to be that lucky. Still they are looking
out for her

I again come out; there is a small noise of the black cupboard
But I don't make any sound while taking out the bottle
I take out the glass from the old rack above sink
Quickly enjoy one peg

Wash the bottle and keep it in the sink
Also keep the Black Glass in the cupboard
But still no one is aware of what I did
Because I never take a risk

I: But still I think Iyer's daughter's age is not that much
Wife: What are you saying? She is 28 yrs old... like an aged horse
I: (I forgot her age is 28) Oh Oh...

I again take out potatoes out from my black cupboard
But the cupboard's place has automatically changed
I take out the bottle from the rack and quickly enjoy one peg in the sink

Mahatma Gandhi laughs loudly
I keep the rack in the potatoes & wash Mahatma Gandhi's photo & keep
it in the black cupboard

Wife is keeping the sink on the stove
But still no one is aware of what I did
Because I never take a risk

I: (getting angry) you call Mr. Iyer a horse? If you say that again, I
will cut your tongue...!
Wife: Don't just blabber something, go out and sit quietly...

I take out the bottle from the potatoes
Go in the black cupboard and enjoy a peg
Wash the sink and keep it over the rack
Wife is giving a smile

Mahatma Gandhi is still cooking
But still no one is aware of what I did
Because I never take a risk

I: (laughing) So Iyer is marrying a horse!!
Wife: Hey go and sprinkle some water on your face...

I again go to the kitchen, and quietly sit on the rack
Stove is also on the rack
There is a small noise of bottles from the room outside

I peep and see that wife is enjoying a peg in the sink
But none of the horses are aware of what I did
Because Mahatma Gandhi never takes a risk

Iyer is still cooking
And I am looking at my wife from the photo and laughing
Because I never take risk ... hic!

Cheeeeeeeeeeeers!!!

Caught in the web-Part 1

2009-02-13T10:50:00.000-08:00

Traveling across Tamil Nadu for a week is a cake walk. But meeting 1000 new people everyday and teaching the 990 internet non-savvy people is a gargantuan task.
The remaining 10 people walked in for the Air Conditioned bus, treating it like a free mobile Internet Cafe.

The interesting times arrive when the Bus stops at a public location. Blokes from all walks of life throng the bus refusing to get down without a freebie!

A genuinely interested person-a rarity!

Some think the bus is for sale. Some think it's a fast food counter before they board it. But that's okay. One guy decided it was a fast food counter even after boarding I guess. He walks in with a half eaten banana, staring at the screens. He finishes the fruit and throws the peel on the floor(of the bus!). Upon hearing 2 people scream at him(including yours truly), he promptly picks up the peel and squeezes it in his pant pocket.

That was still way above the average hygiene of the bus junta. Imagine yourself explaining Internet to folks munching Paan in their mouths and their hands making repeated vertical and horizontal scratching movements with their hands at places you don't wanna know.

Just to give you a slight picture(no not going down there..staying up):

Shoaaa ("So" with Paan munching) Waaat is thiss indar nettu? I did miss my Google umbrella then :)

One guy with hair all over(his face) beckoned me to come near him. He whispered a secret:" Psst...I am researching on unearthing a lost idol of "Baadhaala Bhairavi Amman" Please find it on indar nettu for me"

Then comes a guy with a face on his mustache (words interchanged for the right reasons) He was the DSP of Salem and he wanted info on Anti Corruption and catching criminals with the help of Internet.

A lot of people stared from outside the bus and refused to enter the Bus till we assured them that entry is absolutely free!

School kids had 2 very unique classifications. Boys and Girls. When girls boarded the bus, they came in a line, quiet walked in, saw the screens and walked out.

Boys start pushing each other from 10 meters away abusing each other. "Yaaai indar nett bussu daaa" blaah blaah ..jump inside the bus pulling headphones and almost breaking the equipment inside. Lost a few calories grazing that bunch of kids :)

I have no pic since I was busy controlling the boys' Q
A smart person's attempt at making full use of the Internet bus went bust as the mobile phone(on display) he tried to flinch started beeping. He fled the scene of course :)

Security check-in call forces me to add an hyphen and title this post as Part-1. Over and out from Coimbatore airport. More later of course.

2008 Annual Performance Review

2009-01-20T09:54:00.001-08:00

/*Disclaimer: This one's out and out a personal post. Unless, you're interested, you can move on*/

Q: What does a guy whose life changed so much in a year do?
A: He blogs about it.

I can say that my life changed with so much certainty because during the last year, I have heard a few people say that I work hard.

Without being atrocious, I remove the "hard" part. I don't think anyone has ever said I "Work" at first place. So that was me before. The laziest guy. I survived because of friends who I depended on almost everything I wanted and by dating lady luck(Who seems to be dumping me now)

Having arrived in Hyderabad from Chennai, a year ago, I managed to remove the laziness quotient and accommodated some sincerity in the efforts I put in my daily life. Worked hard, and partied harder. Partying saw some new avenues as well.

TASMAC became Bottles and Chimneys.
Water Packet became Club Soda
MC/Monitor became Finlandia/Absinthe

But I guess I never forgot my roots :p

Testament:

Reid's farewell treat

Met a lot of new people..new kinds of people..the kinds I thought were non-existent. Those who were probably the opposite of me or those who could completely scandalize me.

To name a few, I met

-a guy who faints travelling in a general compartment(I think it was my abode for 4 years)

-a guy who refused to take up an IIM seat(Not a day passes without me praying that IIM should open up management quota)

-a guy who has got the time to do EVERYTHING in the world(well almost). Blogging, sketching, replying to long misc email threads, playing pool, organizing some event which no one has a clue about and working as well(This guy shares my birth day. Which is why it beats me all the more)

-a girl from the 18 hundreds who still looks 20 (My hair is half grey already and I am balding)

-a guy from Goa who doesn't remotely remind me of an Indian. One guy who can give crap all day and yet claim he strategises (He also thinks Tamil Nadu ain't part of India)

-a girl who stops talking to me for a reason as "critical" as me having forgotten to tell her I was going to play tt (She does hit me at the critical{this time not sarcastic} places to take revenge...Ouch just the thought of it)

-a girl who can down multiple shots of rum and mask herself as a Yogic Guru who meditates sitting on nails (I have no special comments for her. She simply is a glass apart. Oops...Class I meant!)

-a psycho who enjoys running his car on animals (oh this is one is a sophisticated type. Has got Gphone Apps to support his cause)

-a guy from Muscat who sings, plays guitar, plays volleyball, cricket, basketball, counterstrike, gilli thanda, goli gundu, mangaaathaa, wateva. You name it. He's been there, done that (I did not mention pool cuz he lost to me...finally)

-a guy who probably got rich referring blokes into the company(He does a lot of calculations and analysis every split-second)

-a senior citizen who caused me trouble in Facebook(Much to her happiness)

-a guy who sends out proposals to women on a brute force attack basis when he is drunk (Ideas:it is the lack of them that people like me are single till date)

-a guy who adulterated his dad's bottle of alcohol after gulping the genuine bit(He is the only guy who can get me stuff in case I go back to Grass)

-a "player" who plays the Indian Version of "yo mama" after getting drunk.

Thanks to SQE who generates these awesome specimens ;)

The best part, though was that I traveled to a lot of places. Panchgani, Kerala and Hampi. All this in addition to the great time I had with my best friends in Chennai, Pondy and Goa(phew we finally made it)

Enjoyed on different terrains I'd say

On Water,

(A random ride on the abandoned lake in Hampi. With currents going great guns, this sure was one helluva ride)

On Air,

( Bargained with my Tutty fruity Hindi to get a good deal on parachuting in Goa. If you know Hindi, you fly cheap. I am guessing it costs only a feni for Konkani blokes ;) )

And my fav, on Road

(As long as wheels are concerned, lesser the merrier. Trust me, no cars in Goa)

(Mountains and rocks. All that is left of Krishnadevaraya's wealth-Hampi)

Looking forward for another great year. God, just bless me with the dough...I will take care of the rest.

By(e) Gone Era

2008-12-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

Create yet conceal,
Delay, yet deliver
With great effort comes
first cry, then smile,
Oh this is going to be heaven!
Alright, all set.

Crippled, yet created,
quickened and dissolved
With guilt,
uncreated.
Ohhhh this is hell.

Life outside the basket,
just aint worth the let.
Apologies sweetie,
bidding a bye.

Melange of heaven and hell

2008-11-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

Roll a roll,
lift your soul.
Light up the bitch,
watch her burn, hear her scream.
Its your turn, have your dream.

Ride on, she screws you,
with pain, but pleasure.
No fiction, the bitch is here
No friction, the walk on thin air.

She undresses,
drags by drags.
Shoots you up, no less
your thoughts in a mess.
Remember the forgotten,
forget the begotten.

A dive, headfirst,
into an endless tunnel.
Waiting for mercy,
from His gavel.

Ask for heaven, ask for hell.
For all you yell,
you sink in a melange,
of heaven and hell

Roll a roll,
lift your soul.

Dedicated to "Grass" and all the fellow "Grasshoppers" ;)

An "Excel"lent Diwali

2008-10-27T02:56:00.000-07:00

A snapshot of an MS Excel Database on Nov 8th 11 pm

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jones Smith -Sysopman -#21345
Adam Fletcher -Sysopemp -#16764
William Ben -CorpVPman -#11256
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5 mins later...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
)($%^*&# #$^^$%^$%^^ !@@$@#$#@4
&^!@()^&&& %$&(()!!@@@@@@@@@ $%^^&^&^&^&
%&(())$#@@!! #$^^&^^%^^^% ^^^%^^&%^^&
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What was the Database for?

It contained access rights of a client company for all employees, ranging from a clerk to the Vice President.

What happens if the Database is messed up like this?

All incoming business transactions get disapproved since approval flow is stopped.

Does that mean the company loses money?

Exactly, a few thousand dollars for every 5 hours of approval flow stoppage.

Oops! Who made this blunder?

The Database Admin of course!

Who was he?

Yours truly.

At 12 pm, when the entire city of Chennai was celebrating the death of Narkasura, a new avatar of Narakasura in the form of my client manager from Ohio was firing my
u-kno-wha.

As all client managers, this one was a bimbo too. All he knew was to login and approve. He did not know the technical aspects of the system. Well neither did I.

Till 3 am, I was trying to comprehend where the DB backup could have been stored. If I find it, I can "roll back" the DB. At 4 am, I realized the manager was pinging me and I had dozed off at my desk. He had sent an email asking me to come again during the day and restore the system. Went home, slept and returned at 11 am to find the DB restored by an Indian in Ohio office. With a few $$$$$ gone down the drain, I was mothered by my Project Lead here. All this happened in Bye-Bye.

