Friday, December 22, 2006

Hello there readers!

This is an apology blog to all those who regularly read my blog :) !! I have been kinda caught up in other things over the past two weeks, and haven't had the time (or rather the inpiration) to write about anything.

And with the Christmas weekend coming up in a day, am all the more caught up in planning for my weekend ;) !! So there will be no blog for the entire of next week too...

I am trying to write this at 6:30 in the morning, as I wait for my roomie to get ready, so that I can take him to office :) !! Learn time management from me ;) !!!

Merry Christmas!

Mr & Mrs Girish?

Hiya reader! Welcome back to another edition of my ego-centric rantings online :) !! Hey hey, you can't complain. You are on my blog, and I can write only about me . I tried writing about world peace earlier, but somehow neither the peace keepers nor the trouble makers got my message. So, I decided I stick to writing about the things I know best. You guessed it right .. me myself and Girish :) !!

A couple of weeks back I got an innocuous looking letter in my mailbox (Post box you geek. There is life outside the Internet and email too!). It was addressed to a "Mr and Mrs Girish"!! That was shocking.. It proved two things:

1) I look too old to be single
2) I dress too shabbily to be actually a single!

Singles are supposed to be good looking and on the lookout for ... ahem .. you know, the "fairer sex". And I look all withdrawn and content with life, kind of a married guy with four kids who has seen and done it all, who works late in the office and comes home to a nagging wife, and crying kids!

That mail kinda hurt me (a lot!), but then I thought I will give the sender the benefit of doubt, and continued my peaceful non-existence. Until day before when I happened to meet a man dressed as a Santa and mistook me to be the father of my colleagues' 16 year old son! Now, a self-respecting man like me, can only take this much. I imagined myself punching the ol' Santa in his stomach, pulling his beard and telling him "Man gimme a break, I am just 25 :(" !! Being from the country of the great Gandhi, I let peace prevail.

This blog was more of a warning for you. So next time when you meet me, admire my youth :) !!

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Shopping

Here comes Saturday and I am in all enthusiasm to write. I have realized that in the last two blogs, I have written too much about my fat. Enuff said, no more cracking jokes on my transport vehicle on this planet now (my body!). When we aliens invaded this planet (That is a closely guarded secret! But I know human beings to be so naive that even if we aliens leak a secret unless its sleazy it doesn't spread :)), we had no option of choosing bodies. So I got into the one that I got. Now I have to stick with it :) !!

Now, let me get onto some other interesting topics.. shopping!
With Christmas just two weeks from now, you can't escape sales, discounts, mail in rebates etc. etc. A day is incomplete without at least 10 visits to Deals2buy. I have realized that slowly and steadily I am being infected by SSS (Serial Shopping Syndrome).

What is SSS?
SSS is a new type of disease infecting wanna-be geeks like me. The victim in question gets attracted to words such as "sale", "buy one get one free", "mail in rebate" etc. And then the victim's subconscious mind takes over. Thereafter the subject reaches for its pocket, withdraws its credit card and buys the product in question. In advanced cases (like mine!) the victim has already memorized its credit card number, so it just goes and enters it online and buys things left right and center. At times, while driving down the road, this disease suddenly takes control of your hand and makes you enter a shopping mall parking lot.

There is no known cure for this disease.

Symptoms:
Well, how do you figure out that you have SSS? Its simple, if you tend to stock upon things because they are on sale, or because you will need them 45 years from now (like buying a walking stick when you are 25, or buying diapers when you are still single!), or if you find out that the mail man delivers parcels to you everyday, and you have no idea what is inside, cause you do not remember what all you bought online.

I am now a victim of this disease and I am hoping someone somewhere saves me! The obvious short term cure is that you guys donate a few hundred bucks per head so that I can buy some more stuff for this shopping season ;) !!

Talking of shopping and money reminds me of Microsoft Money. I use it to manage my expenses. I know I know, I should use GnuCash instead. Trust me, I went through a lot of pains to use it (including installing Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on my laptop, configuring my stupid Broadcomm wireless card etc). But at the end of all that, I realized that there was a small problem. I do not understand accounting :) and you ain't gonna get any where if the only knowledge of double entry accounting you have is by reading its article on Wikipedia :) !!

Money on the other hand is a typical Microsoft product (read - extremely user friendly! I bet when MS makes products the end users in their mind are chimps like me :)) Well, coming back to the topic of Microsoft Money, it kinda keeps on reminding me that I will go bankrupt if I continue with my current expenses :) !! Hehehe, typical doomsday warnings which I conveniently ignore. After all, predictions always go wrong :) !!

Money also helps me to plan my life ahead. So I told Money that I want to retire at the ripe old age of 35 .. and it predicted that I need to earn at least 500 times what I earn per year now for me to live a happy life in an old age home somewhere in *istan :) !!

That doesn't leave me with much of an option but to look for alternate sources of employment after the age of 35 :( !!! So here is a list of things that I have compiled, which I can probably do..

