N Off We Went Sailing!!!...

The good part about this boat trip was that it wasn't planned way much in advance, that I had to start counting down the days, and by the time the date arrived I would be flat broke, and borrow money from everyone possible and then go on the trip... or wait a minute!... i was broke when i went for the trip!... :P

That was the six of us who went on the trip... since we haven't been seeing much of these people in this blog yet, I'll intro them... Vrinda, Vijay, me, Domnic, Shainu and Laseelan... they are the Cochin Division of my friends network... i like to divide my friends network into the Cochin Division, BFAM Division, B'lore Division, Chowder Division, The Old Men Division and Rest Of The World Division...

It was pretty obvious that I couldn't hide my excitement...

That was from Allepey Beach... though the weather looks pretty pleasant in the pic, it was quiet hot...

Since we hadn't found out yet that we were at the wrong place, we were under the impression that we were early for the boat... so we got around clicking random pics...

While we were busy posing, we forgot to notice what the gurls were up to... and before we knew it...

falling...

and finally...

Once we had had enough, we left for the boat jetty, only to realise that we were at the wrong boarding place when we reached...

An hour later, we finally reached the boat...

Though that's not exactly our boat, ours looked quiet like that... it was only after we got into the boat that we realised that we had forgotten to click the boat's pic... we decided that the nearby boat's pic would suffice...

Inside the boat was fun...

and the view was 'calm and relaxing'... maybe if I were from some other part of India or some other country, I would have used 'breath-taking'...

In the evening, there was the 'fun activities' and then the sleeping (which I guess everyone does, even if they're not on a boat!)...

The next day, we were all set and ready to go... back home...

That's us with the entire boat crew...

It was fun on the whole, and was a much-needed break from all the work I've been doing (and not doing) and the disappointments... I could use ones like these pretty often!!!...

PS: I went fishing too!!!!...

A Year Gone By...

It's been a year...

July - Over and Out!

So finally July is drawing to a grand close as well!!... right from the month of April, i've been hoping that the following month would be interesting... and this time too, i'm hoping for the same... this month has been quiet an eventful month though... firstly, the FIFA WC is finally over... and with that, at least 30 of my 200-something friends on Facebook have nothing more to talk about for the next four years!!... no more of the infamous OctoPaul or the 'listen-to-it-more-than-5times-n-ur-sure-to-get-irritated' Waka Waka (i hate to admit it, but my alarm tone is the 'Waka Waka'... my policy is that irritating music in the morning tends to wake you up much faster)... i had supported many teams this time round, and watched them fall one by one as well... Italy, England, Brazil... all of them... and finally, the Oranje... Now that the Commonwealth Games are coming up, i hope the indians don't come up with the indian version of OctoPaul to predict who's going to win what medal!!...

Then, there was the Editorial day out at The Park last week... the only thing that amused me during the entire course of the event was the menu... i wasn't really doing a good job of holding myself back from cracking up when i saw 'Chowder' listed under the soup section... Chowder and soups... haha!!!...

Has it ever occurred to you that Gmail constantly monitors your mails??!!!... yes, they do!!!... that's what i think... there was this instance when my colleague sent me an article about Viagra for editing (i work in a health mag... we come across a lot of such stuff very often...)... and then, for the next few days, i constantly began getting advertisements regarding Viagra brands!!... anyways, off late, Gmail has been monitoring all my 'flirtatious' moves and has now begun sending me marriage proposals from girls across the country... yeah, on an average, i receive about 3-4 proposals in a day!!...

There used to be a time when back in school, sometime around the tenth or eleventh grade, almost 70% of the people in my school were die-hard fans of Linkin Park...  i have no idea why... i used to like Limp Bizkit more... again, i have no idea why!... i guess i was just sick of the way the guys @ Linkin Park act cooler than they are supposed to be... Mike Shinoda the 'Sober Guy'... Chester the 'Genius who can Scream'... the turntable guy who was the 'Asian Dumb Vegetable' (talking about Asians... i was talking to my friend who recently migrated to the UK... and i asked him whether he'd made any indian friends yet... and he replied saying that he was yet to make indian friends, but had already made quiet a lot of Asian friends... i've always wondered why non-Asians consider only people with slanting eyes as Asians... we indians are Asians too, damnit!)... and while we're at it, here's a video for all you Linkin Park fans out there!!!.... yenjaayyy!!...



and... here's another one!!!... lol...



Sheeeeesh!... that's it for now... August is coming up... a lot to look forward to... i hope i get lucky this month... my luck and intelligence have always been two quantities that are inversely proportional to each other... right now, at this point of time, my intelligence levels are at a decent high, which is why i am going through a bad patch, thanks to my bad luck... thus, the least i can say is, i'm hoping i get back to being stupid again pretty soon!!!... lol... ciao!!!...

