Virtual Ramblings

Some of the weird things I have prayed for…

Oh God,
Please make sure we get the movie tickets today
[I am very passionate about my movies]

Oh God,
Please let her not get more marks than me in kannada
[It was my weakest subject in middle school, and used to always loose top position because of this subject]

Oh God,
Please make me big enough, to fit into normal adult jeans
[I had a tough time moving up to waist 26, where all  pairs of standard jeans began]

Oh God,
Let me wake up one day, and power of my eye vanish
[Used to hate wearing specs as a kid, even now I do]

Oh God,
Let me not get any calls tonight,
[On days I am on call, I may have to wake up middle of night and work]

Oh God,
Please get me the joker, in the next time I pick a card.
[Card games can be fun, and am never less competitive]

Oh God,
Let India win today, don’t want them to loose this one..
[Cricket is an important part of most of us]

Oh God,
Please do make the Microprocessors paper go easy
[The only subject which I thought I would have tough time. Surprise surprise I got highest marks in that]

Oh God.
I want to ask something, but having nothing on mind now, so just surprise me this time
[he he believe me I did this once/twice]

And the list continues…

Its so simple to make instant noodles isn’t it?, I mean all you need to do is turn the packet over, and look for directions as to how to make yourself a wonderful cup of the yummy noodles. I wish many a times that our days were like this, we wake up and open the newspaper and bang, you have all the directions to make your day an awesome one. Two large hour-full spoons of self time, Two and a half cups of  soulful movie with a mate,  A stirring lunch with the family, some boiling playtime with the guys, a cool and soothing dinner at a fancy place, and a couple of miles of moon walk along the beach for the garnishing. Wish it was this simple to make a day awesome, all we need to do is turn over and look for directions

As a kid I remember getting directions from my parents, jumping on the sofa was a big no no, skipping dinner was forbidden, laughing too loudly while having food was almost a un forgivable sin. Sometimes I wish our emotions could take orders like these, I wish I could order myself in the middle of  a busy day, now is the time Laugh loudly, Wish I could forbid thinking anything about work once I reach home, wish I could control my urge to just go up the highs of a vacation when I am supposed to be reviewing an artifact at my workplace. It would be so simple isn’t it, if we could give directions to our mind.

Have you ever checked your deodorant spray? It does have directions for usage, we are supposed to open the cap, keep the nozzle at around 6 inches away from the body, and press the release button for about a second. It also comes with a caution of being highly inflammable, and directs the user to discontinue if a rash develops. Shouldn’t we have such directions to vent our bottled frustrations?, I mean keep your bottled frustration at a safe distance from your family, keep the cap tightly closed, when no ones’ around and you can’t hold it any more, give a  vent for few seconds, one should be cautious of as this can be highly destructible, and should be immediately discontinued in case of any signs rage.

I was once bored and alone in Arizona, and I wanted to go and try meeting someone at a local bar, knowing my socializing abilities, I wanted a backup, I wanted a bar that played music, just in case [in high probabilities] I chicken out speaking to strangers at a bar. So I choose some bar close by on the internet, and take the driving directions from the google maps. I take my car out, and follow the directions the reach the destination, only to find out the bar has long gone, and has been replaced by a dingy and dangerous looking central American place and is named La Bamba. Why does it happen in life, I mean why do we take pains in knowing the exact directions, reach the destination to find out that we were just a bit late, what we wanted has long perished, and whats remaining has nothing to offer.

The topic today over at skittles was “directions”.. and needless to say my mind ran in all four of them