What I would like to do after I retire at 35?

Become a full time cook: I know most of you who have eaten my food (or atleast tried to look at it!) will die laughing at this statement. I know, I know my cooking is absolutely bland and tasteless and you would rather graze on the lawn outside than eat my food. But let me explain. I will be a cook for someone who is very diet conscious. That way, the person won't be able to eat what I cook and would automatically control his/her diet :) !! Solutions are always out there, you should just know how to look for them :P !!

Non-lethal weapon for crowd disposal: For those of you who don't know, I have awesome vocal chords. I can sing and make the slowest of snails zap by me. I know there are bad singers out there, but what I do is just generate a lot of noise. Cacophony at its best :). Imagine how useful I would be for the Police to control unruly crowds. Instead of using tear gas and other tactics, they could just make me sing "Unchained Melody" in my *original voice* and in no time, not only the protesters, but also the police will be displaced from the scene.

No wonder when I introspect, I find myself to be the most talented person on this planet :) !!

Amazon filler items

Hiya shoppers! I bet most of you (like me) do not buy products online unless you get free shipping :) !!

Amazon has many products on which it offers free shipping if the total cost of your order is above 25$. Now the problem that I face many times is that my total cost is around 19-23$ and then just because I can't cross that 25 margin, I end up paying 5.99$ on shipping.

Today I came across this site which gives you a list of "Amazon filler items" so that you buy them and take your order total above 25$. I just bought a 22$ camera tripod with free shipping thanks to a filler item (Sony wrap around earphones!).

Check out the site... SlickDeals.net

And that reminds me, I don't get any referrals for doing this :) !! I know, most of my friends have this misconception that Mozilla Firefox gives me referral bonus for forcing them to use Firefox on their computers :) !! I have this something about small companies that compete with the giants. Thats why I swear by Mozilla and AMD (have been using their processors for the last 4 years with AMD Athlon 64 in my desktop and AMD Turion 64 in my laptop) !! Wait until they become giants, and then I will start hating them too :P !!!

Saturday, December 2, 2006

Pedometer and the art of walking!

2 weeks and counting!! My my, sometimes I feel I am the busiest person on this planet! Can you imagine I could not take out 10 minutes in 2 weeks to write something over here? That reminds me, I have started a course on "Time Mismanagement". If you wanna join come to my place on Mondays 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM. But then, it might start late, or get canceled (that was a poor joke, I bet most of you didn't understand :) !!)

Well well, (poor) jokes apart, I have been sporting a rather snazzy little gizmo for the entire of last week and I thought I let ya guys know about it. Its a small device that I clip to my belt (or rather it gets squeezed and gasps for breath between my stomach and my hip) and its called a pedometer. Now there are two parts to this story, and I have neatly divided it into two parts, so read on..

Part 1: How I procured the pedometer?
I have a sweet friend, Nidhi, who happened to go to a women's health seminar and like all seminars *collected* a few goodies on her way back. I happened to visit her cubicle one day and instantly recognized that one of her goodies was a pedometer (yippee!!). When you are a kid and all rolly polly, you just have to stand in front of someone put your hands on your cheeks roll yourself around and say "Can I take this please?", and you look so cute that the unsuspecting adult falls prey to your trick (shooo shweet!!). I happen to still use this trick at times, and I for one still succeed :P (may be the scene looks so gross, that the adult in question can't stand it any longer :P !) !!

In this context, I would like to put forward a new theory. "The chubbier you are as a kid, the fatter you become as an adult", a corollary that you can obviously derive from this statement is "The cuter you are as a kid, the uglier you become as an adult" :) !! I for one, now don't want any chubby and cute kids (see I care so much for their well being!). When I was a kid, I was an instant hit with all the *elder* gals around me, and now .. ahem, I don't even wanna talk about it :) !!

All said and done, I procured the pedometer by hook or by crook, and have been sporting it on my belt ever since!

Part 2: How the pedometer works?
Well, I wont get into the nitty grittys of the whole mechanism, but to put it in one sentence, the pedometer counts the number of times the body vibrates when you walk. For an average human being, one step equals one vibration.

So, I started proudly wearing the pedometer and would read it every once a while to see the steps that I walked. I was kinda amazed by the number of steps I took , with me hitting 100 steps in less than 30 seconds! Just to test the accuracy of it, I measured the steps before and after I took a single step, and it gave me a reading of 6!! Now, that was weird!!

Off I went on a quest for self discovery and here is what I concluded. Viscous solids produce something called damped waves. Fat is a viscous solid, so when it is subject to motion, it produces damped waves. In layman's terms, every step I take my body vibrates a lot more than it should, thanks to damped waves in my fat :) !!! Well, I understand that that was the most complex joke I ever cracked :) !! If you take a slow motion video of me, when I am walking you will see my whole body shaking off centered like it happens to the jaw of a bad guy when the hero hits him in slow motion :) !! I bet I am boosting your visualization!!

