Tag Archives: Routine

Muhahahah!

Humor, ,

I think I have a sense of humour. It’s just that some people call it good and some people call it bad.
Sometimes I crack the lamest of jokes (Yes I know!) but you should give me some credit, because I have had the history of humiliating other self-proclaimed PJs by simply dominating over them (whenever I’m on a roll, that is).

So, just for the record.. just to prove that my jokes are actually good.. just to make you regret calling me a bad joker.. here’s a mashup of bad jokes, good jokes, puns and (as some people call it) being a jerk, which I cracked out of spontaneity, and can now recall.
I am so sorry folks, but you unleashed this onto yourselves. You called me bad.

Note: Some names have been changed for anonymity, or because I had no idea who that was.

1.
ARN: Kate is hot. But I think Megan is hotter.
Me: Yeah… Megan is like Kate in an oven.

2.
DAG: I just had 2 shots of Vodka and I got high.
PS: What? It is not called “getting high”. You don’t get high on drinking alcohol.
Me: Yes you will. If you are on the second floor while drinking, you are about 10 feet high above the ground.

3.
Me: Why do we have smelly feet and runny nose? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

4.
Me: There are two types of Bengalis in the world – Sen’s and Non-Sen’s

5.
Me: I think the Danish people actually immigrated from West Bengal.
ARN: Why? (Making an expression of regret that he prompted, the very next second)
Me: Because everyone’s name ends with a Sen in Denmark.

6.
Me: Women make men complete! On second thought, Raymonds suit also does!

7.
Malayalam
———
Ge: ഞാന്‍ പിന്നിട്ട വഴികളിലേക്ക് തിരിഞ്ഞു നോക്കുമ്പോള്‍…
Me: നിന്നോട് ആരാടാ വഴിയില്‍ pin ഇടാന്‍ പറഞ്ഞത്? അത് ആരുടെയെങ്കിലും കാലില്‍ തറചാലോ?

That’s all I can remember now. I hope some of you enjoyed them, but my real satisfaction will come when some of you bang your head against the wall out of frustration. This list will grow in future.

V Day or I Day?

I miss India, Just Rambling, Life etc., ,

Feb 14th.

No chocolate for guessing what is so significant about this date.

But I bet you would have guessed it wrong about the significance of today w.r.t. me (with respect to. Anyone remember calculus?)

Instead of getting a date, I got a phone call… from my parents. And they wished me Happy Birthday! A birthday that even I came to know of, only after the call. Before you get all confused, today is my birthday according to Indian Calendar. And because I don’t have an Indian Calendar here in US, I didn’t know earlier. Oh, I just love being Indian. You can have two birthdays per year!

Anyway, it came as a pleasant surprise, because I had absolutely no plans for today. Now I can celebrate, and not look like an ass slacking on Valentine’s day.

Also, I called my brother, and I talked to him like I talk to my mom – for 45 minutes. The only difference was that we talked about some subjects, which I never dare talk to my mom. It spanned topics like my theory about his craze for Telugu movies (His secret Telugu Girlfriend! Not so secret any more!), about our parents’ trip to Mettupalayam today, how to survive in the cutthroat world of office, my plans for Valentine’s day, his plans, and of course, Ram Sene.

  1. My brother didn’t know that my parents were going to Mettupalayam today. When he asked me why, I said in my usual fashion, that they were going to Black Thunder themepark to rediscover their childhood. He replied back with an impromptu punchline, “Paada Parambil keri Golf kalikkalle Mone Dineshaa” (Don’t play Golf in barren land. To understand what he meant, read this post, section 6.1)
  2. I told him how to proactively cut the throat of those who are planning to cut your throat. You can even mention that during your appraisal, as an example of how proactive you are.
  3. My plans for V-Day – Eat, study, sleep.
  4. His plans for V-Day – Eat, work, sleep when the manager is not around.
  5. My brother told me about Ram Sene’s threat that they will forcibly marry off any couple they see on roads. He was talking about how the mob was a bunch of sexually frustrated losers who wanted an excuse to grope girls. I couldn’t help but crack this joke that there may be gays in Ram Sene, so boys are not safe either. (I am sorry if this is insensitive, but this is how I will show my protest, because I can’t do anything about it from US)

So, because today is my birthday, I’m gonna celebrate it by ordering a pizza and the delicious Chocolate Breadsticks from Pizza Hut.

PS: I generally don’t talk about my Indian birthday outside, because it is strictly for family. But today was too much of a coincidence!

PPS: On an entirely different note, an important event occured yesterday, which will never occur again. At 6:31pm, the UNIX timestamp struck the value of 1234567890. But the trouble-seeker that I am, I accidentally slept across the iconic moment, and incurred the wrath of all UNIX enthusiasts.