Oh... and amidst all the excitement, i managed to bump in to Mr. Sunny Thomas as well... seeing him brought back all the memories of all the "hunndra parcent suare" questions that we used to have in our math papers!... ciao again!...

The Great Indian Bargain

Two reasons why the Indian sales department will never do well enough...
1> the 'take-it-or-leave-it' attitude...
2> creating special offers that never encourages a customer to come back...

Something that has always ('always' not as in throughout my life… hmmm… but yeah… somewhat close to that…) left me wondering is whether the Indian salesmen are the best, or the worst, in the world… now, salesman could be anybody… the guy at the car sales showroom… the guy serving you chicken at KFC (grrrr…)… or even the milkman who leaves a pack of milk outside your doorstep everyday (in India!)… they know it… we don’t… all Indian customers are stupid… no matter how much they manage to bargain and how much they know about the product… sales outlets come up with offers like ‘Buy 2 Get 1 Free’ or ‘Win a Trip to (blah blah)’ or ‘50% off’ and the customer gets easily suckered in… the offers look very attractive and decent on the outside… but a deeper look into it would reveal the cheap and dark side of the ‘offer’… think about it… you shop for 5000 bucks’ worth and then ask about the free trip to Sri Lanka, they tell you the offer is valid only on Tuesdays… you get into an Adidas showroom which offers you a 50% discount, but you can’t find a single item which comes with a 50% discount simply because they are short on stock of items which actually have the discount on them… the fault lies with the Indian customer… the ‘we-came-all-the-way-now-we-gotta-buy-something’ attitude… unless we learn to walk out of the store, if we don’t find what we’re looking for, things are never going to improve…

Bet you’re wondering why the utterly senseless post, out of the blue (??)!!! (not that all my other posts made much sense, but still…)… yep!... I got punk’d too!... as recently as yesterday… I was having a dull day (certainly not the first instance)… and was a little under the weather… weirdly, I felt having some chicken might make me feel better… and off I went to ChicKing… one of the many local equivalents of KFC… since I’d got an e-mail about the ‘offer’ two days back, I was very sure about what I wanted to buy… it was the ‘FIFA offer’ (FIFA offer… like duh!... in a country whose football team has never even qualified for the qualifiers!! (or have they??)… and that too in a state from where a certain ‘mentally challenged’ cricketer is the only person to make it to an international sports arena!)… you buy two wraps and you get two mini-burgers free… (perhaps I missed the ‘oh-here’s-another-FIFA-offer-dumass’ smirk on the face of the guy at the reception)… it was only when I reached home and opened my package that I realized the horrors of horrors!... the wrap was barely thicker than my middle finger… the burger was worse… at a distance of about 15cm, the brown-colored fillet seemed non-existent, and the brown color that I saw here and there made me think it was because the lettuce was wilting!!... sigh… yet another stupid Indian customer… sometimes I do think that Russell Peters was perhaps right (though I still maintain that he’s a ree-tarrrd) when he called Indians ‘Cheap Stinkin’ Bastards’…..

PS: for those who missed it, I've uploaded the Munnar video in the previous blog... since both Chowder and me have the reputation of not having a 'crystal-clear' speech, I've added subtitles as well!!!... how caring of me!!...

2K10

It's 2010!!!... ten years past the Y2K... ten more years for 2020... what's so cool about 2020??... who knows??!!... and more importantly, who cares??!!!...

It's Republic Day today!!... ah... what do i say about Republic Day?!... only vague memories... memories of baluchi kids sitting on our school's boundary wall, eating Oman Chips, while our flag was being hoisted (sorry Latch! i had to borrow your line! :D )... ha!... Oman Chips... why on earth did they name the chips after the country??!!!... come to think about it, it's one of the worst chips available!!... hell it didn't even have a tazo free with it! (k, don't ask what a tazo is! i took half an hour trying to recollect what it was called, and finally i had to consult with Nandu to get it right! of course, Nandu was busy doing 'something else', so he couldn't be of much help either!)... sigh... how i miss Salad Chips... and Sohar Chips... and the Cuttlefish Crackers we used to get only in Carrefour... SIGGGHHHhhhhhh.... aaaarrrrrgggghhhhh... Cochin's become one big "mosquito resort"!!... there're are mosquitoes just everywhere... under the bed, over the bed, under the sheets, in your clothes... just everywhere! gone are those days when the Goodnight or Mortein plug-in mosquito repellants used to jump up and down and 'eat' mosquitoes from all over the place... they've just become a waste of electricity!... but instead, the coils have arrived!!!... all it takes is a burning matchstick, and BAM!... no more mosquitoes!!... the fumes are so powerful, if you take a strong whiff off it, you are most likely to be the 'next one on its list'!!... ah mosquitoes... why am i even talking about them???!!!...

