Why this happens to me?

I tend to change my desktop pictures often. Looking at them is a nice change from doing important tasks like orkut-surfing, chatting and checking mails for the nth time.

Rarely, I allow salacious pictures to decorate my desktop. The rarest of the rare times I have them, my friends who happen to be girls use my system.
:-((

Image damaged!!

Hurt hurting hurt

Something that hurts, happens.
Down with depression.
As if personal pain was not enough, office irritations rub it in.
There comes a stage when you go numb and nothing matters to you, atleast you think so.
Then something worse happens to someone your friend. The thorns which had you as pin cushion get thrown off. A fury at what happened to your friend alone simmers.
It's not that something good has to occur for you to forget your worries. Sometimes closed ones' misfortune can make you forget yours.
Unfortunate but true.

River struggles; A dam cracks.

Some hesitation.
A shyness to come back to what I left.
New found friends left behind.
Hectic schedule. A mere excuse?
Why the block with so much to unlock?
I wish to write.
To put down what all I sight.
Feeling guilty hasn't helped a bit.
Still I wish an old fire be lit.
I hope I blog again.
Come back to live in the world of my choice.
To live in the world of my choice
As I exist in the world I am in.
I am getting a life.

Fat boy slim!!

It's been a long time since I got myself a pair of jeans.
The one that's my favourite clings to me too much for comfort. The ones fit look dirty even after a wash.
I, preset with a particular shade, searched for a month, not being in too much a hurry and not getting the shade either.
Today lady luck smiled on me. Atleast that's what I thought first, not knowing what was to come.
That shade was in all the sizes, except for my size x, which is my size since 1 year before.
So I tried size x-2, since they jump along even numbers. I had half a mind to take it, but my tummy protested too much.
Heeding it, I convinced myself with a jean of some other colour and a different brand and tried one in my size.
It fit alright but not that comfortable.
So I walked away, saying to the salesman that I'd visit again once he gets one of my size in that particular brand.
My friend asked that I try one of size x+2. I pooh-poohed him in confidence. He insisted.
Reluctantly, I yielded to him and walked to the trial room with my chosen jeans in a size too large.
Horror of horrors, it fit comfortably.
A long walk to the billing area, and a longer walk back to my friend!
I've got to exercise.
Any ideas to get the lazy bones to start working out?

Kicking to start; starting to kick

I never intended to take this big a break. At home and catching up with friends for 2 weeks. A long travel to Indore and getting swamped with work immediately slowed down my intentions to blog. Laziness brought a complete stop. From Indore a shuttle trip to Chennai within two weeks of coming from there, made January a travel month. A full month without any post in the 20 months I've been blogging, is a first. So without bothering to take the effort to transmit the posts from my mind to my blog, I just blog about not blogging. Nurturing my blog is first. I'll bring it back to life, then I'll nourish it.
Blogging to continue..........

Thoughts as I leave

I am gonna miss this place! Chicago!

I came with a different opinion. I am going back with some of them changed, and some of them strengthened.

Could understand many things better now, like the addiction on oil. This country is beautiful. And the people too!! ;-)

The one aspect which confounds me still, is politics.

I am still unable to understand the reasoning behind the wars. In my opinion the military is highly spreadout. At one point in time, when the draft gets implemented, public opinion will turn against it forcing a retreat in the many theatres of war. But that will come at a time after lots of enemies have been made and ironically when the troops should be in the battle field. One has to pick the battle to win.

In India, we appear so conservative. One family's black sheep becomes the talking point of the entire neighbourhood. And to become a blacksheep one doesn't have to stray much. If it's not a metro city, just marrying out of caste is enough. But we tolerate public leadership who are no paragons of virtue in their personal life. I bet no member of public would like to prefer the personal life of the leaders, but would still prefer the personalities to lead the society. Bigamy, shady relationships, everything goes. But in US it's just the opposite. The public tolerates anything among them. But for leaders they expect characters straight out of the scriptures. No extra-marital affairs, sorry! This in a country where the bonds of marriage are very flimsy. The country's leader may have boosted the economy, increased minimum wages, pursued peace instead of war, but still gets his knuckles so hard for a private deviance from values. You can't call what happens between consenting adults illegal. But still he can be besmirched for that. Hmm...

Anyway, I am leaving the place I like, to the place I love!

You say goodbye and I say hello*

This month has been pretty hectic for me. I try to absorb the imagery that flies past in space-time (whoa!).

Yes, I am getting ready to return home and it's causing lots of work. It's also seeing me trying to capture the year that was.