Right is back

Life etc.,

I am partially back in action. A successful surgery at Hosmat and I am back in Palakkad now, to take rest. But being the internet buff that I am, I couldn’t ignore the call of my PC and the internet. So here I am, typing with one and a half hands, a quarter of a bone less and 13 stitches in my inner elbow.

I had quite some revelations about my conditions as well as about some of my friends through the course of this recent development. First of all, this was not a cyst and was some other “benign lesion”. It was nevertheless harmless, because, well, it was benign. The doctors just removed the head of my radius bone instead of grafting a bone from somewhere else. That spared me another cut in my body. Anyway, I had my surgery on Friday, hand was on cast for one day, I was discharged on Saturday evening and a couple of the nurses were pretty.

I was feeling a little underweight because of the piece of bone which was removed, but it was quickly compensated by the weight of the minuscule facial hair which sprang up in a matter of 3 days. After discharge, I came back to Palakkad, supposedly to take rest, but I’m taking everything but rest here. That includes taking pills, taking occasional punches from my brother for bullying him and taking food with my left hand. I have become adept at eating with left hand of late. Guess it is only a matter of time before I become ambidextrous.

I got bored easily, watching the idiot box, so I decided to clear my backlog with mails and Google Reader. But I was flabbergasted when I saw the number of unread posts in my Google Reader. It was a tad less than 100 in 5 days. Now I have to work hard to read all those. Plus I have a pending tag.

Another important thing that I found out was who really cared about me. I found out that some people who I thought were friends, were not my friends, after all. Honestly, all that would have taken to show some sign of concern, was a phone call. I’m not whining here. I’m just thankful that there was one good thing about my condition – I could separate the wheat from the chaff.

A series of unfortunate events

Life etc., , ,

Thursday, 8th November – 0600 hrs
So I was taking a break from work for 11 days. Let’s just call it a vacation at my native. My agenda – Diwali on 8th, Kalpathi Ratholsavam over the next week, and a visit to Chelakkara, my mother’s native place, after about 10 years.

This has been my most expensive trip home so far. I had to take a flight to Coimbatore and my dad came about 50km to pick me up. The reason – No train or bus tickets were available as it was peak time. Forget peak time, you won’t get tickets to Kerala even on normal months. I remember seeing 93 seats available on the first day of booking (that is 60 days before the journey date), and it quickly went into wait list in 15 minutes. Traveling from Bangalore to Palakkad (or to any part of Kerala, for that matter) is a pain in the butts, mostly because you have to take a bus (because there are only a couple of direct trains) and your butts will indeed be painful by the time you reach home.

Deprived of all cheaper means of going home, I thought of taking my car. That would be a drive of 7 hours. But my mom thought that was a bad idea (Read: “Forget it! You are not taking your car alone for such a long distance.”) It almost seemed as if she sensed that I was in Diesel Mode of late. Diesel Mode is the term given by my friends to my random rushes of adrenalin wherein I drive my car like a race car driver when I find stretches of road where there is not much traffic and there is no risk of people crossing the road, for instance the Inner Ring Road or the Mysore Road. The name is derived from the role of Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious. Anyway, my mom said “No car. Period.” So I took a flight, shelling out about 2000 bucks more than what I’d spend for a train ticket.

The flight duration was 1 hour. I was wondering why it took so long, given that it is not even one third the distance between Bangalore and Delhi. I made up a theory. Coimbatore was so close that the plane would have passed Coimbatore and gone further South by the time it gained altitude. So it had to turn around to land in Coimbatore.

Mathematically speaking,
Optimum Altitude/Rate of altitude gain of the plane < Distance to Coimbatore/2*Ground speed of plane

The flight was supposed to be uneventful, but as it would always be the case with me, it was eventful. The event was that I got two free sandwiches and a coffee from Kingfisher. The “unevent” was that I got those not in the flight, but in the airport, because the flight was delayed by 2 hours, owing to the shortsightedness of the Coimbatore lads. (They said the visibility was only 600 feet and they couldn’t see farther than that. This is called shortsightedness or myopia.)

Thursday, 8th November – 1100 hrs
The 45 minute journey from Coimbatore to Palakkad was uneventful, except for the event that I immediately sensed it when we crossed the state border to Kerala as it started getting bumpy due to potholes in the National Highway. Anyway, the journey was over in a jiffy. All I did was talk. I talked to my brother, talked to my dad. Funnily enough, they didn’t talk to me much. My brother said I didn’t give them a chance to talk. One of the few things that I remember my dad saying was, “Watch out… there’s the bull temple.” There was a Shiva temple with a huge bull statue by the Highway. And my dad and mom always made it a point to say “Watch out… there’s the bull temple,” as we used to pass by. You’d usually get bored having seen it so many times in life. But not my parents. My mom may even ask to turn back to have a look, if she misses it by any chance. (I don’t know whether this has happened any time.)