Today, my heart goes out to everyone who is working and not enjoying Diwali. The ones I pity the most are the BPO employees. I have worked on a BPO job in Bye-Bye and also in a BPO company before that. 3 of my friends who are working in BPOs share their experiences.

a) Whenever I pinged this guy to say hi, I get this in return:

Hello and Good morning Sir. Thank you for calling Citibank Customer Service. My name is Lenin. How may I help you? :)

b) Muraleedhar Sadhasivam baptized himself as Mark Stephens and carries a non Indian, non American accent when he speaks non English.

c) Jacob's regular customer is a Filipino called Han Phuck (Pronounced Han Fuck). Since it's a rule to address customers with their second names only, Jacob always says "Hello Mr. Fuck how can I help you?"

Working for a BPO is a whole new way of life with untimely shifts, midnight cab drops, a whole account line marofying the only chick on the floor, suttas and tea every half hour. I'm glad I experienced it even though it was for a very short period.

Readers who are working or have worked for BPOs can share their experiences :) Wishing you all a happy and a prosperous Diwali.

The Human Xeroxers

2008-10-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

The Indian educational system needs no introduction. For the uninitiated, let me tell you that(am being a bit extreme here, but got facts to back me up)

a) A 13 year old school student carries books weighing 80% of his body weight

b) "The Teacher" can beat a kid to death for not doing home work

c) Marks are the ultimate criteria for judging the worth of a child. The kid can kick ass in chess, join the cricket team or sketch well, but still is a "bad kid" if he does not score well.He is made to attend coaching classes just so that he misses the fun at chess or cricket ;)

Purely a South Indian thingy this:

d) For a guy , a girl is always an enigma till he reaches college. He does not know what it is to talk to a girl. A girl is always someone who sits at the other side of the class. Is someone who "bad kids" talk to. Is someone who does not need permission to take half day leave and the boy always wondered why. Is someone who you can talk to later in life, after you pass the board exams and get into a good college. The funda? Well, I have not got it yet.

So the bottom line is "When in school, study and do no more, no less". To score well meant the ultimate thing for any middle-class school going student.

a) For an LKG student a good score guarantees that one toy he always wanted. Not studying well meant "watching the neighbor kid play with it"

b) For a fifth grade guy, getting the into the top 5 ranks guarantees his first bicycle. No prizes for guessing: School bus till the good rank comes.

c) The list goes on. Pocket money for the 10th grade and a bike for the 12th grade.

After this, Indian parents feel they have led the horse to the water. And it is up to the horse to drink or not. What they don't realize is that the horse has been tortured along its way and the South Indian horse is the most pitiable one. It wouldn't have seen an horsess till then ;) Mare, for the grammar conscious.

I kinda digressed from the title. Yeah, The Human Xeroxers. All the above mentioned points are the some of the reasons that all the student junta copy during exams. Or is it just human to copy?

I have strong opinions about people accepting this. I will never believe a person if he/she says he/she has not cheated in an exam, ever. I have never missed copying in an exam if I had the opportunity. Before I start feeling ashamed of what I said, I can recollect my school peeps going overboard when it comes to copying. To some of them, copying became a part of their survival.

People who copy are broadly classified into 2 categories:

1) Haves(Have the information needed to copy)
2) Have nots (require help either from the Haves or from others)

HAVES:

Introducing the "bit". North Indian version "Chits".

a) The art of bit making, like all other inventions, comes out of necessity. A bit in student lingo can mean a 2 X 2 inch piece of paper that contains valuable information. I have seen pioneers who increase the information and decrease the size of the bit.

b) More time is spent writing "chits" or "the bit" than in studying. From the conventional hide-em-in-the-sock to the innovative stuff-em-inside-the-tie, the student junta have mastered the art of bit making.

c) A few if not many, prodigies, hide 'em in their undies and fake an urgent nature's call. These are the ones that the Indian Intelligence Agencies need to recruit.

HAVE NOTS:

a) The gutsy lazy ones who neither study nor have the patience to write chits.

b) These are the Canon Powershots. Can take snaps without flash in a jiffy and quickly reproduce them on paper.

c) Some fake a nature's call and wait for one of those HAVES to come to the loo. The HAVE NOTS truly do not deserve to pass ;)

In my my life, very few blokes qualify as prodigies, since I rate myself an 8 out of 10 in this art. But a tribute to some 10/10 prodigies whom I respect, till date.

The Mango Seed guy: Rank#3

Shiv was in 10th standard and I was in 11th. This guy had written down the entire poem and prose(English Exam) and hidden them in 2 chits with a rubberband attached to his arm, beneath the shirt sleeve. When the 10 mark section came, he showed me the question paper and opened both the chits and asked me if I knew which one he should copy from. Mango Seed was the name of the prose.

The Index guy: Rank #2

Sathish(my classmate) used to write almost the whole syllabus on small paper chits, burning the midnight oil. The characters can be read only with 2 things on Earth.His eyes and a magnifying glass. The best part however, was that he wrote a small index, neatly tabulated in his hand. It looked like this.

LP, RP and TP were left, right and top pockets! This guy was simply a genius. For practicals, he had the admin password(how he got it is a secret till date) and used to upload all the programs on to the public folder before the exams started. That was the ultimate social service for all of us.

On linux console a command like

li -main/proglist

would fetch us the programs. All we had to do was fake as if we are typing something and keep opening the debug window from time to time. Just when the time was getting over, copy, paste & run the program, and Bobs your uncle!

(I owe you big time Sathish Machaan)

The God of Xerox: Rank#1

One week before the exam, this guy flicked the "additional sheets"(A4 size)from the faculty department and wrote all the answers for the possible questions and hid them between his pad and a pad cover. If the expected questions came, he took the particular one out and attached it to the main page. He signed his additional sheets looking at the signature of the invigilator on the main page. This guy was simply the best, in my opinion, for what he did demanded brains, guts and watertight execution.

I shall blame the educational system for all that my friends or I did. Copying is like a by-product of a sort of a butterfly effect of the...damn I'll stop. It doesnt make sense, I know.

If you guys remember anything of this kind, leave comments and enhance this knowledge base of nonsense ;)

Quitting 88mm for one last time

2008-10-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

I didn't quit when my friends or cousins pleaded. Dismissed the occasional cough and ignored the frequent scoff. In fact, even the only person for whom I might have quit smoking, couldn't get me to quit the habit. I'd rather smoke away my worries than worry about my smoking. And then it happened.

Jeevodaya, a place that does hospice for cancer patients was an hour away. Accompanying around 10 colleagues, 3 of whom smoke, I had no idea what I was going to witness. On my way, I felt I wanted to smoke as many cigarettes as possible, for the fear that I may quit after this visit and that it will be the last I'll see of one of my best buddies-the ciggy.

The folks at Jeevodaya told me that cancer patients with Severity 1 and 2 usually get "treatment" in hospitals and those who fall under Severity 3 or 4 do not get treatment as there is none. Jeevodaya gives "hospice" to these people; people who were told that they have, hardly a month to live.

Hospice involves dressing the wounds. Cancer cells replicate and multiply in crazy numbers and dig up the skin and flesh out of a person. Hence, the sisters there, clean these wounds and alleviate the pain to an extent. Hospice basically is about care and prayer. Social service blokes come and talk to them, organize games and entertain them. Money is all secondary here. The reasons are obvious.

It's a delicate situation to be in, trust me. I'm sorry to say, you can literally see death written all over their faces, but your job is to make them smile and forget the misery they're undergoing. Cancer patients here were either addicted to smoking or "Gutkha". Women from villages who have a lot of "Paan", not knowing that it's dangerous also end up here.

Smokerman(not taking names here), a 30 year old guy was lying in bed, waiting for youngsters like me. He wanted to pass on a good message and a horrible warning before he breathed his last. They told me he had 2 weeks to live. But he looked fine, just a small piece of bandage on his neck. Throat cancer due to smoking, I was told. Hearing this, an organ in my body found a lump in itself, my throat.

A week later, he had metres of bandage around his neck, to cover the hollow part. Yes, the cancer cells required merely 7 days to dig out his entire flesh around the throat area. His vocal chord had been bitten off my the termite like cancer cells. He could not talk. With immense pain, he shook his hands and signaled "No Smoking boys, dont do it".

If you thought this was a difficult sight to watch, I must tell you it comes second. His mom who was hale and healthy, wept buckets sitting next to his bed, screaming that she is watching her son die every second.

A week later, Smokerman's bed was occupied by another lady. He was gone. Gone for good, but not before experiencing a tortuous 3 weeks. Every time he coughed, it must have been like a knife stabbing his throat. It was worse, every time he watched his mom watch him.

As much as I hate my sentimental posts, I feel obliged to pass on a good message :)

Remember, there is no cure for cancer. But cancer cures something...smoking.

Just keeping up the promise I made at the end of this post.

The Indian Stunt Gurus

2008-09-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

I'm sparing Bollywood for now, since I am not in touch with the industry. We will now have a countdown on the best stunts ever. Stunts that will put the Hollywood blokes to shame.

Position:5

SUPERHERO NAME: VIJAYKANTH 1.0

POWERS:

a) Can bravely adorn headphones that resemble a device which takes in electric shocks.

b) Can generate 100 Mega Watts of power by biting his teeth and staring at a person.

c) All in all, he can speak dialogues even when electricity is passing through him

POSITION:4

SUPERHERO NAME: BALAYYA 1.0

POWERS:

a) Biker dude who can drive an Indian bike faster than a train.

b) Specializes in jumping from one compartment to another over the train

c) Can crawl beneath the compartments too, without the bike of course.

POSITION: 3

SUPERHERO NAME: T RAJENDRAN

POWERS: Sadly, all powers have been stripped off our hero and his voice which was once, used to scare the daylights out of people has been reduced to a meek sounding one.

POSITION: 2

SUPERHERO NAME: VIJAYKANTH 2.0

POWERS:

a) Can catch any flying object with utmost ease

b) He can face any bullet aimed at him thanks to the mangal-aarthi plates hidden beneath his clothing

c) You may ask what happens if the bullet is aimed at his face. If you have that doubt, I suggest you read the first point again :)

POSITION: 1

SUPERHERO NAME: BALAYYA 2.0

POWERS:

a) His updated version 2.o, has not forgotten about his skills on a train

b) Knows magical mantras and recites them to implement his stunts

c) Can move a train with the mantras and the secret way to implement it. (Pat on the thigh and the direction of the train to be shown with his finger)

There are plenty more, but the superheroes are going to be the same. The new kid on the block seems to be Sam Anderson but he is yet to start showing stunts. Until then, keep watching out for these 3 :)

Operation 403-Success but a failure

2008-09-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

This post being another true incident, is specific to my friends circle(50p), but people who lived in hostels can definitely connect to an incident like this :)

HIS-TORY

1) I almost got expelled in my first year of college on allegations of breaking tubelights and planting country-made bombs(They're a bit more louder than the loudest Diwali firecracker) inside the hostel premises. 50p saved my ass saying I was not the kind of guy who would do such cheap acts.