I always believed that one cannot jump a traffic signal unknowingly in Bangalore, I mean there is such high traffic, and people from the other directions always all set to jump in, there is no way you can jump a signal without realizing it.
I admit I am a very lazy person, I hate to go out during weekends, specially if it involves driving mainly because of the bad traffic in Bangalore and also my extreme laziness when it comes to dealing with two wheelers. This Sunday was different, I had It planned, I was to wake up by around 8am, have breakfast by 10, catch an episode of a game show which I missed on Friday night and wanted to see how good a singer has developed, and free myself by 11:30. I wanted to get to a second hand book store at the heart of the city to buy some books for me. I had finished my last unread book at home, “Lolita” by Nabokov, and had a list of books to buy.
So as per the plan, I left home at 11:30am as per the plan, and enter the J C road, this is one street which I have never seen empty, but today it was deserted, at least by Bangalore standards, I went past swiftly and took a right turn, and bang I was caught by a policemen. I slow down and park towards the road side and take off my helmet, and a nice looking policemen stares at me for a second or two. I begin to wonder, what wrong have I done, is this some kind of a routine check?, if yes I am in a big soup, as my bike’s insurance had expired and was pretty much hoping I had broken some rule so that he just fines for that. Looking at a puzzled me, he point me to a white colored car and asks me, did you just follow the car?. I nod my head, and he tells me, “sir neevu traffic signal node illa, avranna follow mad bittirdira”. [You have just followed the car, you have not seen the signal at all]. I was very shameful and he could make out that I had not realized till he told me, he asked me not to do again, put a fine of 400Rs for jumping signal and rash driving [his version of saying be careful when you enter highly crowded places] and off I went. My first driving ticket ever.

In a way very symbolic of type of person I am, most of the times a follower, always a reluctant leader.
Anyways the main fun was to follow, I had a list full of books I wanted to buy at this second hand book store, and was pretty satisfied with the help I got there, the lad there just took the list of my hand, and within minutes he had the stack ready.

So here is the list of books I bought on Sunday.

Memory of My Melancholy whores. Gabriel Garcia Marquez courtesy
I have never read him before, this will be my first book of his. Book courtesy shelf of my blogger friends Shreyasi Deb and Dream Catcher

I came across a passage written by Mrs Sudha Murthy in a mail that was forwarded to me by someone, I always have liked people who had a middle class feel to their writing, more of what I can relate to, so here’s another first book on my shelf
“How I taught my grand mother to read and other stories” by Sudha Murthy

Sometimes when I am bored I resort to some dry wit, and so just wanted to try some humor book, so here I have “Sein Language” by Jerry Seinfeld, Yep the same sitcom comedian.

Its really surprising that I haven’t read many of Indian authors, so I caught hold of Anita Nair’s LADIES coupe, I am not sure why I picked this up, its more of a feminine book I suppose, but to be frank the cover picture kind of attracted me a lot, so went by the old saying, judge the book by its cover. [well I think I got this totally wrong, I think it was not to judge ]. Suggested by Idea Smithy

Last but not the least my tryst with a new genre, “My name is Red” by Orphan Pamuk..no clue regarding what to expect. Suggested by Dream catcher

Remember the question I asked some time back?

“People who do not affect us, people who really do not care much about us, people who were close to us once upon a time, people who have grown up and apart, why do they still matter to us so much?, why can’t we forget that people who have drifted apart?“

I think I am back to the same thought again today, I think I found the answer, “Time”, how effectively it makes us forget people, and reduced their need, their importance.

This put a even bigger question on my mind, are people really important?, people who did not stand the test of time, do they still matter to us?, is “mattering” just a function of time?, or time just hides the importance and people will be back to haunt us soon.

Hinduism is known for a lot of festivals, even though over time many of them have lost its festivities, some of them have survived modernization and lack of time. Some of these festivals are my favorites, some because of the way we celebrate them, some for the sweat memories associated, and some for the philosophy behind the festival, today happens to be one such festival. Today is the first day of our new year.

Like Chinese calendar which has 12 years named after animals, Hindu calendar has an year cycle of 60 years, and each of them are called samvatsara, at one point I could name all of them, but aging body has affected my memory ;). Today happens to be the beginning of the sarvadhari samvatsara, and we call the festival “Ugadi”, which literally means a beginning of the new year [era]. You can read some more info about the festival here.

On the day of  Ugadi, apart from the normal practice of taking an oil bath, and praying to the god, we have two very unique practices. One is we touch the feet of the oldest in the family, and he/she will provide us with the blessings and hand out a mixture of neem[margosa] and jaggery [unrefined sugar], the other thing is the eldest in the family, generally the male reads the almanac or panchanga [Indian calendar] .