That's it from me, adios amigos until my next post :) !!

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Agreement

After years of fighting in vain to get rid of my bulge (tummy for you uninitiated!), yesterday night we ( I mean my stomach and me) signed a strategic agreement. Its a 54 page document on which both of our lawyers agreed upon. Here is a gist of the deal:

  1. I shall not do any more ab exercises. These exercises prove harmful to the growth of Mr. T (for tummy!).
  2. I shall not restrict food intake. It directly affects the well being of Mr. T. By the power vested in Mr. T by the constitution, it is illegal on my part to do so.
  3. Mr. T has agreed to deposit all the fat that I shall consume. This way, if I get stranded in the Sahara desert someday, Mr. T will take care of my well being, till help arrives.
  4. Mr. T shall cushion my fall, if I trip or lose balance. Mr. T will that way protect my face and keep me away from harm, risking its own life.
This strategic agreement will also help me in a lot more ways than you can imagine. First of all, I will be able to concentrate on other things in life than appearance. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and if some gal is gonna like me, she ain't gonna see if I walk alone or I am always accompanied by Mr.T. Imagine, if I save those 2 minutes that I spend looking at myself in the mirror everyday, at the end of the year I will have saved 12 hours!! I could probably end poverty in the world in that time!

Finally, whenever I have kids, they shall get to have a front seat view of the action. Let me explain. All the thin guy carry their kids in their arms. So when the dad is walking ahead, the kid is actually looking at a stranger following his/her dad and making strange faces (and for all you know, that guy actually thinks that he is entertaining the kid! Oh! How boring!). My kids will sit on Mr. T. So they will have front row action! They will see what I will see, how exciting!!

That reminds me of a joke that I had read somewhere..

Why can't fat men play golf?
Because if they keep the ball too close, they can't see it and if they keep it too far, they can't reach it :) !!

I am gonna end this post right now. I guess something someone said yesterday, hurt me a lot :) !!

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Tips for people like me!

Breaking my pledge of writing a blog once every week, here I am sharing something useful that I came across on the big bad world of the internet a few weeks back. Well, its a compilation of articles that help you to get over your habit of procrastination (I had this article lying in my del.icio.us for 2 weeks, before I read it :P).

Let me warn you, its exclusively meant for people like me, so if you are that organized person who knows which trousers you are going to wear on the 3rd Saturday of next month, its not for you..

Also there are some very useful articles about how you can get more organized in life. That reminds me, getting organized is NOT buying a Palm PDA. I have a Palm, but then to get organized, you also need to use it :) !! All said and done, here is the link to the article..

http://www.lifeorganizers.com/home/

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Love and Betrayal

I bet my topic got you all thinking! Well I was going to add "sex" somewhere in the title too, cause I had heard that it sells. But then, I ain't selling anything out here, so kinda refrained from using that word :) !!

I don't intend to write a sleazy blog but I just thought I voice my opinion about this thought that has been tossing and turning me for the entire of my last weekend. Well, for most of you I know, this would come as a shock, but I am happily committed to this certain someone whom I met (and subsequently moved in with!) for the past 6 months of my life. I occasionally did glance at others here and there, but have been pretty much committed to her.

But last weekend, I did something terrible. I had to drive down to some place 400 miles from my home and since I care for her so much didn't want her to make that journey (It would be too tiring for her!). I ended up asking someone else to accompany me, and that is where the betrayal started :( !!

For you guys who couldn't make out anything, well I am talking about the Ford Mustang that I rented last week. Now, I am pretty much committed (shall I say am in love?) to my Civic, but the moment I lay my eyes on the Mustang, I could feel myself go weak in my knees.. Civic is certainly adorable and cute, but the Mustang has that nasty look which kinda says that "I wanna be punished" :) The heart pounding roar she gives when you step onto her gas peddle is something out of this world!! And then it was two days and 800 miles of a torrid love affair with a Mustang. But then, as if to punish me, on my way back, the fuel tank of the Mustang started misbehaving, and I started wishing I had got my Civic along with :) !!

Now, I have exactly understood why guys betray. They just go by external appearance and have no regards for feelings. This post was mainly written for me to come over my guilt :P !! I am trying to convince myself that I rented the Mustang, just because I loved my Civic and didn't want her to go so many miles. I hope you agree too ;) !!!

Thursday, November 2, 2006

Burp..

I have kept a personal deadline of writing a blog every week. Now my days go so fast, that before I realize; its already a week since I have written something and there is no new idea in my half-asleep brain.

Nothing much happened in my life last week, except for the fact that I put in 12 hours of work everyday! Yupp, work is like a never ending saga for me, the faster I try to finish it, more work gets piled up. But yet, my spirits were high throughout the week. Wonder why??