2) Gnyanamani was a tough officer in VIT university and I had got into trouble a lot of times with this guy. In fact, he refused to allow my sister inside VIT when she wanted to visit me inside the campus.

3) The hostel in-time was 9 pm and the only punks who could return after that were people who "knew" the security guards. We "knew" them pretty well and one of my close friends would often buy them stuff(or he did something to them that made them very loyal and helpful to our entire gang)

MY-STORY

We were preparing to leave hostel at 8:55(our usual time for movie outings) and asking friends who were interested too. "Fakir" never watched a late night show and we managed to convince him saying nothing can happen to us since we "knew" the security guards.

IIM-RAGS who had already watched the movie, the previous day and returned to his hostel room by climbing the pipe at 1 am, was not interested. But he was forced to come along with us and he finally gave in.

Sharjah who wanted to come to his first late night movie came till the hostel gates. For the instinctive guy that he was, he sensed something and went back to his room.

I always had company when I committed a crime in college. The entire 50p was my partner-in-crime and Jackson, who heads all our crime activities ranging from a chillar late night movie to preparing Jays, was all cool. After all, it was just another day for him. ( A quick tribute to Jackson for having been there and done all that: Can convince any high authority into doing anything in college, get stuff and roll Jays at any time including time of exams, help anybody at anytime for anything. I considered him an OASIS. He would have 13 arrears at any point of time and he would not think twice when you want him to do something when you're busy preparing for exams )

The movie got over at 12:30 and 8 VIT blokes caught a single auto back to hostel. We always stop the auto at the railway crossing so that we can crawl like the soldiers do, in case of an emergency. Auto would be the dumbest option to enter our hostel.

We walked till our G Block and went about discussing the usual question: Do we climb the pipe or just talk our way into the hostel? The guards kept changing and unless we were sure it was a guard we "knew", we would not risk taking that option.

We decided that the pipe would be the best option and we gathered up around the backside of the building.

The G Block security guards were the people we "knew" but the Hostel Supervisor Rajesh who kind of knew about our activity had made a good deal with the guards. Dough was probably one of the possible spoilers of the friendship between us and the guards.

One of us started climbing and the others were waiting for the turn below.

*Whistles* and *Torchlights*!!! We turned around and heard people approaching us. 2 guys who sensed this fast ran towards the railway gates(which is 1 Km away from the hostel). Their story ends here and they walked another 2 Kilometres and slept in their friend's apartment.

The 6 of us were startled. It wasn't the G block security guards after all. They were a whole fucking bunch of guards from many blocks. G block fellows were scanning and guarding G block sneaky exits and entrances alone. Rajesh was the brainchild behind this operation and obviously he had it all well planned.

The 6 of us got caught and were made to assemble at the front gate. The G Block guards were quick to explain to us, in a jiffy, that they had no choice but to oblige to their boss. They had betrayed us.

We were made to sleep outside the hostel on newspapers and we were let in next morning at 6am. Fakir was crestfallen for obvious reasons and IIM Rags felt sad he had to undergo this for watching a movie for the second time on consecutive days!

Beeru, Jackson and I were not a happy lot either. Next day, the remaining 5 guys went to college and I decided to sleep. At around 11 am, another supervisor whom we called Clive Lloyd came and inspected our room(Room 403 already had its history. The room was vacant for a long time because 4 people were expelled out of the hostel!!! Talk about the power of numbers).

They do this to see if any additional penalty is applicable so the criminals are kept out of hostels forever and if possible, chuck them out of college too. He woke me up and shouted at me for possessing a pack of cards(Read the hostel rules post and you wont find it funny that playing cards are bad). He found a tumbler and sniffed it. Some blokes use a tumbler to store weed and Clive got excited looking at one. That tumbler however, was used by us only for drinking tea. Being lazy asses we had not washed it for nearly a semester. Clive Lloyd sniffed it for a second and quickly threw it out of the door in disgust, the next second. There is no feeling to express this cheap enjoyment which I cherish till today.

3 days later, the entire VIT had notices stating that the 6 of us have been officially dispatched to reside outside campus on a temporary or a permanent mission. No it was not that decent. I said, we were expelled out of the hostel for an indefinite time and we need to vacate asap. A "suitable" fine was also applicable.

Whatever damage this incident did to us is eclipsed by the fact that we laugh over it today! After all, we came back into the hostel using IIM rags, Fakir's and Beeru's Good-boy-images. A major problem in getting back to the hostel though, was the fact that Jackson was included in this crime list! I was in no position to pull strings either, with Gyanamani ready to nail me with the slightest opportunity.

Another reason why we laugh over it is because we entered the B block, next year where all such criminals are put together. The movie incident became a really chillar episode and it was not even worth saying it was a crime trying to climb pipes. B block grooms some of VITs best criminals. Be it people who roll Jays or the ones who smoke them right on the face of the block's warden ;)

Adver(se)tising in India

2008-08-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

Considering the fact that this vehicle roams in India, the advertiser is a smart ass. Sex is a word that sells anywhere in the world. More so, in India thanks to the fact that it's not publicly or openly discussed. (The population would not support the previous statement though, because we multiply like rabbits)

Without digressing further into sex, population or theme parks (do you see a connection here? Blame the picture!), let me first appreciate a few brands which I totally respect for the Ads they display.

1)Amul for their banner Ads which are cult material.

2)Fevicol has managed to capture humor without making much sense.

3)Surf Excel(the Ad with two kids)

4)Apache RTR with the Newton laws and Pulsar, the bike which checks out women and proves it's definitely male.

5)Minto fresh with the guy sneaking into the classroom. Happy dent with its pathetic experiment on a cow came back well with the "Kingdom Ad" where people smiling, light up an entire city.

6)Hutch Ads were an amazing lot and the pug was an instant celebrity.

But the Indian Advertising industry still has a looooong way to go!

1)A third grade movie in India with no script or story can fill the first show housefull by merely displaying Mallika Sharawat on the posters.

2)All detergent Ads are shot with 2 women in white sarees holding two buckets. One with dirty water, the other one, sparkling clean.

However, everyone liked the old ad "Washing powder Nirma" with the little girl going round and round :)

Listen to it here.

3)Amitabh Bachchan can use products ranging from Reid and Taylor to Navratan Thel oil. He can turn into a spirit to eat chocolates and can also sell Hajmola candies.
And oh, he is part of the detergent clan too.

4)While condom Ads should be stressing on their quality or on preventing the production of kids, they often show an old man or a servant maid getting mushy looking at the used ones.

5)Pepsi, Coke and Sprite would go to the extent of selling their companies to project their Ads superior to the others! There is no one in the Indian Cricket team or the Bollywood junta who don't belong to a Cola brand.

6)Ever wondered why Liril women bathed only in fountains or other public places?

7)Ever wondered if anyone became a shade brighter using Fair and Lovely cream? People fall prey to the "before" and "after" images! Common sense should help you realize they caught a very fair girl for the Ad and made her dark for the "before" image.

8)All perfume Ads end with a girl finally falling for the guy. If that is all it takes, my roommate would've bought the entire perfume factory in town by now.

9)The worst farce on TV is the Oil Ad. All Cooking Oils say "No cholesterol". The fact, doctors say, is that no oil contains cholesterol and do not treat any brand as special in that regard!

10)The worst Ad I have ever seen in my lifetime:

Picture an Indian "First Night Scenario"

So, the bride is sitting in the room waiting for her husband. But wait, she is weeping badly.

A bunch of worried people ask her what's wrong?

She says: "No one got my husband Poombukaar chaddies" (Don't brand me a liar, I know it's difficult to believe)

The blokes get the groom "Poombukar innerwear" and the bride is shown all smiling and the lights go off.(I'm still ashamed to be living for I know I should've shot myself looking at the Ad)

Well,my memory ain't helping me enough in recollecting many TV ads so I leave it to the readers to comment and add their list of sad TV commercials!

I'm sure you at least remember the famous people like the Vicco Vajradanthi blokes who, by now, would have had their 5th anniversary or the Sundrop Oil Kid who jumped into Pooris and Chapathis!

Yamaha R15 full fairing, cool driving.

2008-08-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks!

Solace on a bad day came in the form of a bike, last night. And boy wasn't it awesome! Thanks to my friend Dan, who gave the bike at 1 am even when I was a little high on Absinthe ;)

I'm not a Bike guru or anything but I simply love driving bikes and I can tell you that the all new Yamaha R15 (of the R series) is a boon for the Indian Biker.

As always, honesty first. Pick up just ain't R15's forte and the first 3 gears wouldn't give you any better feeling than an Apache or a Pulsar. In fact, the RTR technology in Apache can give you a better push on first gear.

"If you have charm, it doesn't matter if you don't have anything else.
If you don't have charm, anything else you have does not count"

This is all I can think of when it comes to the Yamaha R15. It has got the looks and charm that will tempt any guy who can afford it. I don't think the pick up would be a major parameter considering the looks(and the top speed of course).

But the best part of R15 is simply the riding comfort. With full fairing (I guess this is the first Indian bike with full fairing), you'll feel like ripping on the roads. The engine wouldn't mind it since it's a liquid cooled one and it can take the load much better than other engines. Hats off to Yamaha for introducing the first Indian made liquid cooled Engine.

The speed is also unprecedented by Indian standards. I hit 75 on the 4th gear and it was smooth. 5th on 90 and I was done. But when I take it on the highway, I'm expecting to hit the 140 mark with the 6th Gear as Biking gurus have certified.

Above all, is the maneuverability. Do not let the thin tyres scare you! The bike is friggin' solid on turns and overtaking fast cars on 4th gear would be a cake walk on average traffic. Don't you worry about split second braking. Disc brakes on both front and rear work like a charm.

Gurus claim the bike is very reliable and the performance will bowl you over. For blokes who're expecting mileage out of this bike, I would suggest you go for the "much appreciated" byk. Well byk did give 90 Kms/Litre but most bikers later realized that the 90 was split into 50 while driving and the remaining 40 on pushing the bike when it breaks down ;)

Sorry for digressing, but I was in splits when I saw some mileage freaks in Chennai pushing the "byk" on roads till the nearest mechanic! Talk about greed!

Bottomline : R15 is a supercool performer and is here to stay. But also note that the number of R15's sold would exactly equal the number of rich kids in India :p

Am I phobiaphilic?

2008-08-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

Well phobiaphilic ain't the best oxymoron but it sure makes me a complete moron simply because I usually freak the crap out of people when I tell them about my Phobias.

As always facts first: I am allergic to/scared of 4(main)things:

1)Beetroot (ask my mum who tried[in vain] hiding it into pakoras and giving me)

2)Thermocol (ask my inconsiderate colleagues who have a ball of a time seeing me go mad when they scratch it...aawwww the thought of it gets me hysterical)

3)Pregnant women (not allergic, but as a kid, I was a little scared when I saw them. This fear seems to have faded away though. Perhaps it will vanish completely by the time I really cannot afford to have that fear :p. Talk about God and his plans! )

4)Weddings.(A not so inexplicable allergy)

Based on historic data, I can, with confidence, tell you that even my best efforts at making people understand the first 3 phobias would be futile. Hence, I am jumping to the last one right away.