I like the philosophy behind handing out the mixture, as today is the beginning of the new year, this practice is a symbolic way, of the eldest in our family to tell us, life is going to be a mixture of a sweet jaggery and also the highly bitter neem, so the elders bless us with the courage to face both the highs and the lows. As kids I used to hate eating neem, as it is very bitter, especially the flower is much more bitter than the leaf, but then as I began to realize the importance, the bitterness became more symbolic, and at the end it really solved the purpose, you cannot eat just the neem its too bitter, nor can you take just the jaggery its very sweat, so its always good to take life as a mixture.

Reading the almanac, is again a group activity, like many of the other festivities, this again is an attempt to gather the family members, almanac has a lot of predictions for the year, including the months where rains are  predicted, days which are considered to be auspicious, days of eclipse and stuff like that, it provides a common platform where the family could really plan the year ahead, and take inputs from each other. Its again a symbolic gesture, we really don’t go through the almanac, and only as a formality my dad generally reads through some paged of it, but good thing is we all get together, discuss what we are planning for the year, and more importantly know a bit about this samvatsara.

Wishing you all a very happy ugadi, and a very prosperous Sarvadhari samvatsara.

Scene: A table of for four at my workplace cafeteria.

People Involved:
Yours truly: sitting at the end of the table [usual preference]
A good friend: My coworker, good friend and a lunch buddy.
Guy1 [Lets call him Tom]: A reasonable young guy, looks like just out of college, may be an year of work experience max.
Guy2 [Lets call him Dick]: A guy in his mid twenties, neither too young, nor to old confused age I guess.
Guy3 [Lets call him Harry]: A late twenties guy, looks like a north Indian, and speaks like one.

And the fun began.
Me and my friend hurriedly walked into the café, I had been the culprit delaying lunch by about half an hour, you know the usual work pressures. So we walk up to surprisingly empty table in our busy café, and comfortably seat ourselves in the remote end. Somehow I have developed liking for the corner seats and tend to choose the ones in the far most table. As usual we opened our lunch boxes [yep we are fortunate ones who get lunch from home], and began with usual discussion about the project, and whos doing what badly, the usual suspicions as to whats gonna happen to our company, and throwing in the subject of movies once in a while.
Tom and Dick, seeing the empty place walk up to the table and make them comfortable, conversing with each other in hindi, and then a third guy Harry walks in and squeezes himself in between the other two.

Tom [to Dick]: Look Harry looks so concerned, he has began the hunt you know, now he is all tensed..

Tom [to Harry]: hey don’t worry too much about this, Dick can help you with this, btw you should decide on your specs first …

[Read it as, got to decide the specifications, the term used in the cubeland to indicate the requirements for any product/software]

Dick: Yeah you should first find out what you want, just “homely” is not good enough to find what you want.
Dick: I think you should go for a north Indian girl, South Indians are very forward.

*me thinks, Dick must have watched Chak De on Sony last week, talking about forwards..*

Dick Continues… South Indian girls are really well educated, earning well, and also mostly employed in a high paying corporate job. They are self sufficient and know they can live independently.

*me thinks Ah!, Ideal for me, but why “South Indians” and I look up to my friend who can’t stop smiling*

Dick Continues…Now a days you know girls directly ask, do you know basic cooking in the first meeting itself, so its better to employee a cook than marry one.

*me thinks ok at least he thinks wives are not mere cooks*

Harry: Surprised and a little worried by now, oh really? So we should know how to cook?

Dick: yep all IT couples in Bangalore, share the cooking job, if the guy reaches home early he will cut the vegetables by the time wife reaches home, and wife fine tunes them before cooking them

*me thinks, another tech word, fine tuning..job terms in conversations like this make them hilarious.. wow this guy is funny.. but good he wants to help his wife.*

Dick: That’s why you should marry a north Indian girl.. They are excellent managers you know, they take care of both work and home easily, you need not worry a bit.

*me thinks, so here comes the true color*
Tom [who was listening silently so far ], yeah that is the reason why I said, “You should decide on the specs”.

Dick [citing an example], you know my friend was telling this case, one girl who was exactly of the type we want, put up her profile on a matrimony site, and within a week there was a line, so such girls are totally out of reach

Tom: May be you should put up your profile too, some or the other will match your config spec

[Read config spec as the set of rules we define in the clear case to chose a particular version of the file in the vob]

*me thinks this was the limit, config spec hahha I need a break*

My friend was done, so we walked off before I could hear any more c**p

As he walked his life
with his mortal body,
living life,
There where times when voice
became clear,
The voice from within, screaming
“this” is the right path
“she” is the right one
“that” shall make you happy.
Deaf, that he had turned
Chose to ignore.