Ever wondered why we have those 'agreements' before we install a software or a game??... they give that long statement which will, under normal circumstances, take days to finish reading, and at the end, they want you to agree to the whole thing! they know it... we know it... no one ever reads it!!!... so why even waste that much of space displaying the agreement???... you can't proceed anyways, if you don't agree to it!!... so it's like putting an imaginary gun to your head and asking you to agree to it!!... now my point is... i could develop a software, or a game... and then, as usual, at the time of installation, i'd display the entire 'agreement'... however, somewhere in between, say around the 198th line, i'd include a line saying "By agreeing to this document, I (ie. the user) agree to write-off all my belongings (absolutely everything, except the living things) to RJR... and by doing so, i also agree that i am a big moron!!"... can you imagine how rich i can get, and how many morons there are going to be??!!!... no one's even gonna read the damn thing, but they're still gonna 'agree' to it!!!...

Watched 'The Hills Have Eyes'??... the title does seem pretty interesting, but the movie... oh gawd!!... miserable!!!... how many movies are they going to make of the same type???... a bunch of happy people, or a happy family (usually consisting of a sexually excited couple, who manages to sneak in an 'opportunity' just out of nowhere, a hyper-active male kid, a totally uninterested female teenager who thinks her parents are morons) travel along an isolated road, and finally the car breaks down, just when they are miles away from humanity... and then they're attacked by zombies, or zombie-like people... HOW MANY???!!!!... how many more to come???... are they trying to give us a warning or something???... like "never take the highway! you could be attacked by a zombie!".... DUH!!!!...

Ah... i just got back from a movie today... i'd rather not talk about the movie... crap it was!... but the interesting part was, the movie started at 11.15am, and i was asleep at home at 11am!... now, considering the fact that my watch is almost 15mins fast, i was still in the safe zone... so technically, i was late, but not alarmingly late!... but then, it happened... my watch betrayed me... ever wondered how your watch is fifteen mins fast when you're writing an exam, or doing the right thing, on the right time, but shows the right time when you're running late? YES!!!... that's my watch for you!!... Sly Fella'! (yeah i picked up the Yankee accent from Facebook, thanks to a couple of my immigrant friends!)

Sigh... how i wish i could get back to Besi sometime... and visit Cake Walk... or maybe get myself a sundal from the beach! Belch! i used to hate the very look of that thing! only once, just once, under certain dire circumstances, i was 'forcefully' made to eat a whole cone of it!!... ah that reminds me... there was this one time, VG and me were on the beach... and this kid selling sundal came over to us... after we denied the sundals a zillion times, the kid planted two cones in front of us, picked up VG's floaters and screamed at us the tamil equivalent of "you better pay for the sundals you @!$*&%$#@$" (i'd rather not translate the curse word... some tamil curses, when literally translated, can be really really bad!!)... i was totally left clueless... but then, VG, who is normally dumb under any circumstance, came up with a brilliant idea, and whispered it into my ear... i stood up, picked up my phone, fake-dialled a number, and spoke, "Saar, i totally hate sundals... i would never ever have a sundal... ok, i think it's going to rain! i gotta go! wogay! bye!"... the kid, on hearing 'saar' and the couple of 'sundals', dropped VG's floaters and ran away... so that day, VG's stupid idea saved us!!!... bah...

The Past 10 Days

Short Version : Wikipedia... Editorial day out... senior ISMer... house hunting... stupid girl & hot girl... Columbia Pictures... workkkkkk... drencheddddd...

Bet you've understood nothing from the 'short version'... so, here's the.......

DETAIL VERSION (!!!!) : i've been screwing my brain real hard and thinking about what it takes to be on wikipedia (even Sarah Jane Dias is on wiki!!.... she's my senior from school btw... every morning on my way to office, i stare at the huge hoarding with her heavenly face on it... truly a masterpiece!)... i've been seeing too much of wikipedia in the past 8-10 months, that i suddenly feel it's really cool to be featured in the site!

then there was the Editorial Board's day out... my teammates, their boyfriends and good ol' me! (don't ask me what was i doing there! it didn't seem this odd then!)... a quiet movie, preceded by nothing, and followed by nothing.... the movie - Kerala Cafe.... made somewhat on the lines of Dus Kahaniyan, with ten stories and stuff (of course, atleast 8 of the 10 movies were crap in the mallu one... haven't watched the hindi one)... oh, and add to it the joy of meeting a fellow ISMer! (one of Nixxx's friends is an ex-ISMer...).... sigh... i wonder what's going on at ISM these days (in case you're still wondering what ISM is, it's Indian School Muscat)... the last thing i heard about ISM was the "evolution" of the students there... it has become real cool (for the guys) to wear their pants below their knees, and wear bangles covering atleast half their forearm!! (i'd rather not talk about the girls!)... the limits of 'cool'-ness!!....