Thursday, 8th November – 1230 hrs
As I reached home, I had to add something else to my agenda. Designing the system that my brother was doing for his final year project. He didn’t know what the hell a design was. He would say he has done something and I just have to refine it, while in fact he would not have done anything. He would ask me about UML. Don’t ask me what UML is, because I honestly don’t know anything about it. When I tell this to my brother, he’d just ask me to tell him whatever I know. He sounds like a Project Manager at times. I get annoyed, but he gets a backing from mom, “Help him da. Who else does he have to turn to?”
“Oh right.. Engineering is a subject like the Hindi you teach. It is so simple that a Electronics Engineer can solve the doubts of a Computer Engineer.”
“I would help him if only I knew.”
“But I don’t know either”
My brother interrupts, “Look..you just have to draw a component diagram, explain each module and their interactions. I’ll take care of the rest.”
I ask, “What else is left for you to take care of? Correcting grammatical errors?”
My brother says, “No. MS Word will take care of that!”
I roll my eyes.So I was not spared this time either. My brother was bugging me when I wanted to rest in peace. Not inside a coffin, mind you.

Friday, 9th November – 1800 hrs
Diwali went on with some minor attractions like me showing off by lighting crackers in my bare hand and throwing them to burst them in the air. The next day I went to a concert in Kalpathi. I and my mom decided to walk the distance. By the time we reached Grandma’s house, I was really thirsty. No points for guessing the reason. I was talking all the way. You’ve heard “Walk the talk” but I apparently believed in “Talk the walk”. The concert was not very impressive, so we returned home soon.

Saturday, 10th November – 0900 hrs
The next day was a turning point in my vacation and in writing this post. I was not finished with half of my agenda. But as fate would have it, I’m forced to wind up this post midway. I don’t remember what went through my mind when I decided to take a couple of pull-ups in the bedroom loft. That I am not very heavily built, and can take only two pull-ups at most, is a fact which I forgot. (On second thought, this is what was going through my mind when I did that act which can be deemed extremely unnecessary and foolish.) I pulled myself up; when I reached the pinnacle, a piercing pain grew in my right elbow, and I immediately let go. I was literally slithering in the bed due to excruciating pain for the next 2 minutes. After the pain subsided, I noticed that it still was extremely painful whenever I twisted my arm. I was not able to eat with bare hands; I had difficulty in brushing my teeth. I was horrified. What happened to my right arm? I went to the hospital, and found out from the doctor that a cyst has developed in my elbow. It was probably there for some time, but the pain developed when the bone was exerted. I have to get it removed through surgery. I’ll get admitted soon. The doctor advised me not to type, but I wanted to publish this post, although it is incomplete. So I changed the title and am posting it now.I will update after my surgery. This is a very minor surgery, but please pray for me.

On the quest of the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter, Life etc., ,

I’m falling into a state of depression. I can’t believe the last book of the Harry Potter series is out and I have already read it. I just can’t take the idea that I won’t get the chance to wait eagerly for the next book.

Being a faithful follower of Harry Potter, I won’t spoil any of the plots of the book. I thought I’d just mention how my day went on 21st Saturday.

I pre-ordered the book in the bookstore nearest to my apartment, obviously to reach home as soon as I bought the book and start reading the book. Unfortunately, the earliest opening time anywhere in Bangalore was 6 am. And, to my dismay, Crossword Indiranagar, where I was to get my book was to open only at 7 am.

So, me and KP decided to go at 6.15 am and wait outside the store. The others were not interested in Harry Potter. We left them to their pathetic life devoid of imaginations and fantasies. (Take no offence if you are reading this, guys, but your life is really pathetic, trying to spoil the plot to us with snapshots from a traitor which came on the internet on the previous day, and jeering and calling a spell casting as a mere stick rotation)
But typical to the nature of bachelors, we started off 15 minutes late. I was wearing my favorite Harry Potter T-shirt and shorts. By the time I parked my car near the shop, it was already crowded, with a queue of 30+ people. I felt a tiny bit of guilt for not showing my fidelity. I should have reached at 6. I should have been in the front.

That feeling faded away soon when the shop was opened and the first group of about 10 customers were let in. From then, it was a feeling of longing. A part of my brain even thought about gatecrashing, throwing the receipt to the counter, taking a book and running out. We couldn’t get in for another long 30 minutes.

I got the book, took a bookmark from the counter and started reading the book on the scene(until KP collected his copy and came outside). I was engrossed wholly in the book even as I walked towards my car. I heard someone call out, “Take your time, dude. You have all day to finish the book.” I grinned at the group of people sitting near the pavement, waiting for their turn to get inside.

