Signs

Today out of curiosity I walk to the ATM in my office. I swipe my Debit card and check my bank balance. A rude shock. My balance is less than $ 10! Not enough for even a tank of gas. Ofcourse tomorrow is pay day but still, I've never fared this worse before.

It's a languid afternoon and I crave for a coffee. Starbucks depletes me by another dollar and 39 cents. Praying that no misfortune should happen on the long drive home, I start from office. Safely I reach home. I have a mail. A credit card waits for me! I am informed that my application has been approved and after performing the necessary security ritual, I am bestowed with credit!!
I doubt whether this is a good omen!
:-)

Strategic Offense Initiative (ishtaar vaars!)

For a very long time, I've wondered about the visa regulations that the US has. Why should they go to great lengths to restrict such apparently peaceful, hardworking Indians to their country,thought I. Even Bill Gates opposed the restriction in H1 visas last year and I was as puzzled as he was. But recently I found out the reason. Rather, I witnessed the reason. It is to protect its national monuments and landmarks that the US has adopted this strict visa quota regime, but I should report that they are miserably failing in that. One reading this logic might not believe me and might even think that in my absence from blogging for some time now, I must have gone cuckoo! But it's true! I know we Indians are incredibly brainy but never believed that we could invade and occupy a country far removed from our shores. One has to see it to believe the Indian offensive.

Whichever American touristy place I vist, I see only Indians. And not just individual Indian visitors. While the other countries go to war with armies, We always invade in families! Every monument, national park, museum, casino I visited so far was teeming with Indians. Ofcourse i could see some stray Americans around but they had the look of the occupied. And this, with me yet to check-out Niagara falls!

Every Indian invading family (IIF, for short) essentially comprises of a husband, wife and their parents. Sometimes kids also are a part of this army. The guy leading the IIF charge is always armed with various gadgetry hanging from all sides. A digicam, a handycam, a phone are the essentials. Then the wife would follow. She will be either happy or sulking depending upon whose parents accompany them. The most important of the IIF battalion are the parents. Be it their son or son-in-law who is leading them, they will be demure and self-conscious. As certain is that the guy and his wife will be in trousers, the parents will always be in their Indian attire. They will be stiffly marched in formation before the unfortunate monument/statue/musuem/casino and the IIF leader will whip up one his gadgets and proceed to film them. It would all seem natural to the natives that tourists are taking photos. But actually the IIF is on a surveillance and reconnoitering mission.

Be it Sears tower, Statue of Liberty, LasVegas casinos, Golden gate Bridge, Universal Studios, they all have been invaded and continue to be under the occupation of the IIFs. Infact the United States tourism department identifies places of interest by first checking whether any Indians are there. "No Indians here? Nah, this place is worthless" go the department officials.

The only way that a place of interest can be identified that it is not part of India is there won't be any hearts pierced by arrows sculpted on the Golden Gate Bridge, there won't be any guide introducing the Hoover dam as the place where the film, "Fools rush in" was shot which by the way happens to have a dam and there won't be any broken beer bottles in the Pacific Ocean beaches.

Infact IIFs have already achieved success. When Pokhran nuclear tests were conducted, the US first went into hyper-criticising mode and threatened to sanction everything from India. But they were bolting the coop after the fox has come in. The Indian Prime Minister had only to call up the US President and politely tell him that all the US monuments and other attractions are being held hostage. US had to relent and for a face saving measure was allowed to ban the export of nuclear weapons related materials to India and the visit of scientists fro m India to US. Even then they didn't realise how much India's strength lay in software engineers and not the nuclear scientists. No, not in their code but in their inlaws and parents. Not only they bug the code (and later debug) but they also bug the Americans out of their own national treasures. And I am proud of them, every single IIF unit which bravely led and continue to lead the invasion. I salute them.

Belatedly the Americans are trying to salvage a losing battle. Jai Hind!

Vanity, Thy name is Jinguchakka!

Somebody tell the Indian government that I'll continue blogging.Just because I went away for some 10 days they need not shutter down blogspot.There are other bloggers too!

Paradise Found!

Once upon a time, Mother Nature decided to deck herself up. She chose a ocean's shore for that. She had a range of mountains end right at the ocean. She added her usual greenery on the mountains. At some places, she let the mountains slope gently into the waters. At others she made it a sheer drop from the heights to the waters.

Then in a gracious mind, she let the human beings build a road right at the cusp. Travelling through the road, with mountains staring you down on one side and waves rushing at you on the other is an amazing experience. The only road (atleast among I've seen) which has a sign cautioning about the surf coming onto disturb your travel. The road, which you can stop on your way through, to frolic in the beaches (which I did). The road which is panorama personified. It is like living through a series of those beautiful picture post cards which you get but wonder which place it is. No photo can justify the actual beauty. No digicam can capture the beauty drunk by your eye. An early morning drive in which Nature plays with you by rolling a fog from the ocean blocking your view momentarily then revealing herself in all her glory.

Paradise on earth!
Pacific Coastal Highway!

Also called Route 1 or Cabrillo highway, I took the stretch from Los Angeles to San Francisco. An out of the world experience.