then there was the house-hunting session with dad... apparently the area i stay in looks like a garbage dumpyard to him... for the first time, he found the interior of my house MUCH better when compared to the exterior!

and finally(!), the (five-hour) bus ride to cochin from home... the stupid girl and the hot girl.... first the stupid girl... a particularly ugly female sitting diagonally in front of me, out of nowhere, suddenly opened up her laptop and started watching movies! (even though it was a perfectly normal thing for a human being to do, it sadly seemed out-of-place to me)... considering the aged men sitting around her, i came to the conclusion that she was trying to impress me... geeeeee... if in case she WAS trying to do so, the sad-ass movie she was watching, was definitely not one that could be used to impress a guy!!! (come to think about it, i wouldn't have been impressed even if she were watchin American Pie!!!)... then there's the hot girl, who was sitting in front of me (ha! she had no idea who was sitting behind her!!)... a striking contrast of the stupid girl... she had such a heavenly voice!! (she was flirting with her boyfriend over the phone almost throughout the journey... sigh....)... the hot girl, her voice and the air-conditioning was putting me in a really embarrassing situation!!...

over the weekend i've managed to make an astonishing discovery that could change the lives of millions across the globe!!... Columbia Pictures... the secret is finally out!!... pick up a movie made by Columbia Pictures... at the beginning of the movie, when they show the Columbia Pictures thingy, with the lady holding the lamp... watch closely next to her right arm... in the clouds, there's an impression of a chubby, sleeping man!!!... i bet none of you had noticed that before!!! (or am i the tubelight here???)

and at the end of it all, i'm back here in office, staring at the wall, visualising my pile of work that's left for me to do... hmmm... i wonder how depressing it would have been if we didn't have computers, and had to stare at actual pile of papers!

sigh.... the rains are back again... along with haunting memories... why?? why?? why?? why can't there ever be a rainless year in india? why can't it snow instead??....

gotta go...... sighhhh......

Payday, Murder and the Indian Restaurant

a month of work over!!!!!!.... it's finally payday!!!!.... woooooooo!!!!.... my first pay!!!!!.... (i hope my teammates have forgotten about the treat i promised them!!!... or rather made me promise them!!!).... i can't wait to see the five-digit balance in my account!!!.... it happens only on rare occasions.... like when i'm shifting houses and need to pay the owner's advance, or when i had to pay my college fees....

oh... then of course there's the murder part!!!!.... it's nothing actually related to a murder.... let me elaborate.... i've been to a couple of interviews so far... and i have to admit, the question that has left me totally bamboozled at all interviews is "Tell me about yourself"..... i have never been able to figure out the right answer to that!!!!.... before every interview, the only question i prepare myself for is this!!!.... and yet... at the interview, when the dreaded question arrives, i'm blank!!!!.... luckily for me, this time round, at the interview, they forgot to ask me the question!!!... (perhaps that is why i got in!!!!....).... instead they substituted that with another deadly question.... "What type of books do you read"??...... the fact that i read only books related to psychopath killers has led my mom to come to a conclusion that i'm a psychopath and will make a fine serial killer some day!!!!.... i guess the interview panel thought the same too, when i told them about my taste!!!.... and today, i just consolidated the fact!!!.... i was the only person in office today.... my CE walked in later, and found me laughing to myself!!!!.... luckily, he was amused, and didn't take it otherwise (i think!!!)....

and finally.... the Indian Vegetarian Restaurant....(or is it just the Vegetarian Restaurant???... most of the vegetarian restaurants are Indian, or have Indian staff!).... after staying in Chennai for so long, i'm always under the impression that all veg restaurants are run by tamilians... so whenever i walk into a VR (even in kerala!), even if the waiter talks to me in malayalam (or some language other than tamil), i still end up saying "anna... konjum thanni.... oru masala dosa"!!!.... anyways.... since i'm on a crash diet (like duh!), i've been sticking to veg food for sometime.... long enough to have made a survey and a very important conclusion.... it's about the chutney.... or whatever re-serves (like sambhar etc.) you can get, without paying extra.... first of all, chutneys are never served fresh.... if a chutney is prepared today, it hits the serving dish only from tomorrow (onwards)!!!.... so whenever you ask for a refill of chutney, if the waiter makes a face equivalent to why can't this guy just leave, it means the chutney was just prepared the day before... however, if the waiter repeatedly comes to you and keeps refilling your chutney, it means the chutney is atleast three days old!!!.... so, the next time a waiter keeps refilling your chutney, don't think that he was born into a nice kudumbam, and that he's living upto his family's great name!!!.... he's only trying to get rid of the old chutney in the kitchen!!!!.....

peace out!!!