Well it all started a year back when a colleague of mine became a happy father! So, one year later he celebrated his daughter's first birthday! (Ahem, I understand that it makes no sense yet!). And he threw a big party for all of us. But as most of you know, last weekend was Diwali and many people didn't make it to his party. That made his estimates all go wrong, and he was left with a LOT of food.

Obvious choice to give away all that festive food was of course "we the bachelors". Yippee, the sight of soo much "fresh" food in our refrigerators made me and my roomies feel like millionaires. We had a ceremony in which we garlanded the refrigerator, stripped down to our bare essentials and danced around it. The fridge was our new God :)!! Economics always told me that food, water and clothing are our fundamental necessities and we just had enuf to fulfill one of them for a week!!

So we ate and then we ate and then we ate again. We ate the same food for breakfast, lunch, supper and dinner! (And in my dream, I again floated to the fridge and ate the same food :P !!) You would have never seen some one soo content with life! And finally after 4 days and 8 meals we saw the last of our love, our life disappear :( !! Sob .. Sob.. It was famine at our place again.

Then came Friday evening and two of my very sweet friends called all of us for dinner. And yippee, food was left again!! So 4 more days of absolute bliss :) !!!

I am still reeling under the after effects of sumptuous meals that I had last week. Well well, I have just changed my definition of "happiness". Its that state in a bachelor's life where he has access to "unlimited supply of food" in his refrigerator!

I know I sound like a scavenger .. burp... but I am not complaining :) !!

Reality check

Am I really busy or am I just pretending to be? Ahem, that's a difficult question, but the truth is, I haven't had (or made) the time to update my blog for the entire of last week. Living up to my procrastinating standards like always :) !!

Just came online to tell you guys that I am alive and kicking but my gray cells are sleeping. Coffee doesn't wake them up any longer. I have taken up some new responsibilities (willingly or unwillingly, I know naught!) and they are keeping me busy. Can you imagine, I haven't had the time to even read Dilbert today :(??!!

So while I sleep, let me give you a dose of some very cool stuff.

For your entertainment let me present you a video that I really like.. Here is YouTube in all its glory:



Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Names

This is the second week of my tryst with common cold and I thought I look it up on the net. And according to Wikipedia common cold is Acute viral nasopharyngitis. Wow! And for a moment I thought only South Indians had long names! That's a long name for a virus to carry around, considering that the moment I sneeze, I banish millions of them from their nasal-abode! Imagine the inconvenience of carrying your long nameplate along with the rest of your belongings when you are only 1 cell wide! I bet I can fit a billion of them in the space that their name occupied in this blog :) !! Before I start talking yucky about mucus and the rest, let me get back to the original topic "Names".

I was born with a long last name. I have never liked my last name (see its conspicuous absence in the "About Me" section of my blog :) !!). It is long and complicated and has 'U's and 'Z's to complicate its pronunciation further! The friendly lady at the Safeway counter always reads my receipt and mutters "Have a nice day! Mr Moo-zooo-mu-daarrr?" and then she has that pitiable look on her face saying "I am sorry Mr, but my boss says that I have to wish everyone with their last names!, not that I am interested in wishing you!"

When I was a teenager and had to come up with a signature (remember the good old days when you practiced and perfected your signature by scribbling it anywhere you could?) I had a tough time getting my last name inside my signature. I thought I would grow up to be a celebrity. How embarrassing it would be to stand and sign for 15 minutes for 1 fan, when you can see hundred thousand other fans yelling your name ("Moo-zooom-mu-daarrr! Moo-zooom-mu-daarrr!") That reminds me, if I write my entire name I need to refill my ink pen before I can sign again :) !!

After a lot of deliberation and studying the aesthetics of my signature, I decided that I shall get rid of the 'z' and the 'u', so all I was left with was lots of 'm'. This I decided was the best way to scribble my autograph on my fans hands, books and places where only I imagined ;) !! But as God would have it, He got angry with me for playing with my family heritage, and here I am, a lowly Software Engineer writing blogs for you unsuspecting souls!

If only I had not messed around with my last name, by His grace, you would have been standing in a long queue somewhere to get to see me! And the entire police department of that county would be out to keep the crowd in control :P !!

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Obituary

Today the 10th of October 2006 my dear Coffee Mug of 1.5 years left for its heavenly abode at 6:30 AM in the morning. It is survived by 4 of its other mates. The last rites were given by sweeping the floor and then throwing away the rest of the stuff in the dustbin! May his/her (never thought about a Coffee Mug's sex!) soul rest in pieces.

I am very sad today, and I thought I pay homage to this brave cup (which survived through chai and coffee with me for soo long!) by writing a blog about it. I stood for 2 minutes in silence for the Mug, and I got late to office (can you come up with a more amazing excuse than this?)!

Saturday and Sunday mornings would never be the same again for me! Me and my faithful Mug have spent many a weekend mornings reading newspapers, talking on the phone, and last but not the least, me dipping the delicious piece of toast in the hot chai that the Mug so fondly held.

As Toni Braxton would like to put it..

