Timepass...

A little cloudy day with the temperature hovering between a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 8 degrees. A perfect setting for sipping a ginger tea while watching a Chashme Buddoor or a Katha. Sadly, this 25 year old moron is sitting in his office supposedly giving support to some other teams in their testing. The fact that not a single representative of those teams have turned up till now to ask for support completes the misery. Mind you, it’s a Sunday!!

Welcome to the corporate world. The world in which you earn more than you deserve, you sleep less than you need, you save more than you think and in a nutshell, you live less than you wish. You will realise this when you miss the marriage of your close friends coz you are 4500 miles away from them.

(4th Feb. This is somebody’s anniversary in my family. Trying to recollect the couple’s name but failing. Murphy is playing with me again and I know as soon as the clock would strike 12 midnight and it would be 5th, I would have the names!)

Okie...4th Feb. Today I completed my 4 months stay in UK. Not comparing the life here with India, admittedly, its been easier here. Easier to the extent of being monotonous. Roads are so smooth and straight that you can actually finish a novel while driving before taking another turn. The gas cylinder would never finish at the odd time coz you have electric stove at your disposal. Even the trucks and buses would stop near the zebra crossing pleading you to cross the road first and there is no need to go to vegetable market after finishing you grocery shopping coz you have the ‘you-name-it-we-have-it stores’ like Sainsbury and TESCO!

Still the country is alien (no, I am not sympathising with Shilpa Shetty and I have not watched any of the Big Brother episodes). I mean, something is missing. Where is the excitement of penetrating the crowd all the way from platform 1 to platform 7 at Andheri station to catch 8:57 local? Where are those bumpy rides in Pune’s non existing roads? Where is the fun of running to neighbour’s house asking for the spare gas cylinder when yours is finished with half cooked curry on the burner? Where is the feeling of achievement when you bargain successfully and get kilo potatoes in Rs 9.50 instead of 10! What is the use of taste buds when you have all but tasty food in English restaurants! (My taste buds are all packed and locked in the drawer. Asking for the taste in English food is like demanding a six from Courtney Walsh).

All things are not bad either. Weather is something to die for. Although it’s a little fickle and too cold at times but personally I like winters no matter you are all packed with two sweaters and 3 jackets giving competition to Shammi Kapoor. And the place is just too beautiful to ignore. The folks are extra courteous and start the sentence with please and then stuff it with 253 sorrys and 562 thankus.

The analysis will continue…

A little conversation..

My room mate works in the same office as mine. A new girl joined her team a few days back. Yesterday, he shared a few thoughts with me in office on the Instant messenger. The conversation was brief and is produced verbatim below (I have done some formatting)


Friend (My room mate):
U know

Friend:
The new girl

Me:
Hmm…What about her?

Friend:
Her skill sets

Friend:
Huge smile

Friend:
Sweet talk

Friend:
Nice pleasant face

Me:
Hehehe!!

Friend:
Constant questions

Friend:
To keep ppl thinking she is not sleeping but involved

Friend:
One question 2 each

Friend:
Walk in a hurried way

Friend:
Needless run 2 collect printouts

Friend:
Results…

Friend:
No test case is being run so far

Friend:
No work is being done for last 5 days

Friend:
Forget to add

Friend:
One more skill set

Me:
What’s that?

Friend:
Laugh or at least smile for every joke played by all

Friend:
However bulshit it is

Friend:
Stupidest jokes 2 make ppl comfortable and warmth

Friend:
And 3 ppl r still assisting her to her questions and sorting things for her accommodation

Friend:
2 guys have brought lunch for her. List is endless!!


And he concluded the conversation a little later when we met in the evening:


Conclusion: A girl’s smile is equivalent to 4 days of a guy’s hard work!

Disclaimer :
The above conversation is a figment of our ( me and my friend's imagination). No such person exists on the face of the earth or for that matter, on Jupiter.
Even if the person in question identifies herself and comes back running to me, my above statement will hold good.

Cheers!!

The weekend..

After a 15 day respite from the cold weather when the temperature was 6-7 degrees (yes, this is termed as ‘respite’ in UK) the weather gods are again showing their colors. It’s been pretty cold since last three days and the next few days are not looking too great. Mercury is threatening to dip further and there is this BBC site to put an authentication stamp on mercury’s threats. During the next 5 days, maximum temperature is 5 degrees while the minimum is touching -2!