When talking about Colorado's beauty Teddy Roosevelt said, “The descriptions would bankrupt the English language.” My vocabulary fails miserably when I strive to capture the sublime beauty of the Pacific Trail. I consider myself fortunate to have had the chance to travel along it.

Have you had this happen to you?

It is almost six months since I took any kind of leave.
I, having planned to make the coming long weekend a longer weekend, broach this topic with my client and my own managers.
I tell them that I plan to skip office for 2 days.
Client says "No problem".
Then I approach my onsite manager. A pretty senior manager this one, heads the entire delivery team at the client end.
She asks me to shoot a mail, just in case she forgets about it.
About to leave, I blurt out the reason for my planned absence. I plan to go on a long road trip, I tell her. I also tell her the places on my plan, the routes I'd take and so on.She just nods and wishes me well.
Next morning, I get a mail from her, asking me to have fun.
Also attached to the mail is a document generated out of a software detailing the routes I told her I'd take, the times, places to stay, map etc.
This doesn't fit in any Dilbert strip, right?
It's a warm and sunny day out here.

Narcissism

Usually I avoid writing about myself preferring to write what I observe. But Casa has asked me to fulfill her tag and here I go. Still I tried to frame answers that are true but don’t focus on me. A difficult thing I found that to be, as I re-read what I wrote.

I am thinking about..
....my oncoming road trip (an arduous one) this long weekend and wish it should be a success.
I said...
....I should buy a home, but yet to do this.
I want to...
....pilot a plane (at the least, a hang glider)
I wish...
....for peace in my mind. (whoa!)
I miss...
:-(
I hear...
....Apple’s gonna release a 100 GB iPod
I wonder...
...why money never stays with me
I regret...
....not doing well in my school finals
I am...
....brutally frank
I dance...
....to no one’s tune
I sing...
....my own meaningless lyrics to popular tunes
I cry...
....unshed tears
I am not always...
....happy. But who else is?
I write...
....to improve my writing. Very little success so far!
I confuse...
....myself when it comes to balancing relationships
I need...
....heavy doses of self-confidence
I should try...
....to clear CAT!!
I finish...
....idlis, dosas and all food in general very fast (of course with appropriate side-dishes)
I tag...
....Paravai
....Janani

I wanted to tag some more of my blog friends but I decided to save them for my future tags. Yeah, I am yet to honour some more tags. Watch this blog for more!

Guns and a Rose

After a long day at office, I slowly make my way through the car park. Two football grounds and some more, the huge carpark can pack. Always one who comes in late, it is a long walk for me having get to park the car farthest from the door.
I push myself in and drop my backpack in the backseat and myself at the wheel.

About to start, I see a car rushing in fast. The car park is hemmed by my office, a creche, a construction company etc. The car stops in front of the creche, some distance from me. Nothing unusual in that except for the rash driving. I am about to turn away when I espy a guy getting out seemingly in a hurry and at the same time being pulled in by the driver, a lady. Rivetted I look at them. A family argument.

The guy peels himself and starts walking away. The woman wildly gesticulates and talks something which doesn't reach me.The guy walks out into a pavement nearby and slowly but surely makes off. The woman starting the car with a ferocious speed matching her temper tries to come on to the other side and take on the guy head on. The guy nonchalantly gets back to this side of the pavement which is long and wide and the woman turns back the car and comes without reducing her speed. She tries to climb on to the curb and hit him. Failing in that, she stops and getting out of the car, rushes on to him. She, her arms spread wide, starts pleading something. I watch a tragic mime. They belong to different races, I could presume from the colour of the skin. A subconscious observation as I am transfixed by the quarrel.

After about a minute flailing and failing, the woman walks back to the car, alone and angry, pulls the door shut and takes a U-turn on her drive back. As the car makes the turn I notice a doe-eyed kid sitting without an expression in the back seat.
Another war, another innocent victim.

'G'agged!

I was tagged.
The Tag Instructions: Comment, and I shall give you a letter. Go back to your journal, and write ten words beginning with that letter, including an explanation of what those words means to you and why. And I was given the letter G.
Hastobeme must have been really mad at me to give me that letter! I think, thank and thunk but for the life of me, couldn’t manage ten words starting with G. Of course, some exotic but had-to-be-censored “G” words, I had them down pat. But I pretend to be a gentleman and so tried to get hold of other words. No progress! So I archived the post in the trenches of my shallow mind {It kept floating :-( }

You allow me in peace, and I’ll ramble, drivel, blather, babble and generally won’t leave you in peace. But you test me with an alphabet and I flunk.

It is almost like stage fright. I can talk by a tea shop for hours together. But remove the tea glass (pronounced T-gloss) from me and give a mike, I’d become verbally challenged. It has happened so many times. How I overcame that and became a proficient public speaker with a stray dog and a lamp post for an audience (yup, it happened, I promise), is the stuff of legend. Will be narrated sometime in the future.

OK, what I am trying to drive home is that this simple tag had me stumped. I was almost tempted to buy up a dictionary and jot down all the “G” words.