Voice is back!,
Will it get a second chance?

———————————————————————————–
The topic over at writer’s island is “Second Chance”. I always had a thought that its not life which needs to give us second chance, because it always gives us lot of chances, its us who need to give life a second chance.

Topic today over at skittles for heads or tails is any word which starts with letter P, and I chose “Planning”.

As I was wondering what to write for HoT prompt this week, I remembered a thing from my days in engineering college. One thing not many of my friends know about me is how I used to plan for the semester finals. The date of the finals used to be announced like about a month in advance, so I used to plan meticulously regarding what I will read when, I used to have timetables like for more than 6 weeks leading up to the finals as to what subjects to read when, the last two weeks used to be reserved for revision, even while doing revision I used to plan in such a way that I need not put in too much of a gap between the actual date of exam and the day when I revise the subject.

Why do one plan so much?, is it really required?. How much of our day to day life do we plan consciously?.I guess there are many people on either side of this debate, people who plan and people who don’t.

Many people love to take the situation as it comes, trust their instincts and believe they can make a strong and good decision when the need arrives, and are also ok with facing the consequences if their decision or the step backfires. They want to live more in the day rather then future.

Is planning really necessary? Does it spoil our spontaneity, do we tend to make more decisions based on the theory and knowledge, and not based on the actual situations, does this make over reflexes weaker?. Is planning more riskier because one might not know what do if it fails.

Speaking of meticulous planning, one does not really stop at PLAN A, I mean one plans for the failure as well and come up with mitigation plans like PLAN B and C and so on just in case PLAN A fails. Isn’t this all based on prior knowledge?, I know this would be a far less risky because this is more planned, and we have plan in place for every unseen circusmtanes, but somewehre I think we are gonna miss out on small pleasures of living the life as it comes.

When it comes to more uncertain things like life, how much can we plan, I mean can we really plan what we will be doing 10 years from now, and stick on to it?. I think I really planned my carrier, even when software industry wasn’t that big in Bangalore, I think when I was asked in my school magazine in 1994 what I wanted to be, I had said computer scientist. Can we tell something like that with our life, Can I say that I will be 8 years into marriage with a 6 year old kid, with a house in my name, and living with a wife at the end of next 10 years?.

How well can we plan our finances?, here I think we all need to put in a lot of effort because, this is something which can affect many parts of our life. One should be really careful as to how and where we spend out money.

I speak about this to my dad and he says, plan as little as possible, and enjoy as much as you can, because there are things which are in your control and many which are not, so why to plan for them, and spoil the days which you have in your hand.

what do you guys prefer a little boring, success highly guaranteed, uneventful, planned life? or the thrilling, success not so much guraranteed, risky unplanned life?.

Random Thoughts:
Recently I read a comment “here“, even though I thought the whole post was with a sense of humor, my eyes did catch a comment which said about about being tongue tied when guys approach a thinking woman. Lets forget about the distinction of being a thinking women, and take women in general, how many of the men really approach a woman and talk freely. I guess there is a lot of difference with boy approaching a girl, and a man approaching a woman. I have seen and have myself been at one point of life in the category where the shyness in approaching a person of opposite sex was very high. I think somewhere we grow out of it, may be that is called maturity, or may be we just grow up. Coming back to the comment about thinking man/woman, I do not think there is anyone who does not think, may be the topics we think about may vary, and also our sensibilities.