This weekend was eventful. Not that I climbed mount Everest and met Lalu Prasad Yadav but yeah,visited London for the third time and covered many places. There is a certain London eye, which looks like a replica giant wheel which I used to ride as a kid. It takes a whopping 45 minutes to cover one round! What a boring stuff.

Then there a London bridge which is famous by mistake. Actually parallel to London Bridge, there is Tower Bridge which opens up when a ship passes. Most of the people believe that this function is done by London Bridge. So London Bridge takes all the credit while Tower Bridge does the actual job. Similar instances can be seen in office when a guy and a girl work in the same team!

I had a chance to visit Greenwich on Sunday.We all know this place for GMT. I don’t know what excitement people get when they stand across a line claiming that they are standing with one foot in each hemisphere. The line is imaginary (latitude and longitude), hemispheres are imaginary even the whole concept is imaginary!!
Anyways, I proudly stood across the line and got my snap clicked.

In London, there are around 1,25,12,567 museums. The likes of Lord Curzon, Cornwallis and Wavell and their counterparts in many other countries Britishers ruled bought/stole so many things that they had to convert half of the London into museum to make place for these stuff. Need another life to see all the paintings in National Gallery at Trafalgar square.

All in all an entertaining weekend. Sadly the grind in office started today. Waiting for Saturday….

Cheers!!

Murphy and Me...

My life is full of incidents, accidents, situations and circumstances which can be faithfully explained only by Murphy’s laws. This guy is practically dictating my life.

Just a snapshot…

Whenever I watched any of my stock booming and decided in the night about selling it, the stock either crashed with the opening bell of the stock exchange next day or the entire set of bulls converted into wild bears over night converting my share into a penny stock.

Whenever I felt cramps on my body or had a disturbed sleep and I went to office praying for a ‘light’ day in office, I had entirely new set of loads to finish and I ended up doing donkey’s job.

If I target 8:55 bus in the morning and reach bus stop at 8:54, the bus will turn up at 9:15. Next day, if I target the same 8:55 bus and reach there at 8:56, it would have left at 8:54.

No matter how hard I search for the best deal in the market, after I buy something, it will definitely end up ‘on sale’ everywhere in a few days time. Take this, I bought my Sony cell phone after surfing many, for 130 pounds. Five days later, it was available in 99 all over!!

The probability that my shoe lace will open up is maximum when I am visiting a peak in Switzerland packed with all warm clothes and three set of hand gloves.

My camera roll will get exhausted at most obscure places at the time when I just find/experience the best location/sunset during the entire visit.

There are hundreds such incidents that happen with me….Atleast 2 a day!! Infact Murphy got pretty active during last few months so I thought of documenting these.

Am sure my life will continue to be governed by his laws, so more will follow.

Cheers..

Away from India...

I got a chance to read a conversation which I had with somebody more than a year back and it reminded of my days when I used to blog regularly. I have been posting with alarming irregularity now and infact the year 2006 was quite barren with 19 posts in all. This place seems more or less dead. But this is one place where I made numerous friends, got to know many wonderful human beings and agreed and disagreed on their thoughts, got their thoughts on mine and this place provided me a space where I vent out my feelings, be it personal life, political issues or my travels and now once again there is a burning desire to make this space lively. I know this is my umpteenth attempt and even this attempt does not guarantee a success!

The last time I updated my blog when I switched my company and when I uprooted myself from Bombay to settle in Pune. I was beginning to indulge myself in the pleasures which one can have only when he is on bench (read last post), I guess my project manager managed to get a picture of what I wrote. He decided to put an end to my honeymoon and packed me immediately to UK on some project. It’s been more than three months now.

Last 100 days were quite happening and I am pretty satisfied with the way things are shaping up here. I am quite content on the travel front. I visited Scotland, Switzerland a little of France and a city, Blackforest in Germany. Add to this list London and Cambridge and I can say that the traveler in me is highly satisfied. Switzerland is truly next to heaven and visiting a mountain peak in -10 degrees is an experience in itself.