Attending a wedding is the last thing I'd do on mother Earth and I had taken an oath long ago, that the only wedding I'll attend next is my own. However, God always has his own plans and he has never allowed things to happen in my will. I have been attending a few of them, thanks to parental pressure.

Reasons why I hate weddings and also discourage people not to attend them:

1) You will not know 99.97836521% of the people who attend the wedding. Sometimes, you may not even know the bride and groom and the only reason you are required to attend it is either because,

a) You and the bride would've played hide and seek in the same colony 15 years ago,

b) your mom and the groom's mom would've met each other in a neighboring supermarket a few weeks back.

or

b) the groom is your very very close relative. By south Indian standards, a close relative can include someone who is your grandfather's cousin brother's son's sister-in-law's husband's sister's second-cousin(phew)

2) You'll encounter two different kinds of people.

a) GROUP 1: (Consisting of people who have seen you recently, say 1 year back)

Regardless of how grossly fat you've become, they will ask you that one typical question: "ayyo! aen romba elachhi poitte?" ("why have you lost so much weight?").

One stare at my mum and she is quick to say "They're just concerned". Yeah right. Somehow, I only see the sarcasm in the statements and concern seems invisible however I look at it.

b) GROUP 2: (Consisting of people who only remember seeing you in chaddies)

"adaengaapppaa evlo perusaa valandhuttaaan..chinna vayasule paathadhu" ("wow how much he has grown..saw him when he was a child..he was soooo small then").

Do they expect a child, not to ever grow so that, how they see me now matches that of what they remember to have seen me? Ridiculous statement I say.

3) Your spinal cord gets the maximum burden during weddings. Old people from the 18 hundreds(1800s) who stood the test of time attending marriages right from your great grand father's to your cousin's weddings fill up the first few seats of the wedding. And why are they there? To bless people with wealth, health and prosperity.

I would have no choice in such situations but to fall flat 180 degrees on the floor and wait for them to finish scattering the yellow rice grains on my head.

Simultaneously they recite a host of cliched "blessings" like "live for 100 years" (used to Wonder if 100 was some sort of blessing-allowance limit and after that you should rather, kick the bucket). Only after that are you allowed to get up.

The cliched blessings would sometimes be way too templated that it ain't the right blessing for you! Stuff like:

"nalla perya perya padipellam padichi peryaa doctoraa varanum" (may you study "big big studies" and become a "big doctor") Poor old people, they wouldn't realize that we have already passed out as engineers and that, his blessings are going waste!

or

"nallaa sekka seve nu oru ponnu unakku amayanum" (may you get a fair girl to marry). What if you already had a girlfriend who was dark?" and what is the funda behind blessing someone with only a fair girl? Are all dark girls doomed to be kept out of old blokes' blessings? We must all vehemently protest against this racial blessing :)

4) The most dreaded part in any wedding is the Advance Booking System. No, I'm not talking about trains here. Talking about wedlock!

Jobless aunties with daughters are always on the lookout for prospective son-in-laws. It may seem too early for both the girl and the guy but should the right parameters match, they are quick to grab the opportunity a deal and get their daughters introduced to you.

But before all that is the secret interview. They first ask you if you are an Engineer. Most guys pass this criteria and they move on to the second round. Next is the company you work for. Like the sign which reads "All major credit cards accepted", the aunties have an implicit agreed-upon database of software companies that are recognized and accepted for wedlock. I would proudly say that Bye-Bye was one of them :)

After ensuring that you are a qualified candidate, the aunties reveal their true colors. They bring along the equally embarrassed daughter (always noticed the degree of embarrassment on the girl's face when they were being introduced to my cousins) and start off by saying something like "She is my daughter.Very intelligent girl. She also works for this great company. Earning good salary. She is a very bold and confident girl etc etc)

I always had my sympathies for the girl for all you know, she wouldn't have,in the wildest of dreams, realized till then that her parents had plans for her wedding.

5) Gifting is mandatory in any wedding and it has to happen on the stage only. Being photographed is acceptable as it requires only a second from your side. But standing next to the couple, doing nothing but forcing a smile for 100 darned seconds is a crazy idea.

In this case, I had my sympathies for the couple. Meeting an entire jing-bang of blokes and posing with them is clearly catastrophic considering the amount of people and the amount of jewelery they adorn . Not to forget the one ton garland each of them wear which almost covers their entire body.

6) Leaving the wedding hall without having food is completely unethical for reasons beyond the scope of my understanding.

Anyways,have you ever thought of killing the asshole who flashes bright yellow light on your face when you were eating in the dining hall? Why the fuck would anyone wanna videotape and record you when you're having food? Well, I still don't get the funda. Anyways, such videos are a breach of privacy and must be banned from being published!

As far as weddings are concerned, I'd recommend you to attend it only if you have a bunch of friends to go with. The best wedding I had ever attended was that of my sister's. Had around 40 of my friends coming and we managed to transform the wedding hall into our VIT hostel with all the galatta.

Of course I wouldn't deny the fact that it was the best wedding simply because my sister was getting married and not cuz my friends had come :p. I hope the last statement calms my sister down when she reads this post. There there, I can already see you smiling, Manju :)

The weekend that wasnt

2008-08-09T23:36:00.000-07:00

I bunked work on Thursday and Friday so I can spend 4 days in Bengalooru - The Silicon Valley of India and half my native place too.

A saying goes: "If u throw a stone in Bangalore, it either falls on a dog or a software engineer".

Yeah, there is no paucity when it comes to dogs or software engineers in Bangalore. In fact there are banners across the city that read "C, C++ and Kannada are the most widely spoken languages in this city!"

As for dogs, there are many incidents where they attacked and injured/killed humans at odd hours. So, I'm not getting into it.

Though my main purpose of visit was my cousin's wedding, I had a few friends and a special person to meet too. So, I got to roam around the city. As for the wedding, it was a different episode altogether.

A few, if not all, aspects of the city I observed:

a)Two legs can get you faster to a destination than a 150 cc Pulsar, thanks to the traffic.

I guess the fact that they have traffic signals and traffic cops on top of fly-overs would substantiate my claim.

We could soon expect tea shops that sell Omelettes and Ciggies on fly-overs ;)

b)The weather is something you will not leave the city for. Splendid weather I must say. For bikers, the weather is just awesome but the traffic again, is discouraging. A ride after 10:30 pm would give a heavenly lift to your spirits.

c)The Auto guys are no different from their Chennai or Hyderabad counterparts devising ingenious new ways to rob people off their dough.

d)Blokes here are crazy about clothes and accessories. It's hard to find people who are boringly dressed. Freaky costumes, ear rings on all places except the ear and perfumes are some things you cant help but notice.

e)You can pass 5 hours of your time doing nothing on Brigade road , yet not feel bored.

f)Software Engineers claim they don't have much of a social life though. I met my Bye-Bye friends who work in Whitefield. Whitefield is Bangalore's Sainikpuri(Hyderabad) or Nolambur(Chennai) as far as the distance is concerned but extremely hi-tech. Half of their day is wasted on travel, remaining half at the Bye-Bye office which needs no further description.

g)For blokes who do have a social life, coffee shops and pubs are ubiquitous. I'm sure Bangalore has more Coffee Day outlets and pubs than any other city in Asia.

h)Coming back to the traffic. As if waiting in the traffic was not enough, people get tortured by eunuch's who pester them for money. The 120 second wait at Dairy Circle signal seemed a lifetime for me as 2 eunuchs tried to open my helmet visor and also block me from moving an inch further. One glance at the green signal and I felt like a prisoner being released after 20 years in jail.

i)Last but not the least, the city sees strikes almost every week. Roads get blocked with people shouting slogans and at times displaying violence too.

Just last week, there was a protest against Rajinikanth for his statements on the Hogenakkal dam. Today, when I'm just leaving Bangalore, I witnessed people throwing stones and bricks on any vehicle that carried the godforsaken letters "TN" on their number plates.

All said, Bangalore is one of the most happening cities in India with malls sprouting up like mushrooms and huge buildings all over the city. An entry criteria for any company to be an MNC could be a branch in Bangalore, no doubt. So pack your bags, come here and get Bangalored. Oops! please do not ban my blog, I meant Bengaloored. Cheers :)

Randy Pausch on Google's homepage

2008-07-26T03:29:00.000-07:00

Today, I noticed an extra link on Google's homepage! It was a link to a speech, referred to as the "Last Lecture" given by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carneggie Mellon University. It was added, owing to his recent death. Randy Pausch was 47 and he died of cancer.

Check out the video. It is indeed, very inspiring.

Hats off to Google for giving the late, Randy Pausch a piece of probably, the most precious "web real estate", Google's homepage!

Drunkard Vs Alcoholic

2008-07-24T07:11:00.000-07:00

I constantly keep reminding my folks that I am not an alcoholic. I am a drunkard. For the uninitiated, these two terms describe two extremely different characters. I have been pretty jobless so let me present you the difference in a neat format. (Kindly ignore the blank space. Blogger behaves a little funny when tables are written in code and hey I'm sober right now)

FEATURE	DRUNKARD(Read me)	ALCOHOLIC
SKETCH
SKETCH EXPLANATION	NEVER drinks alone Keeps talking while drinking	PREFERS to drink alone Goes into absolute silence once the first sip is downed
ETHICS	NEVER takes a sip without saying CHEERS Makes a toast to people around him	Sniffs and licks the first sip without waiting for anybody Raises the half-empty glass when a toast is made by drunkards
BRANDS	Anything with the radical "-OH" would do Can drink Guiness beer and Padmavathi 5000 with the same joy Hard liquor varieties may include Monitor whisky and Military Rum	Price must exceed $50 (Rs. 2000) Pukes on smelling a bottle of Padmavathi Nothing less than Johnny walker would do
LOCATION	Feels comfortable whether it's under a lorry or in a pub	Requires a good sofa and music
CAPACITY	Usually very high but, Depending on location and distance from home, has an upper limit	Usually very low but, Depending on (bad) mood, can down an entire bottle all alone
MIXING	Not required really. In fact, Pepsi or Sprite might contaminate the drink!	Mixing with soda is a must. In fact, Soda is the main component for an alcoholic with an 80:20 ratio
SUPPLEMENTS	Mandatory Lower limit includes chips, crispies, chikki or even pickle Upper limit includes grapes and chocolates	Anything other than Soda, Ice cubes or the Alcohol is an adulterant to the alcoholic
POST DRINKING(This is how the bottles would look)
NEXT DAY	Hang over Enjoyment more during drinking but low the next day	No Hang Over Enjoys to an optimum level before and after

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But one thing common to all those who consume alcohol is the fact that they never quit! They are ready for a drink any time and most importantly, they do not require a reason or an occasion to drink. I guess that's the "spirit" of it. So cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeersss ;)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Crossword Clue#1

2008-07-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

I love crosswords. I like creating clues more than solving them because I suck at solving these days. So here is my first set of clues. I will post the answer as a comment with the annotation. Till then, intelligent blokes can guess the answers.