Random update:
Driving classes, I have finally started ticking of things I planned to do in next two years. I started my driving classes last week. Waking up early was never an issue for me, but it had been quite a while since I got scoldings from some one, when my driving instructor scolds me early in the morning sometimes, I feel like being in my primary school, where my teacher used to scold me for not doing my work properly. It is almost the same environment as before,where I do some silly mistakes and the instructor is all set to pounce on me. Its still all in fun

Random Reality:
Last week has been really taxing mentally, I had a feeling of an unknown urgency, an unknown mental blockage, I was not able to think for most of the week. It all changed on Friday, as I reached home a little early, there was a big power cut, for about two hours, I had nothing to do, I was laying on the bed, that cleared my anxiety very much. I began to think again properly, and for a change, the unscheduled power cut in my locality had a great soothing effect on me. Well I did receive some comments about writing block on my post of Thursday, more than the writier’s block, it was my mental blockage which was making me very anxious, I am glad to be out of it

Random changes:
For starters I hate to change my routine life, more importantly I hate to change things associated with me. It took almost more than 2 years for my cousin to make throw out my old outdated mobile. I guess I am guilty of attaching too many memories to things. This week I finally am going to move onto a different number, I mean I am changing my network provider, it had been Hutch from last 5 years, and the same mobile number for as long as I can remember. Finally they have lost my loyalty and me my number. Not that many people call me on my mobile.. still its something which I brought with my first earned salary, even though I lost the instrument the number had a lot of memories associated with it.

Random Nostalgia:
Speaking of mobile phones, and memories, the week had a lot of nostalgia associated with it. Somehow I was ending up remembering many people and incidents from the past, not just the incidents even the movies I saw, kind of had memories associated with it. The week had some interesting movies being shown early in the morning in one of the channels, just in time of my breakfast when I get to have 20 mnts of TV time. Why do we do this, why do we associate memories with things around us. Its not just a movie, its the people who have watched with, the state of mind I was in when i watched the movie.
BTW, that reminds me, Its been quite sometime since I watched “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”.. should catch it on DVD

Random quotes:
This was an interesting observation made my fellow blogger shefaly on one of my posts extremes. “Rambler: Have you considered an academic career? I notice you notice things (empirical data) and then try and identify a pattern (define algorithm or propose hypothesis) around them. And of course, from what we know, you are not married so this discussion is purely academic, no? “
Actually this kind of surprised me, she might have just joked about this, but does Rambler really do this?, hypothesize a lot on available data and experiences?..

Sometimes I wonder.. how came up with the idea of laughter track. Even people who are remotely regular amongst the sitcoms would be aware of how common these laughter tracks have become.

The other day I was catching up one of the reruns of the hit series F.R.I.E.N.D.S on TV, I was just zapped when I could remember a joke so precisely that I could tell when the laughter track was about to start. We get so used to listening to these tracks, that we almost kind of make it part of the entertainment.

Somebody must have been a big believer in the fact that laughter is contagious, so apart from humor why not through in a little laughter so that people get charged up. That must have been the idea. You know sometimes it works, sometimes when I am being bored or a little low, and I sit to watch a series, and am still not in the mood for the laughter, the track kind of puts me on the track.

Sometimes the tracks make us feel utter disasters as well, mainly at our own sense of humor. There have been so many times, when I have watched a scene, and have felt the expression or dialogs or for that matter some mannerisms extremely funny, and I have burst out with a loud laugh, and then when I go silent the track sets off on the next joke, making me so conscious at my sense of humor, I have seen couple of stares from my dad, who just hears a big laugh in otherwise silent household, followed by a big background laughter coming from TV, he might be thinking I must be not understanding any of the humor..

The other day, I was catching up some episodes of the old series MASH on the internet. I think its one series which I started to watch so late, it must be so old now that its outdated even in the rerun circuit, but have to admit some hilarious sitcom it is. I could not stop myself laughing in few episodes, even long after I finished watching it. One thing was that many episodes in the first season did not have laughter tracks. For few episodes, I kind of missed the track, it was like my cue was missing.. or a feel that I was watching a soap but not a sitcom. Again so used to the track. I got used to its absence after few episodes.

It made me wonder what if we could some day give the laughter tracks to our blogs, wouldn’t that be fun, you kind of start reading a post, just when there is something funny, you hear laughter as the background music.. hehhe that would be fun. WordPress people, you listening??

Imagination can be wilder, what if our life had the laughter track. Amidst a conversation, when you make some hilarious joke and no one gets it, then you kind of wish that people should have had a cue :).. wouldn’t that be fun, kinda telling people “Guys, this is the end of my joke, start laughing”. ah Fun!.

On a slightly serious note, think about this one.
When you are low and depressed, kind of lost hope in life, and you here a laughter track, kind of a cue from him up above, saying, common, now is the time for you to laugh and cheer up.