We drove back, I parked my car in the most lopsided manner that could be possible and rushed to my apartment. I continued from where I had stopped. By 10.30, I had finished about 100 pages. KP, being a voracious reader, was thrice as fast as me. I skipped breakfast, and went for lunch only because I was really hungry. I even considered taking the book to the restaurant to read it while having dinner. I had already lost about 4 hours because I fell asleep afternoon after having a heavy lunch. Throughout the day, I was interrupted (to my great annoyance) by a number of phone calls. I never received so many phone calls in one day. It had to be this day! Sigh!

I finished the book at around 2am, had a quick browsing of the internet and started my reread. I won’t tell anything about the story, but I’d say this is one of the best books in the series ever. I’d say third best after GoF and PoA. The book is really fast-paced, and we are in the thick of the action from the first chapter itself.

Ecstatic though I am after knowing (or living, rather) how the saga ends, I also feel strangely depressed. It is as if someone has abandoned me in the muggle world and I don’t know the way to get back. My only hope remains in the two films that are remaining. Nevertheless, I can only feel grateful that I lived in the times of Harry Potter and Joanne Rowling.

American Goof ups

Humor, Life etc.,

The moment I landed in US, the song “Swapnathilo njangal swargathilo” came to my mind.

For non-mallus, this is a song from the third movie in a comedy trilogy where the heroes land in US for investigating a case. That they solved their cases only by goof ups and some luck, is another story. The song translates to “Are we in a dream? Or are we in heaven?”

Little did I know that I would end up with a truckload of trouble like the protagonists.

#1
On day 1, I went with my cousin to a Restaurant. After lunch, I asked the waiter, “I want the bill back after you swipe my card.”
He just stared at me like I was talking Greek.
My cousin then corrected, “He’s talking about the check.”
“Oh..Alright.”, said the waiter.

“What the hell is a check?”, I asked my cousin after the waiter was gone.
“It is called check in restaurants here. Bill in US means…”
“Currency Notes. Oh man!!”, I cried.

#2
As we were going out of the hotel, a group of people were also exiting ahead of us. The last person of that group held the door open for me. But I was so absentminded that I didn’t notice that and simply went out as if there was no door there at all.

He looked at me in a disgusted manner.

My cousin corrected me again. I should hold the door as I exit. That is the way to return the courtesy here.

#3
This one too was related with open doors. Some of you already know that I have trouble with doors.
This time I failed to keep the door open as I was going through. And there was a lady right behind me.
As soon as she came out, she shouted at me, “Heyyy! You slammed the door right on my nauuuuse!!!” (Spelling of nose changed deliberately to show how she pronounced that!)
I thought, “WTF? She should be careful. It’s not my fault.”, but didn’t say anything. Not even a sorry.

#4
I came to know that people here are so possessive about their possessions through a funny incident. I had gone to my friend’s house and we were just having an “epilogue” chat near my car as I was leaving. I just leaned onto the adjacent car casually as I was talking. Some time later, a guy came with a huge dog ( I think a boxer ) on a leash and asked me curtly, “Please don’t lean onto that car.”

I thought I heard, “..or else my dog will rip you to shreds”, but I was just imagining that.

My friend told me that he was decent enough. She told me that people usually scream at you. You are not supposed to even touch other cars. People would think you are trying to steal it.

#5
Although this was not exactly a goof up, I’ll write this. This happened in the car park in front of a shopping mall. I was carelessly crossing the road around a corner when a car came from the corner and stopped just a foot away from me. (In Bangalore, you say “more than” a foot for the same situation). I jumped, but we encounter this so much in Bangalore that I casually went ahead.
I saw the person driving the car keeping her hands on her forehead in horror. She got out of the car and nervously approached me. She was a pretty young lady.
“I’m very very sorry about this. I didn’t see you around the corner.”
“Not to worry. I’m alright.”, I said as if it was not a deal at all.
I saw her sweating with jitters. There’s nothing worse than hitting a pedestrian in US.
For another 2 minutes, she repeated “I’m really really sorry”, “Are you okay?” and “Are you sure?”, until she got on my nerves.

BTW, why do girls always say “really really” or, sometimes, “really really really” when they are apologizing?

“I’m alright, alright? I won’t make a fuss of this. Forget this and don’t worry. You are blocking other cars.”, I grinned as I said.

I think the “I’m alright, alright?” will be a classic quote. 😀

And I got back a very pretty smile which many men would die for.
I wish I had been hit, then it would have had that “Back to the Future” (Or Five Point Someone) effect.

Looks like I always have some funny things going on in my life wherever I go. 🙂

Non-mallus, please don’t try to understand this. Because you won’t!!
What is left is to measure “How many kilometers are there from Washington to Miami beach”…
Kilometers and kilometers in these days of degenerating decency where….whatever!!!