1) Mixed respect for ghost (7)

2) 100 pets again, to become a ghost (7)

Common sense should tell you that the answer for both clues is the same :)

Quitting 88mm a 100 times

2008-06-19T09:39:00.000-07:00

"Its easy to quit smoking. I've done it a 100 times"

Not only Mark Twain, a million other smokers would say the same thing Im sure. I was a quite a smoker in my college days and I decided that one day when I'm able to quit the habit completely, I will boldly blog about it. Well here I am.(With some help from famous smokers who managed to give amazing quotes)

"It would be a service to mankind if the pills were available in slot machines and the cigarettes were placed on prescription"

I'd have vouched for this anytime during my smoking days. A dozen on any normal day with an extra 5 on exam days. Or another dozen extra if the day involved alcohol.

"Alcohol and cigarettes are like the two hands that clap. You need both to give the effect"

Wondering if this quote sucks?! Well yeah I wrote it thats why.

In fact during exam days, there used to be so much demand for fags(=cigs and not gays).
It used to be the indispenable entity for us to stay awake and study the whole night. When fags got over, the alternate solution were beedis. You get 10 beedis for the price of 1 cigarette.

And when everything got over, the one guy who had cigarettes would get worshipped like God. Suddenly out of the blue, he would become everybody's best friend in hostel. Of course we had rules.

1) Once a smoker has helped you, you're forever indebted to him. Gratitude can be shown but is allowed only in the form of fags. He has the right to come knocking on your doors anyday at any hour.

2)We all comply to 4 D and S. It means you take 4 drags and spin the fag to the next guy in the circle. When any of the greedy morons takes an extra drag(puff), he is penalized in the next round.

3)Lenin rule:It states that a smart smoker is one who smokes 15 cigarettes in a day having bought only 4.

(Origin: We had this smartass called Lenin(50p) who bought 4 cigarettes a day. He uses the first one early in the morning and the remaining 3, late night. All the remaining fags, he smoked by acquired friendships, giving company to the owner of the fag. So when the hostel is devoid of fags, Lenin used the buffer 3 in the most clandestine fashion.)

4)Nobody gets to "go dutch" with cigarettes. One guy buys and all smoke. Anybody who buys one fag and asks the remaining to buy their own gets disowned by the community :)

5)Quitting is prohibited. Talk about peer pressure. Emotional blackmail would make you do the rebound. Common pathetic dialogs include

5)a)Machaan, we all started smoking together and how can you do this to me?

5)b)No use quitting in college life.Finish college and we'll all quit. Lol this is what they said during my training days too. And then I joined work where fags are considered the best stress busters)

5)c)Ok fine I know you quit, you dont have to smoke. Just come with us and give company. (No smoker will ever prefer passive smoking! And it starts all over again)

Next ones are the best. All engineering students will suddenly get MBBS gyaan.

5)d)We all have already started smoking na? Even when we quit now, it makes no sense because all our nerve endings are gone already.

5)e) Cancer is always hereditary machaaan so dont worry we all will never get cancer. This would be the hope giving statement for any engineer ;)

And smoking is not all you do with a ciggy. Other stunts you could do:

1)Lighting up diwali crackers with the fag in your mouth.

2)Smoke rings. I reached up to 10 rings. There were blokes who did 200.

3)Empty the nicotine inside and fill it up with better stuff. For this you need only fag and you're done for the next 2 days.

4)Use the ash to mix it with the birthday bath to completely ruin the supposedly "happy" guy who has had his birthday.

A smoker would go to any extent to get his cigarette when he needs it. Some situations where I (now) feel embarrassed about:

1)I waited till 9 pm to get my TCS results. Losing patience I went out to smoke and they announced my name on the first 5 at 9:05 pm. Whole audience was clapping for the loser smoking outside campus.

2)In Singapore, fags were bloody costly. So I smoked one for sometime, extinguished it halfway and used the next half for a "rainy day".

3)Me and my friend missed a train by a whisker because we went to buy fags for the journey.

4)Journeys always involved 3 or 4 of us smoking inside the loos. A fifth guy(non-smoker) always kept guard and warned us if the TTE came!

There are many others, like my friend managing to smuggle a ciggy in Thirumala where smoking is banned, but I prefer not to degrade myself or my friends anymore.

All said and done, smoking cigarettes is the most dangerous thing for anyone. I have quit smoking after a few incidents that touched me deeply. I realized it aint fun anymore. I'm definitely gonna blog about it here. (The word "here" would get converted into a link soon.Keep checking).

"Dynamic" Bullshit

2008-06-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Watch the video before reading this.

For blokes who dont understand thamizh, you might not get the video.Chillax, I'll explain. For thamizh speaking people, I am sure this video incensed you already.

The news documentary says its a "dynamic wedding" taking place in a small town called pudukoattai in Tamil Nadu. What the video shows after that is utter bullshit.

So the two assholes clad in suit are set out to make this new revolution. They want to prove that tams were originally "freaky" people even before the Aryan civilization but now they are regarded as a conservative society. They want this image makeover and wanna prove this is how tams actually are.

Their concept is that of "pasapinaippu" which translates to "love bonding". Alright people are "showing" their love in India and making some too which is evident from our country's population. There is nothing that this society lacks in that regard. Why make such a hue and cry of it? They project it in such a sucky way that it ultimately looks gross.

I know it makes no sense whatsoever. They probably will set out making dumb changes to the society because one of the two said they were going to make this a revolution. It was pathetic to see them shouting 'dynamic!' 'dynamic' 'dynamic' inside a wedding hall. There is a good probability that the entire wedding was a sham.

Few things you must have noticed:

1) The guy was not all that happy seeing the whole jing bang kiss his wife(to be/not to be) while he dint have his turn yet.

2)The tall suit-clad wannabe revolutionist beat Richard Gere by a mile. Poor Gere thought he was the only man in India who sinned ;)

3)There was this long queue of people waiting to kiss the remaing set of people. I did not get the algorithm right though. As in who kisses who? (If you know please leave a comment)

4)It promotes a man kissing a man. And woman a woman. Fine whatever, but why make that kiss look like your being paid to do so? I'm sure it was because someone asked (read forced) them to. There was an air of artificiality that filled the event.

Bottomline: Gross way of addressing an issue which does not even exist, by a group of senseless bastards. You guys arent getting anywhere, so stop the shit and get a life.

(written by a tam who is ashamed and embarrassed by this whole nonsense)

Rocking the cradle - then pinching the baby!

2008-06-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

Bye-bye (name tweaked: a software company I worked for before, I joined Google) has a brilliant world class training facility in Trivandrum, Kerala. When a bunch of 500 students got recruited in VIT into Bye-bye, they had no idea the training was going to be so much fun. I was part of that 500 and August 1st 2007 was my first day at training.

Bye-bye freaked us all out on the first day of training. Here are some of the Bye-bye rules:

1) 9 am sharp and everyone needs to be in class on time. Else your rebuked upon badly. Yeah you have school, then bindaas college life and again back to school with Bye-bye.

2) You need to look extremely professional. That includes:

a) Wearing formals top to bottom.
b)Wearing your top most button was compulsory
c)Tie which must cover that button mentioned above.
d)You need to wear socks that match on both legs.

Im not kidding but they have periodic checks and guys are asked to lift their pants up so they can confirm you are wearing the right pair of socks.

So we are divided into batches and if one guy fails the "professionalism" check, negative points are awarded for that batch.

Once, such a check was done and the whole audience consisting of students from many batches were in splits!! Suddenly a guy from my batch walked in late and the "quality checkers" asked him which batch he was from and we were all signalling him to tell the wrong batch. This costs us a few points too LOL.

The final results are announced end of the week and the paper is posted on the notice boards!! People throng the notice board and have a laugh taking the case of people who committed crimes on different categories like

"Dint wear tie properly"

"Sleeves folded"

"Wrong socks"

"Using ipod in class"

and many more!!

3)Attendance on all days is compulsory. Unless your friggin sick they dont entertain leaves. All the 50 days are to be attended.

4)ID cards!! Having one is just not enough. You have to swipe it every time you enter or leave the building. Even if you find the door open you have to swipe it too. Else you become a tailgater.

Inspite of all this, the training was so much fun. It was our second college with weekend trips to places around God's own country and it was the first time we had a Co-Ed dormitory ;)
I guess Bye-bye doesnt recruit a lot of babes so it aint a great celebration really.

Somehow, girls and guys always had something to study in the hostel since that was the only excuse they can use to "talk" to each other till 12 am or more than that. Im sure that in the other guys- only hostels, people slept off by 10 pm ;)

Rumour has it that many people find their life partners @ training. Well I sure know one couple for sure who would chuckle reading this post!!

Few things I remember from the training days:

B6 (6 in malayalam is pronounced "aaru" so B plus "aaru" gives us baaru which means BAR)

B6 is a blessed place for corporates as we had a discount for Bye-bye employees. After a tough day at work, we all used to gather there, drink and then head to the Executive Hostel.

Coffee Beans

This restaurant is on top of the same hill which houses our training centre. The view is simply awesome. Coffee and sutta during lunch breaks was the best timepass.

Fire!!!

All training batches have a 30 minute session on how to react in case a fire opens up in any of the Bye-Bye facilities. They talked about how our business must continue and we must pick up critical hardware before vacating.

So one day, a Mr.Colonel, the chief security gave a talk and he said 2 minutes is the time before which all humans and equipment should be out of the building.

Some days later when our classes were going on the alarm went on buzzing. The building we were in was a 3 storyed one. We all came out and started wondering if fire really broke out.

Suddenly 3 people from the ground floor, carrying a huuuuuuuge water pipe started spraying water on all the 3 floors. Amused by this incident, a few of them got wet in that water and others assumed that it was a real fire and ran out of the building, dodging the spray. As for me, I wasnt sure whether it was a real fire or another fire drill. SO it took around 2 1/2 minutes to vacate.

Icing on the cake though, was when Colonel was watching people hurry out of the building and a few dumasses were showing their ID cards on the system before vacating.

Colonel had a session after this and took the case of these people asking if their attendance was more important than their lives. LOL.

Training finally turned out to be great fun and we later realized that was Bye-bye's way of welcoming people just before they get screwed at work place.

Apparently the company asks for options as to where you wanna work and assigns places just where you dont wanna work. Bongs ended up in Chennai and Tams ended up in Mumbai. Thats good in a way but why ask for options at all?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So fun stopped literally the day training got over. Then, it was anything but fun.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1)3 days are given for people to settle in their new locations.