Un-break my Mug, say you'll love me again...
Un-cry these tears, I cried so many nights!

Monday, October 9, 2006

You are the reason nothing gets done!

Another week goes, and I don't get my stuff done! I am so damn busy (or think I am!) that I do not get 15 minutes to update my blog! I have this to-do list which just keeps on extending, I have so many unread emails that I need to respond to, billion other small things that I need to do and I realize I am in no control of my life.

And then I come across this small video on YouTube and I get enlightened! I am the reason I did not get my stuff done :(! Yes get in control before you are too late!

Well here is the video:

Monday, October 2, 2006

Cleaning up my closet

Its a sleepy Sunday evening after a hard day at "partying" and I am playing catch-up on my blog writing business. Its been almost a week since I last wrote and like each one of you, even my time flies in a jiffy...

I was thinking to myself, what is that one thing most important that I did today, and for a change, I actually did something which terribly inconvenienced a few billion happily leaving organisms and their families. Before you get all the wrong ideas, ahem, let me explain!

For those of you who do not know, I live in a "bachelor" accommodation. Its a place which unmarried guys call their "home", but its more like a breeding ground for new kinds of mutated organisms. You have got all kinds of things lying around, and there are more kinds of things hidden beneath those things. Everything in the house looks brown, because there is this layer of dust that gives it that color!

Well, I am a bit of a cleanliness freak, and this bachelor business (with all due respect to my amazingly sweet and nice roommates!) does get over my nerves at times. I try to do my part by getting up insanely early (read 7:30 AM) on a Saturday morning (its insane cause you have slept only at 3:30 AM ..) and try to salvage our apartment. But then I can go only 1 room at a time, cause I need to excavate through layers of dirt (pun intended) to get down to the bottom and figure out what treasures are actually hidden!!

All said and done, today I finally reached the most amazing inventions of all times .. the Fridge. The problem with having a Fridge at home is you tend to stock up on things and try to save them for a rainy day. But then it happens that one fine day you happen to open the fridge and find out that the chicken that your grandma had cooked when she had gone to the hospital to see the new born you, is still there. The chicken is now happily sleeping under a comforter of green yucky things .. I wont be shocked to see it move... (I understand that it was an obvious exaggeration, but I did find some things in my Fridge that had crossed 6 months after their "best if consumed by" dates!).

The most amazing things that I found today were 6 half cut onions, a garlic which had grown a three feet sapling outta it, and 3 unidentified containers which contained something which was completely covered in green and white. I didn't have the guts to go beneath the surface and see what was lurking inside. But I am sure, all the new species of animals are born this way.

I hope that you guys, by now, have figured out that I have a penchant for exaggeration, and whatever I have written above is not true. But, before I end, I would like you all to come for dinner to my place tomorrow (I don't like to throw away food, you see ;) !!!)

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Smileys and me

Hi there subscribers!! How are ya??

I know, by now most of you must have noticed that I have this bad habit of using a lot of emoticons in my blogs. Almost all my sentences have to end in a :) or a :( or a :P.

Let me explain...

I belong to a generation which grew up watching TV shows like Seinfield, Friends, That 70s show etc. And we have been conditioned to laugh only when we listen to canned laughter in the background. I have been so conditioned to laugh, that if they give a canned laughter soundtrack to a documentary on the deforestation of Amazon (I am talking bout the jungles you technophile!) I might laugh my heart out, not realizing that it aint a comedy :( !

All said and done, I have to put a smiley in my blog everywhere I think I should be laughing (like here :) !!). Considering that my jokes aren't really witty, it becomes all the more important that I indicate to my reader that it was supposed to be a joke :) !!

Now for all of you who are reading this blog between your washing and drying cycle, go count the number of times I have used emoticons in my last blogs :P !!!

Washing..

Since my last post was titled "Clothes", poetic justice decides that this post should be aptly titled "Washing". (Yupp this is the second article in a series of articles titled clothes, washing, drying, ironing ... dont ya worry, am just kidding :P)

To get into the mood of writing about washing, I tried to get into the skin of the character by actually putting my brown, grey and black shades of clothes for washing :) !! After all, great actors try to get a true feel of the character they are enacting by being one. Acting is one realm, that I have no intentions of exploring. Sessions of dumb charades have proven to me that I am absolutely dumb when it comes to acting :) !!!

Coming back to the title.. for all of you who use the traditional "washing machine", there is this half an hour time between when you put your clothes to wash and switch them over to the dryer. According to me, this is the most unproductive time of my life!! Imagine, I waste 1/2 an hour every week doing nothing! That translates to 2 hours a month, 24 hours a year!! Which means, 1 day of this year, I will be doing nothing but waiting for my clothes to get washed! Owww, what a waste!!

After doing causal analysis of this, I decided I should find ways to do effective utilization of this time. That is the exact reason why I am writing this blog :), so what you just read where the thoughts of a man as he waits for his clothes ...