Then a week back, Casa threatened with the letter X. That was too much for me. So I decided to hurry up and finish this tag before someone throws a “Z” at me.Here I go!

God – “I am in him; He is in me” – sounds good and high falutin. But I’ll stick to saying that I have felt His presence.

Green Day – Their “American Idiot” is a masterpiece. I love it.

Goal – I am in a country where there is no interest in the soccer World Cup. And the first match starts at 10.00 AM when I’d be in office busy having my coffee break. By the time I reach home, all the three matches are over. I hate it that I am in a place where nobody talks about it.

Goal – One which I don’t aspire to have in life. I meander like a river shifted by the sands of time!! Big funda but can’t help it. Lol.

Gloating – I never like it when it comes from others!

Grumpy – My current mood

Goa – The place I like to visit, hopefully next year

Google – They have made our world a better place with their search engine. God knows how it was before one could “google” anything.

Godfather - The movie (Part 1) which every aspiring screenplay writer should see. Not a scene wasted. Never an irrelevant gesture. A marvellous movie on its screen play alone.

Girls - :-))


I am done!

Budding Buddha!

As I lay waiting for sleep to come, I was thinking deeply. All of a sudden I had gone into a philosophical mood. I thought whether there could be any person in this whole world without any worry. But I also know that, for any person, there would be atleast 2 or 3 people around him who will perceive that given his riches, material or immaterial, he wouldn't be having anything to worry. But to each man, his own pain. A poor man might think the rich who has a luxurious home and all other amenities would be a most happy person. But in truth that rich person might be neck deep in debt, or a failing business, no family and friends....one may never know. Infact the rich person might actually be envying the poor for living a care free life (his perspective). Nothing with you, nothing to lose would be what rich man's opinion would be. Why so many ills and worries plague this world thought I. And I plunged a bit more into the pessimistic morass.

Whatever I do, there is always a problem to nag me. I seem to be running only to stay in the same place. Not one day passes without me worrying about one thing or the other. Personal, official, genuine, imaginary, whatever but something always troubles me. Deeply I thought and I reflected upon whether there had been any great soul who had over come all these. I remembered Gautama Buddha.

I pondered on how Buddha was so disturbed by human sufferng that he quit the material life and go sit under a bodhi tree! That would be a good person to follow, I decided. So immediately I tried to remember how he had renounced his worldly possessions. In the middle of the night, he'd get up and spend a fleeting moment before his sleeping wife and then leave, I remembered reading somewhere. I too decided to do so. I turned and searched for my wife beside. She was not there. Then I remembered that I am yet to be married. Shucks! What all problem one has to face even to renounce this material world! The path to salvation is never easy. Deciding to wait for my wife, I turned back again and went to sleep!

Curse on those Captchas!

I like blog hopping. I don't stop with bloggers that I know or blogrolled. I like to go to one blog, select another blog from its blog roll, then repeat the process to hop to another blog without looping back to an already visited blog. This way, I go to completely new blogs. I've come across many interesting blogs this way. I've come across funny blogs, serious-with-a-cause blogs, plain but interesting blogs, dead pan humourous blogs, very diverse everyone of them.

Some posts make me wish I had written them. Some are so well written that I think of ceasing my blogging altogether and remaining just a reader. Standards so high! Some blogs I remember without blogrolling them (OK, OK, my browser remembers) and visit them frequently. One widely prevalent thing I found is a majority of them employ captchas.

Captchas or "word verification" as described in blogger are a real nuisance. I'd spy a real interesting post which would provoke a comment from me. But in there a captcha would be sitting patiently waiting for me. After commenting, I'd scroll down to hit the Submit only to find cursive and mangled letters asking me to identify them. Some letters among them are a real pain to identify. Some captcha styles make the letters lean on one another making it more difficult to make out what they are. Even if they don't schmooze, they look twisted nearly out of shape. Simply put, they take the joy out of commenting.

Except for the regular blog network, I don't comment on every blog. Infact I avoid commenting on popular blogs that have an insane number of comments even though the posts are too good to leave without a comment. Still a random blog with a post that stops me in my hop and skip through the blog world elicits a response. But the captcha hurdle has to be crossed before saving my thoughts on the post.

Ofcourse, I realize the reason for them reptilian letters being there. I too had the "spam rash" once. But the spammers now seem to be losing interest in hitting blog comments. They must have got a very low rate of response. I guess only a few cranks just for the joy of annoying others still churn out those despicable things. But the cure for them has almost become a bane now. Sometimes I'd hurriedly mistype in a captcha only to be served with another of its ilk. This time I'm chastened enough to patiently pore over it, make it out and repeat it like a kindergarten child writing out the alphabets!

Only good thing is a captcha is less of a pain than a password. Passwords!! Now they are an entirely different story and deserve a more blistering post!

Captcha is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University coined the term in 2000 to describe codes they created to help Internet giant Yahoo Inc. thwart a spam problem. "Turing" refers to Alan Turing, a mathematician famous for his codebreaking work during World War II and, later, as a pioneer in artificial intelligence.