2)Most of us realize we're on bench! Which means you can sit at home and salary will come knocking at our doorsteps. They call it resource pooling though.

3)My friend in Delhi was in Bye-bye s payroll even after he left the company and joined a BPO in Chennai! Thats how well they know their employees

4)Projects are forced upon people. People who did mechanical engineering get to design websites and computer science blokes work on excel sheets adding two rows and three columns. Argh! Ask me about it!!

5)In the end, you feel like going back to training :)

Read more here.

Mujjjae indhee nayee maloom

2008-06-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

Yeah I'm one of those hopeless tam guys who cant speak hindi for nuts. Many of my colleagues still wonder how people in India wouldnt know Hindi. Well I only request them to travel down south. I'm sure there are many in Tamil Nadu who think Tamil is their national language :p.

Honesty first. Yes, Hindi was not encouraged and made compulsory in schools across Tamil Nadu and many failed to make it a point to learn when they could. I guess I've passed that age now and I find myself lingo challenged in the city of Hyderabad.

So every time someone talks to me in Hindi, I shoot the one statement I can speak fluently and deliver it neat:

"Mujhe hindi nahin maalum angraezee mein baat karo"

The real problem is when I talk to auto guys, barbers, shopkeepers. So in these situations, a passerby would think that either me or the shopkeeper is deaf and dumb. I try to interact with all sorts of hand signals.

1) Thumbs up and rocking up and down signifies "how much for the auto ride?"

2)Using two fingers in the shape of scissors and then keeping the thumb and two fingers parallel to it signifies "short haircut" to the barber. No wonder my hairstyle sucks ever since I left Chennai :(

People who go to hindi movies along with me have a tough time concentrating on the movie cuz I keep bugging them for the translation. In Chennai I used to watch thamizh and english movies only. Always felt that a North Indian girlfriend would ve been good to help my cause but i realized she would've dumped me the first time I took her to the movies.

Thamizh movies have always portrayed tams as hindi challenged blokes. The most famous one was an old Bhagyaraj movie where the hero tries to learn Hindi from an old man just to gain entry into his house and hit on his beautiful grand-daughter.

The old man says "Ek gaon main ek kisaan raha tha thaaa"

Hero says"Ek Gaon main ek kisaan ragu thatha"

Old man stresses "Raha tha thaaaaaaaa"

Hero: " Raggu thathaaaaaaa"

Another famous scene is a comedian fooling a girl saying he knows hindi and takes her into the fields, hoping for some romance. The girl asks him "how to say 'come here' in Hindi?"

Comedian: "idhar aaoooooooooo"

The impressed girl then asks him "how do you say 'go there' in Hindi"?
(pointing her finger to a tree )

Comedian thinks for a while, walks a few metres away from the girl, reaches the tree, turns back and says "idhar aaoooooooo"!!!

Personally, I regret not knowing Hindi and Im making a genuine effort to learn the language. Im the blacksheep of my family. Everybody speaks hindi well though my sister proved to us all that after she hit the USA she lost touch on hindi.

My cousin married a Gujju and during the wedding at Surat, a Gujarathi lady was searching for the bride and my cousin. Apparently that woman knew only Gujarathi and little hindi. She mentioned to my sister "kahan something dulha aur dulhan...woh dhono thoda something baat karne chahiye"

My sister came running and asked if these Gujjus had awesome customs during weddings. She thought that "dulha" has to take bath with "dulhan" then, and they were missing. LOL.
We were in splits then and I had some consolation that I wasnt the only one in the family ;)

Someday in my life, Im sure I will learn hindi. I havent given up as yet. But till then I'll have to manage with this hand signs "talent" and survive in Hyderabad. When I hit Chennai I dont have to worry. In fact even if it is Hindi I know way too much compared to the common junta. And after all, "अन्धों में काना राजा " ;)

(Translation for all you hindi challenged blokes(LOL): Among a set of blind people, the one-eyed guy is the king)

G for Goa.G for Gunny.G for Ghost

2008-06-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Im really bad at explaining horror stuff and getting people scared but I'm blogging anyway simply because of 1 reason: This happened for real. And it is easy to explain what happened in reality.

[Weak hearts-you can stop reading NOW].

I had been to Goa on December 2006, just a week before I had to leave for Singapore to do my project. Goa in two words: beach and alcohol. Nothing else mattered to me.

An occasional boozer converts into a drunkard when he hits Goa. So what I converted into probably cannot be categorized.

My friends and I used to wake up, reach out for a bottle of Royal Challenge or Blue Riband. Once the bottle is downed we got up from the bed and brushed our teeth!!!

So one day, we finished all our adventures by 12 30 am. By then we had been TOTALLY sloshed. A few Kingfishers on the beach throughout the morning, fish and Imperial Blue in the afternoon. Then hit the beach again with some Lime Juice in hand. Evening, we took our vehicles(I hate cars so I rented out a bike and the remaining blokes rented a car) and roamed one half of Goa.

There we played all watersports, had another round of alcohol(whats the difference you may ask? Well this time I had it with hookah ;)

Finally had a great dinner and we were all sloshed(except the guy who can drive the car). We started at 12 30 am and had to travel a looooong distance to reach our hotel(Calangute). The car chaps obviously sped ahead and it was only me and Kumar on the bike travelling at 90 to 100 Kmph on the highway.

This was how the roads looked like when we were riding:

I realized Kumar was dozing off and just to keep him occupied, I showed him how the highway would look like if i switched off my headlights.

This was how it looked like:

You can try lime, you can try puking or any other way to reduce the effect of alcohol, but trust me this one works like a charm. All the booze we had suddenly seemed to have disappeared. This one scared the daylights(damn where were they?) out of us. We just wanted to reach our guest house as soon as possible(and then probably try to start all over and get high again ;).

Hoping that my headlights wouldnt goof up, I sped again with high-beam on ! Kumar had nearly dozed off and he woke up with a thud thanks to my CBZ which started wobbling now. I immediately stopped and decelerated while the bike swerved automatically towards the edge of the road and I killed the engine immediately.

Please see the picture above again! Do you see 2 people there?!! Exactly, that exactly how it was when the headlights went off again! I could not really find Kumar. After a few seconds I vaguely saw that I have another person on that dreadful road beside me. Apparently, the back tyre had got punctured.

Kumar and I freaked out completely and were wondering what to do. We were talking to each other and I heard a voice.It did not sound like Kumar.

[Right now when Im just blogging about it Im seeing one zillion goosebumps on my hands and Im not kidding]

Kumar heard it too and he knew it wasnt me. He caught the bike and clung on to it. Before I tried to do the same thing, I heard the voice calling me.

"aaeeeeee inge vaaaa"

Translates to : aeeee come here.

Common sense told me I could be dreaming cuz I was in Goa and there was no way someone was talking to me in Tamizh. (Well yeah common sense aint so common. aaaaaah forget that now)

I was fucking scared and felt a chill go down my spine. By now, Kumar was shouting(he still was a bit high, poor thing). He yelled in thamizh "Who is it, where are you, who is it, where are you".

This freaked me out all the more. Imagine drowning with someone who doesnt know how to swim. Aint that totally hopeless? Thats exactly how I felt when I realized Kumar was more scared than me.

"Inge vaa..seekram vaaa onnum panna maattaen"

Translation: " Come here fast, I wont do anything"

The voice was more commanding and coarse and I wished I never came to Goa or atleast not taken a bike ride.

I lost hope on Kumar, left him where he was most comfortable-the bike and I turned back towards the direction from where the voice came.

I gathered some courage and inched towards the road. I saw nothing but I heard the voice again.
Right then, I was sure as dead it wasnt anthing physical but a bloody ghost because I saw nothing but heard voices.

"Naa setthu 10 varsham aachu , onnum panna mattaen inge vaaaaa"

Translation:" Im dead for the last 10 years, I wouldnt harm you"

WTF??? you expect someone to believe your harmless when you claim your dead already?

I wanted to turn back and run to the bike but was scared to do that also for reasons I still dont know.

I was slowly walking backwards and eyeing the highway like an eagle. I noticed there was nothing but a ...er..there was a gunny sack. Just a plain brown gunny sack.

Few seconds later the voice started again

"Oaadadhe inge vaa onnum panna mattaen"

Translation: " Dont run come here, I wont do anything"

I stopped right there and focussed. The voice came from the gunny bag lying on the road. Yes a fucking gunny bag! I did some imaginary geometry with my hands and all i could figure out was that only a dog could fit inside that gunny bag. I dont know how to explain that feeling, but you know, you are goddamned curious even when you know you could die of fear.

Going further towards the bag, the voice was louder and louder. It went like "come here fast", " I wont kill you cuz im dead already" "fast fast" and whats worse, it said "help me help me" when i reached the sack.

All those horror movie scenes I watched from childhood went reeling in front of my head. Curiousity however got the better of me and I bent down to look at the gunny bag.(Kumar was now curious too.Well why wouldnt he be? After all it was me who was nearer to the ghost)

I did not speak anything. Was waiting for something to happen. A sudden movement inside the gunny sack made me jerk and of course scream. I was about to run backwards as I saw a human figure coming out of the bag. I got even more scared and wished it was rather a ghost.

Having run a couple of metres backwards, I noticed the man was completely out of the gunny sack and I scanned him. He had no legs at all and his body stopped right at his tummy.

Phew! Me and Kumar were assured that we were gonna live! First question I shot was:

Me(in thamizh):Who are you?
Sackwaala: My name is srinivas
Me: Why the hell did you say you were dead? it freaked us out.
Srinivas: Because I have no legs and I had an accident before 10 years. After that I was always dead.

Really felt bad for that man. We pulled him towards the edge of the road and asked him not to sleep on the highway. Wondered if my friends who went by car ever noticed the gunny bag.

We parked the bike in a nearby place and Srinivas said he would take care of it. Friends came rushing in the car and 7 of us adjusted in the zen and got back to the hotel.

Next day morning, we all got back to the place and saw Srinivas inside the same sack. Gave the bike for repair and got Srinivas a tea.

He explained that he was a thamizh guy who came to Goa 2 decades back and worked as a tourist guide.10 years earlier a lorry had run over him and he had no money left to go back home or get himself operated. He knew Goa in and out and he loved travelling. He had been to many tourist places across India and that was why he considered himself completely dead as he couldnt move. He required help even for moving a few metres ahead.

His entire life was inside that gunny sack. Eating, sleeping, talking, loo and everything within that tiny house.

Now as Im ending the story, the goosebumps are all gone. Just a tiny droplet of tear peeping from my eye. I never thought I would actually feel sorry for any man who scared the shit out of me like that.

Next time any of you guys are hitting Goa, make sure you watch out for a gunny bag on the highway. And dont get scared! Just say "Hai Srinivas we know you"....

10 commandments thou shall not fear

2008-05-23T23:00:00.000-07:00

The famous VIT Hostel [Where we all made our bones!!!]