Beep ... 1/2 an hour over, time to put my clothes to dry.... :) !!

Monday, September 18, 2006

Clothes..

There goes my weekend... 2 days of fun.

I am blessed with a friend circle so big that we could put the entire Indian Parliament to shame. My stay in Uncle Sam's land would have been really boring, if not for them.

Before I get starry eyed and break down into a song about them, let me change the topic!!

Most of my friends thought that I had a very Victorian dressing style, and they forced me to buy some shirts for myself over the weekend. Making me buy clothes is like making a dog have a bath. I am a big spender when it comes to electronic gadgets. But the moment you take me to a cloth store, I try to run as far away from it, as I can.

Let me justify. I have a size which keeps on growing exponentially every year. So at the start of the year, I take into consideration the inflation (of my tummy that is!) and then buy tents, that will fit me through out the year. Now, I restrict my choice of tents to just 3 basic colors Brown, Black and Grey. That makes me look dull and boring.

Now, I have always believed that what you wear should reflect what you are! Considering that the only animated conversation that I can carry out with some one is about the capacity of my car engine and the gas mileage that it gives me, I find it appropriate to dress in dull colors as a warning for people approaching me!

Anyways, I succumbed to their pressure tactics, and bought a few bright tents this time around. Thanks to Deepak for helping me out! Now you are gonna see me in Deepak's choice for one more year ;) !!

By the way, let me remind you, I still will talk about my car engine with you... Dont expect me to talk (interesting) like him. Thats a tall order for me now.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Simian Crease

I have recently embarked on a path to self discovery and there are a few weird and interesting things that I have found out about myself. Let me have the pleasure to share it with you.

1) I can wag my ears. (97.86% of the human species can't do that. Well, that reminds me, do you know that 47.5% of the statistics are made up on the spot?? :P)

2) I can raise one eyebrow at a time. (WWE fans .. can you smell what the Rock is cooking?? For starters .. I would love Chicken tikka masala :P !!)

3) I have a simian crease on both my hands! (That's a very very rare condition in human species! Trust me, I haven't made this statistics up, there are very few left-handed persons in this world who have simian crease on both their hands!! .. And I am amongst them. Bow down you average guy!

So, I would like to dedicate this entire blog, to my simian crease! For you lesser mortals who do not want to read ahead, there is food on my desk, come pick some up and eat :) !!!

This simian crease (SC) self discovery happened not so long ago, when a friend of mine well- versed in palmistry, pointed out that I had "different" hands. Now, I know that I have soft girlish hands (yikes! people actually thought that I was a girl when I was a kid, now I have stopped shaking hands with people altogether :P !!!), but she gave me a shock when she told me that I have a rare medical condition in which my head line and hand line are fused together. (That means, I neither have a head nor a heart .. ) She further told me that this condition is called a simian crease!

Off I went googling about my "condition". After all, nowadays, if you don't understand something about yourself, you go ask Google .. "Google, google on the net, who is the fairest of them all?", said the evil step-mother of snow white and Google replied "Results 1 - 10 of about 2,200,000 for ..." And the first entry was a sponsored advt, which said "Snow White", and that is how the fairy tale started!! For the sake of not getting sued, the author changed Google to Mirror. Only idiots would believe that Mirrors talk!

That reminds me, I have a very bad habit of straying miles away from the topic that I am discussing. So I come back to my SC. Simian according to the dictionary means a monkey. I looked it up on dictionary.com, and finally ... after 25 years of my mysterious existence, a lot of things became pretty clear to me! I could finally put two and two together!

For starters, I realized why gals don't really find me attractive. Monkeys don't really go well with chicks .. that reminds me, had I had a canine line or something, I could sit pretty on a rich lady's lap wag my tail and go around in a limousine :) !!

Also, I need to confess, I have always had this thing about female monkeys. My mom tells me that every time that we went to a zoo, as a kid I would always insist on being near the cage where the monkeys played!! I remember this one time when we had been to a hill station and I happened to look at a female monkey and from somewhere a male monkey attacked me. Only a guy knows how difficult it is to protect his love interest :) (Btw, if anyone of you believed what I wrote in this paragraph .. its time you see a psychiatrist :) !!)

That also explains why I love to pick lice out of my roomies hair (yikes, that was gross!) and eat bananas :) !!! Finally, I guess the quality of my jokes are degrading so I stop writing more about my SC...

Its 10:30 PM on Friday evening and the only thing that I am doing is writing a blog :(!! Girish go get a life ...

Friday, September 15, 2006

Bliss 2

Appraisal over.

Vanilla latte spilled on my lap. Air supply CD got stuck. Car tyre punctured. Battery down. Alone on a deserted road, no one to help and there is a thunderstorm :) !!!

There go my happy thoughts down the drain. There is a statement in my letter which says "The matters related to compensation are strictly confidential between you and the company". So, I haven't told you anything ...

And I thought that money is not a motivator! After all, I was enjoying my work :) !!!