And I tell you, trying to pack things that were with you for a year in 2 suitcases is no joke. So as I pack as much I can, I also leave things that can be easily replaced. Not all things are material, and some things have to be replaced. A snapshot from my list:

Things to leave/pickup:

Fake accent/Inglish
Yes, I'll have to soon get out of the forced habit of rolling over my words. I'll have to soon unleash my natural inclination to sit and do a squat on every R in each word.

Disciplined driving/Driving on the other side with the right amount of indiscipline:
Initially felt like a moron waiting at the red light with no one on any side. Now have to get out of the moronic habit. Back home, that thing is for the ads.

Hugging/Nodding
Going about hugging females indiscriminately gonna be a strict no-no {First this gonna should be replaced with a strict "is going to be"}. And yeah, I don't belong to the Indian P3 elite where hugging females is cool normal and hugging males is cool gay! Back to backslapping my buddies and nodding at others.

Hi! How are you?/ ???
Barking a "How are you?" at persons known and unknown has to cease promptly on landing at India. Studious indifference to people who stare, walk-by, travel with, is gonna (dammit) be the norm.

Starbucks coffee/tea in a glAAs
It took only a day or two to get used to watery decoction in a high collins like container with very little milk (Half & Half to boot). No more dodging the low fat milk and trying to get real healthy milk. But ofcourse Starbucks will be sorely missed. It's pretty much high-end back there. Moi part of hoi-polloi.

My cop-magnet car/My ruddy old bike
It has been definitely proved that my car is a cop magnet. Last week a cop pulled me over (as in several weeks before that) and asked to show my insurance for the Honda I drive. I politely told him that it's a Mercury upon which he left. They have to stop me even before deciding the offence! :-( But I have to leave this here and get on to my old love, my bike.

So if any of you find a bag trashed at the O'Hare containing words rolling over each other hugging other known words, spitting a "How are you?" from themselves while soggy with Starbucks coffee, you'd know who left that, won't ya?

* From the Beatles' song "Hello Goodbye" by Lennon/McCartney

The Pain of Birth!

That's my room mate almost getting to experience the pain he caused his mom at birth.

I am in the first pic camouflaging him with the cake!

:-)

Thanks a lot!

Last weekend was the first long weekend I didn't go anywhere out of state. With an eye on optimal spending and another on possible shopping I decided to spend 4 days at home. Come Thanksgiving and there was a buzz among all my friends here. Everyone started planning for shopping on Black Friday. They checked out the deals, identified the shops and mapped out the strategies. I had only one item in mind, an external harddrive for my laptop. So I didn't bother at first. Then the enthusiam caught on and by 9 o'clock at night, I was cruising from shop to shop, checking out the queues. All my friends were dispersed in various shops. Best Buy offered laptops at $ 249 and $379, a steal! My friend who went at 2 in the afternoon was not the first in the queue. One of our brethren beat him to it. The time I went, it had swollen into a 70 + strong queue with still 7 cold hours to go.

To cut the long story short, I took position at another store and joined the fun of waiting. What started out as a plan for an external harddrive ended up with me getting that, a thumb drive, SD card, camera, surgeguard, Ferrari toy car with remote, Microsoft Flight simulator, some more toys, some jewellery (silver chain and strands of pearls), blank DVDs and some more! By evening, I was driving like a zombie checking out shops. I got some things for my friends who stood at other stores and they got me some other things which I couldn't get. Quite a bit of shopping! :-)

This led to me thinking what if this happens in India. With Walmart about to open shops in India with a tie up with Bharti, this looks very much possible. But things will be pretty much different.

1. Queue will start 100 hours before, not a mere 20 hours.

2. Queue positions will be sold.

3. The store will get calls from bureaucratic highups asking those deep discount items be allocated to them.

4. All tenous connections with the store employees will be recalled and friendships emphasized.

5. Fistfights will be common. In US too, this occurs at places.

6. Political TV channels will blame each other for the possible riots that will happen. They will shove a mike at some bleeding loser and let him have his 10 seconds of fame.

Thank God we don't have this Black Friday concept. As it is, the Deepavali shopping spread over 2,3 weeks makes everyone crazy. A special sale concentrated on a single day will bring the nation to a boil.

Nonsensical niceties

Last week I caught a cold. By Thursday it became acute, setting off concerns from colleagues with my incessant sneezing, coughing and sniffing. I left early and on my way home stopped at Walgreens, the pharmacy chain.

I slid a box of Tylenol across the counter for payment.
The cashier emitted a cheery "Hi! How are you today?", while scanning the medicine barcode.
I, tired looking and reddish faced, replied with "Obviously I am not doing well".
The cashier's jaw dropped at the unexpected reply.
She looked at me, a bit perplexed.
I repeated myself while pointing at my purchase.
She then sheepishly said, " We never look at what people buy."
She must have rolled her eyes after I left.
Sometimes when you are already down and out, saccharine polite conversation kills you.