Since the day I have landed here, more or less everybody is asking me one question. Are you missing something there? Now I am a sort of a guy who can be happy in almost all circumstances. I can spend time in Sahara desert thinking about Mallika Sheravat and can survive in Antarctica discussing the problem with Sehwag’s batting. But the two things that I can think of and can actually put into ‘missing’ list is the hard copy of Times of Times of India every morning and Rajat Sharma’s channel 7. Really missing all those Rakhi Savant’s scoops. So please keep me updated with every minute detail on that front and flood the comment box with the latest developments.

Hope the flow will continue…

Cheers…

IT...I see...

Two more days and I will be a month old in Pune and two more days and I will be a month old in this company too. In this one month, I have worked for the company as much as Mallika Sherawat did in “Myth” and a little more than what Lara Dutta had in “Fanaa”! So that way, I have contributed as much as Mohammad kaif had contributed in his last 4 innings for India.

In the last one month, I became familier with the term called “bench”. For the non-IT guys (Like I was till a month back), it is a harmless piece of wooden furniture languishing in all government schools and offices. But for the IT guys, it has a different meaning altogether. For “kuch karke dikhana hai” type of employees, bench is far more dreaded than asking them to drive in death well while for the laid back kinda guys, it’s an official status accorded to them and they are blessed to get the salary for surfing, chatting and spending plenty of time in food-court ogling at the girls of all dimensions discussing their lipstick color and the size of heel!

And in such a privileged period, I had a change to have a glance at the monitors of others and here are the exclusive results of the study (I thought of giving these ‘exclusive’ results to Aaj Tak or Channel 7 then dropped the idea because they might run the news with captions like “IT companies ka pardafaash” or more innovative “Nanga sach IT ka”)

On the monitors of 20% of the guys, you can see the homepage of intranet all the time. It seems it’s the only URL their explorer permits. They are so glued to that homepage as if it is hosting the revealing pics of the latest bombshell in the campus!

Then there guys who are busy shooting mails to all the females they know within the campus with the hope that someday he will get a chance to have a coffee with one of the ladies all alone and not with the group of other 10 guys. Then there are other fellows busy chatting on the internal messenger to the guys and gals who are sitting at a stones throw from their desk. These constitute another 20%.

15% are hooked to their cell phones or the landlines. If they are just holding the phone and not saying a word, wife is there on the other side. If there is complete silence from both the parties on either side of the telephone and if the parties have a ‘Julia Roberts’ smile on their face, they are the lovers and if they are shouting their heart out you can guess that either someone is trying to sell a credit card or trying to stuff some loan!

10% don’t have any idea what to do while sitting on their desk in front of their computers. They try to click on all possible pixels a screen has to offer with a deadpan look.

5% don’t know what’s their role in the project.
5% don’t know why they are in the company
5% don’t know why they exist on this planet.

Above three varieties constitute a total of 15%. They spend their time doing pee, sipping tea and taking photocopies of articles such as ‘speaking tree’ and ‘teachings of Osho’.

Rest is 20%. These are those morons who can breathe but their souls are dead. They work with a “Tsunami swept away my home yesterday” look. They earn for themselves, for the company and for the rest 80%.

I am yet to figure out where do I fit in this company!!!

The drama of Vande Mataram

Do you believe in God? If yes, have you made it a point to light a lamp in the morning in front of the idols?

Do you love your parents? Silly huh? But do you go to them everyday in the morning to say that you actually love them?

Do you think a soldier sings Vande Mataram everyday, without fail, just to prove that patriotism flows in his veins?

If No, then why this drama of making Vande Mataram mandatory in schools? Do you think that those who will sing Vande Mataram from now onwards will be more patriotic than those who choose not to sing it at all? If yes, then check your credentials. Have you sung whole of the national song, at one go, in your entire life, ever! And above all, do you know the Sanskrit lyrics and the meaning of the song?

Singing a song cannot make you a patriot. Same way, not singing it doesn’t make you antinationalist.

It’s a feeling which resides in ones heart, his love for the country and respect for the motherland.

And for all those who want to make it mandatory citing that it’s our ‘national’ song, here is the argument. Hockey is our ‘national’ game run by one maverick called KPS Gill. Anyone bothered?

Cheers