You ask any VITian "What is the best part of your VIT life". 9 out of 10 blokes would tell you "Hostel". Lets discount the remaining 1 guy who probably had a pestering gf to cater to, in the library or canteen 24X7.

VIT Vellore boasts of having some of Asia's biggest hostels. And boy dont they have rules!!! One year after passing out of college, Im now reading the hostel rules for the first time. I must admit they scare the shit out of people.
(You may find the complete set of 22 rules here. I like only 10 of those). These rules take me back to my hostel life. Time of my life, undoubtedly.

1) Strict silence should be observed between 9:30 pm & 6:00 am.

The exact timeframe where Vellore generates more decibels than ever. Whenever the power goes off, you'd find the entire hostel(around 6000 people?!) screaming like terrorists.

Hostel wardens and supervisors get verbally mothered during this time. Whats worse? dust bins, tube lights and empty perfume bottles are thrown out from the corridor hoping to be landed on one of the security person's head.

Exactly after a hostel-second(Well I think its one of the smallest measurement of time known to man: defined as the time difference between when the power is restored and when the hostel shuts up-completely) you'd find a few culprits tip-toeing into their rooms and declaring with an element of pride what damage they did to the hostel.

2) Perfect silence is to be maintained in the hostel premises including rooms, bathrooms, dining halls, corridors, common areas etc., Every student of the hostel should have the civic responsibility that he or she should not be a cause of nuisance, annoyance or disturbance to others.

LOL I dont get it. Whats the difference between rule 1 and 2? Having said enough about rule 1, let me just add something that came to my mind. Hostel bathrooms had the top open and cigarettes would get transferred from one bathroom to another with the last person in line always wailing that he got only the butt.

3) All hostellers have to be present in their respective rooms and keep open the rooms between 9:30 pm &10:30 pm every day (except Saturday for Men's Hostel) to enable the Wardens / Block Supervisors to take the attendance.

The Wardens/Supervisors were always from the army and apparently smelt a rat from any distance. I still remember a few people sniffing empty glasses from our rooms hoping to find dope and brand us a "TIGER"(dont know the lingo but when we got caught for playing cards(ya man just cards), they called us all tigers)

4) The hostellers are not to enter into any unnecessary conversation, discussions, quarrel or altercation with the hostel staff. If anyone has any complaint against any employee of the hostel, a written complaint against the person is to be lodged with the Warden. Use of abusive, vulgar and unparliamentarily language against the hostel/mess staff is strictly forbidden.

Bottomline:Do not mess with VIT security. Some of them are from the army too. Imagine messing with an Indian ex jawaan man. If they ask you for the id card show it, else your a NON VITian and they ll probably shoot you.

Shooting. The word reminds me of an incident. Some people were ordered to shoot street dogs in VIT hostel because they were multiplying in numbers.(They call it the green campus and thats how red it gets at times)

5) The hostellers are not to waste food, electricity & water. Wastage of food is a national loss. If anyone is found indulging in such wastage, he/she will be asked to vacate the hostel, since wastage causes unnecessary and unavoidable expenditure to others.

Forget wasting, I dint know many who ate the mess food.

5)a) Parottas were thick enough to derail a train if kept on the track
5)b) Idlis would mysteriously seem to be created a month ago
5)c) Dosas would however, qualify as idlis so there goes a consolation
5)d) Custard! They used to give a delicious custard(not sarcastic). But they gave 1 (yeah just 1) small cup.

The custard deficiency would bring the Oliver Twists in all of us and I still recollect blokes fighting for more. Other calm and composed people, however managed to get more than one by signing in the register(where you'd be charged extra) with names like Shah Rukh Khan or with a name of a guy they hated.(the latter would be charged end of the year!)

Hey but if you wanted good food there is always this International Mess(costly) where they have great food.

And of course the Dhabha, outside campus which serves 90% of VIT population kneads and mints "dough" like crazy.

6) Smoking is prohibited in the hostel buildings. Gambling in any form such as playing cards (even without money at stake), consumption of alcohol, use of drugs and narcotics and even., possession of such things are prohibited. Anyone found indulging in the use of such things will not only be asked to vacate the hostel but also be rusticated from the University.

The number of ciggy packets an average servant swept in VIT would be a staggering number. There are 8 shops encircling our college. I aint exaggerating but Shankar shop is the most addictive hang-out place. I still have his mobile number with me. He used to call us all if his income dropped for a day.

Alcohol bottles can be smuggled inside the hostel rooms if you have huge pockets. The security guard always wondered why we took only the chips and pepsi botlles in hand. Hidden beneath were litres of ecstacy.

7)Celebrating birthday parties inside the hostel is strictly prohibited.
(Its colored because in our college website, it was made bold.Wonder why...)

We all had the best birthdays in college whether it was ours or some guy's who you dint even know but ended up kicking him because the ritual took place on your hostel floor.

Jacob, a friend who was completely discolored on his birthday with a lot of ingredients (you dont wanna know) was taking a strenuous bath trying to get rid of the shit and 4 of us were simultaneously pouring SURF on his head from the open top.

"MK" the warden then, was patiently watching us from behind(first look and he must've thought we were all gay).

Such incidents made the Principal stress his point across. He went about saying "heyyyyyy no birththu day bummm allowed inside the hostel". The same guy got belted with firecrackers on Diwali when he dared to enter the hostel premises(ask me for the youtube link, I will authenticate your identity and then give it!)

8)Ragging in any form is strictly prohibited

Yeah they do take ragging seriously. But no campus life is complete without ragging and it takes place at an acceptable level at VIT.In fact if a senior asks for a juniors name and a sick prof gets to see it, he might probably escalate the issue. The usual college rags like the senior salute, dance, assignment writing are common.

But whats unique to VIT is that some of the seniors send the juniors as brand ambassadors to hunt down chicks in their batch and campaign for them. The juniors promptly leak out phone numbers and other value added services to the seniors.

9)Absentees / Latecomers (without prior permission from the Warden) will be suitably fined.

I dont know how a fine would be suitable. Anyways, the library was very useful for this reason. The in-time for hostel is 9pm. Our intelligent men used to enter the library at 8 55 get a slip and sneak out for a movie or for a drink. They sneak in to the library again at 11 30 or so and get the slip signed. Armed with the slip in hand, they entered safely into the hostel with some books in hand which would get returned the immediate next day as its purpose was already served.

10)Violation of any of these rules would result in punitive action and serious violations would be referred to the "Students Disciplinary Committee". The decision of the Dean would however be final.

I dint know there was ever a committee like that. But I did get a decision which went against me. Dont ask me how many points (mentioned above) I violated but one fine day in campus, when I was looking at the notice board (where a whole bunch of students flocked), I took a peep inside. It read:

The following students have been expelled , with immediate effect, from the hostel for serious violations.

1)Anirudh
2)Maruthi
3)Raghav
4)Vignesh (yours truly)
5)Vivek

(All blokes mentioned above are my chuddy buddies. Sad they dont've blogs...yet)

The incident has been updated here

The best part is that this notice gets spammed across all possible locations: the guys hostel, gals hostel and all department boards. Like we murdered someone and are absconding.

Whatever it is, we got instant recognition and joined the club with many others who violated different terms and served different sentences. Ours though, was only for 3 months and we were proved innocent(hehehehe).

We got back to the the hostel and were assigned the most blessed and wonderful "B block"(apparently they put a lot of like minded criminals in the same block so you can imagine). It also had a warden who'd sit beside us for drinking and smoking. He was an ex VITian and he was working there as a prof!

If I forgot to mention anything(Im sure there are loads), please comment and let me know.

4 gears 3 wheels 2 people 1 God 0 compromise

2008-05-22T07:13:00.000-07:00

Right now I live in Hyderabad and once when I travelled by bus back home, I woke up, thanks to the bus driver who was honking like crazy.I was wondering where the bus was then.

The answer came in the form of an auto driver. He was the reason my bus was honking and he swerved the auto to his right, stopped the huge volvo bus and screamed "aiiiiiiiiiiii otha ootaande sollnu vantyaaa?" (Tamil Slang/Swear but it exactly translates to : !@#$$%, have you told home your going out?). My driver mumbled something in telugu and "requested" him to move his small auto out of the way.

The holy sweet words of the auto driver early in the morning joshed me up. Why? Cuz I knew I had reached Chennai!!!

Its unfair to blog about Chennai autokaarans(auto drivers) when the guru krishashok has done it himself. But having lived in Chennai for 22 years, Im passionate about Chennai and and its a sin to ignore the Gods on 3 wheels

Try as you might, you wouldnt find a good auto driver(oxymoron) ever, in Chennai. If you want to take an auto, be prepared to make an ass out of yourself. Dont try to act smart and remember, they are the Gods.

My futile attempt at bargaining with an auto guy:

Me: Bosssu moggappair polama (conciously tryin 2 sound way too local so he doesnt charge me 1/25th of my salary)
Translation: Could we go to moggappair?

God: Moggappair aa?...Romba dhooram aache (Ok this is how it all starts. he tries to give me geography gyan here)
Translation: Thats too far right?

Me: (ahem) seri evlo sollunge ? meter oadumaa?
Translation: Alright how much? Is your auto-meter working?

God: Meter laam velaikkaagadhu pa...onnyum ille oru 200 rupees kuduppa straightaa ootukku poidlaam (There it is, God sez he requires 200 bucks to take me home)

Me:Poitttu varathukku ille naa verum one way dhaan
Translation: Im asking for one way only and not for return too!
(This is my usual dialogue. I know it sucks but then some Gods may entertain a good joke thats why I keep trying :( )

(The God gets a little offended now)

God: enna nakkala? porathukku mattum dhaan. seri seri 190 kudu polaam.
Tanslation: Kidding me? alright gimme 190

Me: Lastaa solraen 130 varennge naa vaange illena venaam.

(On hearing 130 bucks, the God laughs now.And he gives you that look which makes you feel your begging for alms)

God: aen yaa distance ennannu theryaadhaa unakku? (mumbles a swear word but saves it for future use)petrol enna velai le pogudhu theryuma?(from geography to economy) evlo litre aagum theryumaaa?(general knowledge now) vandhuttaan . 170 lastttu varenna vaa.

(Translation here doesnt matter.Bottomline:God has given his verdict-170 ! take it or leave it. And he is ready with his hands on the starting rod-A signal that says this is your last chance)

Me:anna ungulku venaam enakku venaam 140 na correct rateuuu
(Yeah what to do? I cannot stomach giving him 170. I dont even spend that much for my two wheeler fuel for a week or so)

(By now God has decided he has to show me who He is)

God: U#$$#%le(censorship required here) 170 kudukka vakku ille nee ellam edhukku da auto le vare? Bus le po daa.
Translation: He declares that Im only worthy of travelling by bus and asks me to basically fuck off.

And me , I exchanged similar pleasantries with him for a while but since I know they have this whole union thingy and I could get bashed up I spoke no more!