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Bliss

With a little bit of publicity stunts and shamelessly sending my blog URL to a few unsuspecting souls, I have finally got the number of people reading this space to a half a dozen helpless souls :) !!! (Psst .. ever wondered why Soul and Sole sounds the same in English??)

The general feedback that I got from you people is that I am frustrated with my life :) !!! Hehe, I never realized that until I myself went through all my blogs. Ya ya, I think I am wee-bit
frustrated .. So here I am bringing some happy thoughts to my mind....

Me in my car, light rain outside, its twilight and I can here the birds chirping (after a hard day's work they are going home to their families). My moon roof is open, I am listening to a love song (how about .. "All out of love" by Air Supply?). I am alone in my car (ya, I cant think of having anyone next to me :) !!) and I have a tall Vanilla Latte as made by Starbucks in my hand :)!! The road is on the country side, and its green on both sides, and straight ahead at a distance I can see an ocean with its waves breaking on rocks as they reach the shore. The road is winding as it takes me down a lush green mountain towards that ocean :) !!! There is no car on the road, and I am the king of the road. Wow, absolute bliss...

Buzzzzz ... reality checks in ....

I am gonna get my appraisal letter today. A report of what my company thinks about me. That no longer brings any good thoughts to my mind :) !!! So let me publish this blog as it is, and go get my letter...

If my next blog is all the more sadistic, then you know the outcome :) !!

Expiry date

Ever wondered about the fact that the biggest uncertainty in your life is actually your life span??!! You plan, save, invest and do a million other things just because you don't know when your last day on this planet is!

Life would have been really easy if God had put an expiry date on every baby's forehead as it left His production line.. (The Production line analogy is really easy ... God has a billion vendors each specializing in producing one thing in the human body. So the tooth vendor makes all kinds of teeth, the eye vendor makes all kinds of eyes etc. God has a ISO:9000 certified production line and Just-In-Time procurement cycles. So using neural networks, all vendors can predict when God is gonna assemble the next baby, and they send the parts just-in-time for God to set it up. He must definitely have an instruction manual for all His production-line employees to know where to put what .. Ever once a while a new employee comes and messes up. Finally the finished product gets shipped via a stork with a tracking number. This tracking number is exactly what the doctor sees and calls it the "due date!", and delivery takes approximately 9 months! And all this while we have been praising Ford for coming up with that concept!)

Well, coming back to my original argument that everyone must have an expiry data, ever wondered how simple it would have been to lead your life?? Every parent before giving birth to a baby would be taught Microsoft Projects (yeah!!). The moment the stork comes and delivers your baby, you see the expiry date on its forehead. That's the end-date of your baby project. Then using the Wizard tool in MS Projects, you start planning backward till today!! Assign milestones like .. Baby walks, Baby talks, Baby meets first girlfriend, Baby becomes an Engineer, Baby marries, Baby has first baby etc. etc. Depending on the lifespan, the baby could do more things. Lesser life span = lesser milestones, lesser budget, lesser stress, and more enjoyment!!

If I know I gonna last for just 2 more years, I know I don't need to earn that much and I can retire and enjoy the rest of my life! However, if I am gonna last till "Baby's baby gives birth to another baby" milestone, then I need to work till I am 58 years old (unless my baby doesn't decide to wait to give birth to a baby till it is 18 and the baby's baby phase happens before!) and save money all the while, invest, buy property, and generally be a miser!

You will have assigned targets in your life. You would know that you have to work towards a milestone, and wouldn't be confused with what you have to do! You wouldn't make earning money as a goal in your life. Its crazy to work just to earn money! Job satisfaction is in fool's paradise. Everyone works for money! And everyone saves money just cause they don't know when they are gonna kiss goodbye to everyone and buzz off...

I know, most of you ( I mean the two of you who read this!) wont agree with me. But its a thought to ponder. After all, no one likes bad surprises, its always easy to lead a planned life!!

Monday, August 28, 2006

Knock knock!!

If anyone of you (I mean the two of you who actually read my blog :) !!) has noticed, my "about me" says that I am the God of Procrastination. The God title was meant to be an obvious exaggeration, but the way I postpone things left right and center, I guess, I am soon gonna be the God.

Its been almost 1 month since I wrote anything here!! Well well, I have the usual excuses of being soo tied up in work that I didn't find time to eat, sleep etc etc, but the truth is ... I use a to-do list, and the fun part of having it is ... things written on it are always to-do, they cant be ever done :) !!! I incidentally wrote "write a blog" there, and thats it, once a to-do, always a to-do.

Sorry for the stupid joke, let me go back to sleep ... zzzzzz...

Saturday, August 5, 2006

3 years and counting!

In the world of Computers, 3 years is a long time! Just imagine, three years back...

1) I couldnt imagine writing a blog
2) Web 2.0 was not in the picture
3) Google was just a search company
4) I didnt know what is SAP
And the list goes on...