The only time in my life where I think I won the bargain was when I went home recently.
An auto guy asked me for 80 bucks, I boarded and then he asked me for 100 after i reached home. I obviously refused.We argued for sometime and this God gets pissed off earlier than I expected. Guess what this God did? He said I can keep it and went off. (yeah yeah he gave me all the swear words, some gyaan and cursed my generations-to-come before leaving)

22 years man, 22 years! Even after living here for this long I can never ever get the better out of an autokaaran deal.

But wait! One thing I must mention about the Chennai autokaaran God is that the Lord will show mercy on you in 3 situations:

a)you are a lady AND you are pregnant(many a time, a free ride)

b)you met with some minor accident on road AND your bleeding(he definitely wont wait outside the hospital for the dough)

c)your bike stopped and you need it to be towed for cheap(Our Gods have a unique skill of pushing your bikes with their legs while riding their autos-this will of course cost you but they re considerate and wont charge you much)

Anyways like them or hate them, you can never ignore them. They are rude, abusive, haughty and most importantly indispensable. Thats why they are the Gods. Hail 'em :)

Making 40 bucks profit with long hair(true incident)

2008-05-21T05:44:00.000-07:00

Alright guys dont freak out. Im starting my story right away. During my days in VIT, I used to shuttle from Vellore to Chennai and back quite frequently. I bunked all fridays (for reasons that only my friends know) so I spent every friday saturday and sunday in Chennai and caught the monday morning trains(6 am) back to VIT.

On one such day in the railway station....(I had short hair and looked like a nerd then)
A fragile old man, dressed up like a gentleman came up to me and spoke in english, english that would remind you of someone who probably works in a voice-based BPO.

He said, "young man, I have a favour to ask"

Me:Yes Sir

Gentleman:Whats your name?

Me:Vignesh

Gentleman:Wowwww what a co-incidence! My name is Vignesh too....Anyway Vignesh ...I know its shameful to ask anybody for this but I dont have a choice. Ticket cost to Vellore is 54 rupees and I have only 44 thanks to my wife who forgot to keep my wallet in my bag. I have relatives
in Vellore who'd come to the station and I will return it to you promptly. If you dont mind can you spare me 10 rupees?

Me:Sure. (I gave 10 bucks to him)

Gentleman:God bless you. What you studying?

Me:VIT computer science

Gentleman:Cool. What languages you working on? C++, Java?

(I felt proud having helped a man who knew way beyond what he should.Well my dad wouldnt even know what a programming language is ! {sorry dad I need to blog here thats why ;) }

We spoke for sometime and I boarded the train along with friends who took my case really bad saying I got fooled by some conman. I defended and told them "wait till you get down in VIT, I will introduce that man to you guys"

Well he never came and I got late for my classes, so I fled fighting with my friends saying he could not have spotted me in the crowd.

1 1/2 years later(when my hair hadnt met a pair of scissors for nearly a year)....

I was waiting in the railway station looking at the computer screens. One gentleman comes up to me and ....I was like whoaa this guy is here to say sorry and return my 10 rupees. Before I could smile at him he opened up ...

Gentleman: Where is the punjab national bank ATM?
Me: (wtf?!!!) Hmm Im not sure sir. (My smile vanished and I preferred to wait)

(May/May-not be a)Gentleman:Ok no problem.Whats your name?

Me:(the smart ass in me openin up) Shankar

The Asshole!!: wowww what a co-incidence! My name is shankar too(I was almost gonna beat the bastard up but I was like lets wait and see how it all goes)...I have a favor to ask. Punjab national bank ATM is not available here and I am a diabetes patient. I need to catch the Coimbatore train immediately. I fell a little short of cash. Can you spare me 50 rupees?(haaa! talk about price inflation!)

Me:(thought for quite a while and...) yes but how would I get back the money?

The Asshole:Please give me your house address I will send a money order for you.

Me:(anger burning inside but told myself "wait I need my money back") Oh sure but I have only a 100 rupee note so could you please give me 50 rupees because I would require atleast 50 to get to my hostel.

The Dumb Asshole took 50 bucks and promptly gave it to me. I started to walk. He followed me and asked "Excuse me you forgot to give me 50 rupees". I told him I knew him and he better make a move or I ll call the police(Okay guys I dint call the police cuz I had my dreaded data structures exam and I had 5 mins to catch the train).

The unpredictable Asshole then caught my collar and said"Im a decent man and dont fool an old man". I dont know what he read from my facial reaction...but he fled the scene immediately and disappeared in a jiffy.

Recollecting that incident today, Im wondering how such a smart conman would not keep track of the people he fools. Anyways too unlucky for him I had abnormally long hair that could ve fooled even my cousins.

Tomorrow if i get to meet him, he probably woulnt recognize me as I weigh twice as much as I did then!

Life at VIT, Vellore

2008-05-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

August 6th 2003, I found myself in a dormitory with 89(yeah 90 minus one that 89) other people getting ready for their first day at VIT(www.vit.ac.in), a place which still offers two important recipes :guaranteed jobs and guaranteed fun. Blokes who cooked the first part alone(a chunk of 'em) missed out on a lot of fundoo stuff at campus and those who cooked the latter alone have had an absolute blast and by the way still are, at campus ;)

I sorta had a delicious meal, cooking both ,( slightly leaning towards the latter i guess). Anyways, coming back to the first day.

VIT has this perennial problem of accomodating the hordes of wannabe engineers who throng the college. The first few days are horrible and chaotic with no signs of a separate room for yourself. Imagine going to college and finding your bed missing on return(blaming 89 fellas aint a good idea).

After hunting down your bed(which has assumed new co-ordinates now), you realise you have infact, lost a lot of valuable items like undies. bathroom slippers, a few of which are unusable even after return.But what the heck, you get to meet variety of people from all states in India(not kidding man, all the states).

I still remember the dorm days when I met new people-people of those kind-i thought i will never see. 24-25 year olds having given up trying to get into IITs, 18 year old spoilt brats having got through VIT through management quota, punjabis wanting to learn tamil, bongs trying to get intro to other bongees and seal their life off from the very first day ;) and a lot of other interesting people.

I reiterate that point-you wanna enjoy you can, you wanna study hard and come out big you can too. How you make the best of both worlds makes you the perfect VITian.
What I went through the next 4 years was absolute fun.

If you re a VITian,

1)You d know how to decipher phrases like weaving the crystal(VIEWING) when "professors" talk about physics

2)You d understand that if the professor sez "think like library" he wants you to stay quiet

3)You d wish to death that you can speak thamizh(which qualifies you for 50% in many exams)

4)You d always feel that your junior batch and you senior batch has got chicks but not yours

5)You d end up with a girlfriend. (ok all you school passouts stop dreaming, Im not done yet).And if you dint , then you probably got a "gang" which mobs people who do have girlfriends.

[If you had a gf in VIT, then ]
5)a) You had a tough time thinking how she got awesome grades and you just managed to pass.
5)b) Your pocket money was spent on milk shakes that our famous canteen had to offer
5)c) You recharged two mobile numbers at the end of the month
5)d) You carried two bags-one till the girls hostel another till yours.
5)e) You wished you never had a gf.

6)You d ve watched every lousy film that got released just cuz there was nothing else to do.

7) You d ve paid a holy visit to TASMAC atleast once.

8)You d ve drunk tea at 1 am during exam time just to sleep off at 1 01 am.

9)You d find (on the notice boards)people getting thrown in and out of hostel(remind me about this later ;)

10) Diwali, Holi and many other days would ve been at their best in VIT.

Cannot cover everything in a single blog post but I plan to take things through in a chronological order. You may also refer genuinemirage.blogspot.com for some snippets about VIT life. The blogger apparently is quite a VITian. Ask him about the last minute xerox copies, he d sure as hell know!

Any comments?!

The alcohol lovers

2008-05-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Being a self-proclaimed drunkard, I m the sort of person ready for a drink anytime, anywhere. Be it the TASMACs(Refer img above-Chennai parlance: TASMAC shops are the cheapest and fastest ways to get sloshed) or the hyderabad pubs, you would not find me out of place. Happy or sad, in agony or ecstacy "-OH" forms a rare elixir-like-chemical that brings me to equilibrium.

College is where the insatiable quest for alcohol begins. Kingfishers get downed like water and MCs like pepsi. With the kind of friends circle that I had in college, drinking was a bare necessity to live life like food, water and shelter.

Blokes used to throng the Katpadi TASMAC emptying every drop it offered and filled up their spirits.The walks back to the hostel is something unforgettable. Jaywalking, we used to reach the gates just in time.

I simply love this quote written by someone totally "alco-philic" if there is any word like that.

"Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed - Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, 'It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.'

Cheers to all :)

From *** to Google...My journey

2008-05-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

We all know Google is a great place to work in. But for a bloke who joins Google after working for ***(ok lets not bring out names here), Google is simply HEAVEN. Giving all due credit to the amazing establishment that *** is, I would like to point out the difference in work culture.

Imagine rushing for a bus at 12 in the afternoon(having gotten up at 11 for reasons you ll soon know), reaching office at 2pm(yeah a 2 hour travel wearing formals in Chennai weather) and working till 1 am?? Well it doesnt end there! At 1 am you are stacked with 4 other people(doomed with the same curse) in ambassador cars. And, if you are the only guy in the cab, they take you for a tour around the city since girls cannot get dropped last. Finally you reach home, sleep, wake up and lo! its 11. I guess "its a dogs life" would be an understatement.

One aspect I d never forget(and most of the ***ers might ve also experienced) is that of the M**C. It expands to Man P***r **** *** Committee. These are the demi goddesses who can screw your life@***. After your training gets over and if you manage to lay low and not go to office at all, you manage to get your salary for atleast 6 months! Yeah the concept is simple. You re on bench! I was ecstatic for 40 days sitting on bench(the bench being my comfy bed at home) when the dreaded call arrived. I was asked to take up a project that involved editing excel sheets when I wanted a web based project. The MATC goddess simply said" once you join ** you forget all this, take this project or you re ( I was like bench again?!! wow this is so cool) . But no she said "on bench but no salary for the next 3 months). Well, some of my friends have left ***, some fired, some working for other companies(still managing to be on *** payroll...yeah bench again!) and most of the others enduring the professional torture :(

Google recruited this ass-in-the-lions-hide and it cost me 60 grand just to get out of ***(ever heard about "bonded" slavery?). To tell the truth, I would ve even paid a crore. 50 lakhs cuz *** was a concentration camp and the remaining 50 lakhs because Google was worth every penny of it.

Google s one of those rare places where employees wanna work more and give back more to the company. This interest I guess, comes out of a gratitude the way it treats its employees. Right from the free food, free pick up and drop and the amazing work culture, Google just floors its recruits.

Never in my life@*** could I have dreamt of logging on to the internet at work, leave alone blogging! So here I am, blogging at work :)