Well well, why am I getting all nostalgic (and misty eyed;) !!) today?? That is because, today (4th August 2006) I complete 3 years of working in my first company. The firm that picked me out of my college as a fresher... Trained me, and put me where I am now :) !!!

Yippee... 3 years gone, nothing achieved, but time to celebrate!!

Time goes so fast, I grow old sooo soon :( !! I have already completed half the life expectancy of an average Indian male :( !!

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

There goes another month!

How many times in your life do you get up early in the morning just to realize that its the 1st day of a new month, and suddenly you realize that you lost another month of your life? Well, I do!!

Right since the time that my sister taught me how to read the watch ( I mean make sense out of those two arrows that go around on that stupid circular thing and control our life and I ain't talking about digital watches you geek!) when I was approx 24 months old :) ... I have always gotten up on the 1st of every month feeling very low (the pain of losing another month in my life :( !!) (Well, that was just stretched too far, considering that most 2 year olds are not that philosophical :P!).

I still don't understand why people "celebrate" 1) New Years 2) Birthdays. What is there to celebrate in growing old? (Well, on second thoughts they might actually be counting the number of years to retirement!! Or may be, the alien few, might be celebrating the end of another year on this planet (they too must be on missions "onsite" earth!)

Well, this post wasn't exactly thought of before writing. So it might sound incoherent. But the truth is, its 1st August 2006, and I am very sad. The 7th month of the year 2006 is already over, and I have yet not achieved anything on this planet!!

I think its time for me to go back to my planet and do something fruitful ;) !!!

Friday, July 28, 2006

Yellow Stickies!

When I say Post-It Notes, I refer to the ubiquitous yellow stickies that have been made soo famous by the name of the Company that made it first! Just like Pepsi, Xerox or our very own Google!

Well, there is this certain thing about Post-It notes that makes them really fun to use! If you have to give a short casual message to someone, you don't end up typing it up and sending an email. You just walk up to that person to talk. And if he/she isn't in her cubicle, you write it down on a Post-It and there it sits cutely awaiting the intended recipient!

Now the weirdo I am, I love to collect such small personal messages that people leave at my desk. (Well, this single sentence of mine conveys many things .. 1) I am really busy and in meetings all the time so I am not at my place OR 1) I have really no work, and I am never at my place just trying to kill time. 2) I am very important so many people come to talk to me OR 2) I am known to be a guy with no work, and people come to me to kill time :) !!)

I have a big private collection of the very best sticky notes that I have ever got, and just added another one to my prized collection today :) !!


Back to work...

Monday, July 24, 2006

What the heck is "GMUZ"??

For those of you who have gone through the routine of getting a username on a popular website, you understand what exactly I am talking about when I say "I couldn't get an username, like I wanted it to be!".

I mean, the simple guy that I am (hehe!), I was looking for a girish, girishm etc. etc. But, my dear mom and dad never thought about all these problems ( I mean the problem of getting a unique user name) when I was born, and they chose to name me the mundane "Girish". Now Girish I am, and Girish I will be! (Yaa, I was thinking of becoming a puff-diddy, but somehow it didnt go down well with my last name you see ;) !!)

Now gmuz, is that "you-love-it-or-you-hate-it but you-have-to-use-it!" kind of thingie that got stuck to me some two years back. Can't reveal the details of why, where or how, but then, I have been using it as my identification for long now!

So I thought that I will use it as my blogspot domain too. Now let me warn you, I ain't facinated by that id, so please refrain from calling me "gmuz" :) !!

Sunday morning rants!

Being a Software Engineer, Sunday mornings are always bad for me. Bad because, they signify the last morning of your two-day weekend. When you get up you know that its the last day you can get up soo late!

All the same, Sunday mornings are the only time that I get to sit online and do stuff online that I otherwise don't do over the week. (Well before you come up with some real wild guesses ;) ... its just 1) Check my orkut scrapbook 2) Chat on the messenger!)

Well, today doing the second thingie (that's chat!), I ended up chatting with my room-mate (yupp the guy who lives in the same apartment as I do). Yaa, we do chat online too, though it would have been really easy for us to make our vocal chords make noises and reach each other! But thats technology, and we have to use it right??

So, in the course of our discussion, we came across this particular song "Kashmakash" by "Alms for Shanti" that we both kinda liked, and hadn't heard since it was broadcast on TV some 4 years back. The techie that he is, my roomie fetched that song from somewhere online and I am listening to it right now! (On second thoughts, shall I say he googled it. It's an official verb now, and we can use it, can't we? ;) !!)

We are ordering the CD from Amazon, the song is too good. I do not know how many of you have really heard it. So I thought I give it space on my otherwise unused/unread blog..

Here is the link...

http://in.news.yahoo.com/music/a4s.html

Now me goes back to being the sad old soul that I have recently become over the last few years :) !!!

Hello World

"Hello Blogger"

Everything has to start with a "Hello World" :) !!