Foolish Ramblings

I cannot begin to count the number of blog posts that I lit in my mind and just flickered it away. Call it work pressure, TV addiction, shopping spree or the lovey-dovey wifey. I just call it laziness, period.

You know, if I were to get paid for blogging, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t be this lazy to write. Oh well……Every time I talk to my mother on the phone, she asks me if I have writen anything new. At least this time, I can claim a blog post. Baby steps, you see.

Now, there are too many things to write about. I just look around and see Varun Gandhi, Sanjay Dutt (and Manyata, ooops) and their antics. Not too intersting, really. Maybe I should just write about Sharad Pawar and his new found love in third front. Again, boring. Writing about politicians is perhaps not the best way to start a new month.

So, how about Aishwarya Rai accepting the “coveted” Padmashree (*cough* *cough*). I hope you don’t mind, it’s just that Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is a little too long for me. I actually started off hoping to write something meaningful. Something like the best comeback in the Indian cricket history or the G-20 summit. But then, former is old news and latter is no news.

Isn’t it amazing that not writing for so long has made me so rusty? Well, probably not. That’s how I’ve always been, I just realized it today 🙂 And to think that I will restart blogging. What’s today’s date again?

P-In ‘Drop’ Silence

This post is ‘inspired’ by rads’ ramblings on female P-etiquette here. It seems to me that the female species has a lot of misconception on what happens behind the men’s door. We all do it and we will keep doing it forever, so why not dedicate a post for that. I think it’s best described with examples. Here are some:

1. You finish your business, wash your hands and walk towards the door. This older man is standing near the door as if he is waiting for you to open the door for him. You don’t wonder why he is standing there. You just hold the door knob to open the door and get out. Immediately the old man starts laughing and says “Ha Ha, why did you have to wash the hands if you were touching this door? I wait for someone else to always open the door because there are many men who don’t wash their hands and they touch this door. If you open the door yourself, why do you want to wash your hands?” and walks away right behind you, making sure no part of his body touches the door. You sigh! Maybe he is right, maybe you can conserve water by not washing the hand. Oh well, you are uncomfortable not washing your hands. So, you still wash your hands and you still touch the door knob. Yuck!

2. You get inside, curse yourself for wearing Levis 501’s, and before you realize you start hearing all kinds of grunts, sighs and happy moans from the stall nearby. Since this didn’t require any reaction from your part, you finish the job, wash your hands (yes) and are about to leave, when the person from the stall walks out. It’s your boss. You don’t know what to say, so you just walk out and start drinking water in the nearby water fountain. After a while boss walks behind you and starts making conversation. he tells you ALL the details about the big re-org which is happening and also discusses your appraisal and says that you are one of his best employees!!!

3. You are about to walk out and suddenly the stall door opens. It’s your project lead and he gives biggest sheepish grin. you just nod your head and walk out. You remember that he is suffering from diarrhea for the past few days. You try to forget that you remembered it. After a while, the project lead walks by your cube and keeps asking dumb technical questions. You answer all of them. he thanks you and goes away. Now, there’s a closure.

4. You just started and your manager comes and stands next to you and starts his business. Just a shy smile from both, no talk, no words. You are done, he is done. Both of you wash your hands (yes) and walk away.

5. You go in and start doing what you do. Suddenly tens of guys walk in and before you know all the spots are occupied. Since you were the first one, you occupied the first available spot. You finish your thing, and turn back and see a guy standing right behind you, waiting for you to finish and walk out, so that he can take the spot You thank God that you didn’t see him stare at you while you were doing.

6. You walk in and you meet your colleague who wears really really tight shirts. He puts his hands above his head and yawns. he makes sure that everyone around knows whether he is wearing boxers or briefs that day. You realize that he does the same thing in meetings and lunches as well. You don’t utter a word. You wait for him to leave. He leaves, and then you take your spot.

7. You get up from your cube and go towards the door with the triangular sign to finish the business. You see a yellow board in front of the door. You expect a board which says “Restroom Closed”. But after reading it, you realize that the janitor doesn’t know English and thus used the wrong board. You can’t control laughing. You just walk away. The board reads “Men Working”!!! 

Birthday Average

I am not sure if I am the only one who thinks on these lines. In any case, I am confused whether I would be branded ‘intelligent’ or ‘foolish’ after you read this. Anyway, here’s the deal:

Five of us close friends are December born. We all live close by. So, someone came up with an idea to get together and have a big party (Well, more than ‘celebration’, it was just to get-together, we keep coming up with reasons to meet even though all of us meet every other day).

Simple enough? No, wait. My brain started working. I wanted to find out what would be the right day to get together. I thought the simplest way was to get the average of our birth days. So, I added 1, 2, 12, 17 and 31 and divided it by 5 to get 12.6.

And, that’s when the problem started. I wasn’t sure if our average birthday was 12th or 13th. You see, the average value will never be less than 1 and it can never be greater than 31, for the month of December. So, if I assume 12.6 should be celebrated on December 12th, then going by that logic 1.6 should be celebrated on December 1st and 30.6 on December 30th. That means, we can never have a ‘birthday average’ which can be celebrated on December 31st. Similarly, if I assume that 12.6 should be celebrated on December 13th, then we will never have a ‘birthday average’ which can be celebrated on December 1st.

I didn’t like this solution. More so, because we have one person born on December 1st and one on December 31st. So, it wouldn’t be fair to one of them if I chose one of the above algorithms. Thus, I made the algorithm just a ‘little’ more complicated. As in any Math theorem, I assumed that all of us are born at noon. The fact that I was indeed born at noon, did not in anyway prejudice me to come up with this assumption.

So, with the ‘noon assumption’, I can get a more precise birthday average. Now, I can get it in hours and minutes than just days. The hole still remains that the ‘birthday average’ cannot still fall before noon on December 1st or after noon on December 31st. But, I was convinced that it was fine.

So, with my new calculation, our ‘birthday average’ is December 13th at 2:24AM.

Seriously, do you all think like this? Or am I the only weird one?

Know Your Neighbor

Yesterday evening my wife and I went to see the new elementary school built right opposite our home. There were a few other families from the neighborhood. People started talking and this is a list of things I found out about a few different neighbors:

• The old man who lives three houses from ours, works part time at a local hardware store. You can rent him for 20 dollars an hour as a handy man. He is very thorough and professional. He gossips a lot and knows everything about everyone in our neighborhood. His wife is not all that friendly, though.
• The person who lives in the first house on our street never maintained his lawn until now. The house which is right behind his house is on sale now. So, those guys are now paying for this guy’s lawn maintenance as well and they even have new mulch in his front yard.
• The white guy who lives five house from ours has married a Fiji Indian. They party way too much. They have loud Indian music all the time. Their trash bin overflows every week. Also, they don’t stay in this home all seven days of the week. Thus, you see their garbage can on the road for at least five days in a week. They are supposed to keep the bin out only on the day of the garbage pick-up. Hmmmm, maybe everyone should complain.
• The old man from the first bullet above cannot tolerate any nonsense. People who live right behind his home partied too much. They were quite loud a few times. He went and shouted at them and now they are no longer party animals.
• My immediate neighbor to the left does not make a lot of money. If both of them don’t work even for a week, it’s hard for them to do the mortgage payments. The husband drives an hour and a half to reach his office. They have two children. the son is apparently very moody and the daughter is very cranky. The lady of the house talks way more than required.
• Cops have stopped by several times to check on our neighbors. Maybe they don’t get along all that well?
• The new family which moved into our street last month has a kid who will start high school this year.
• The lady who stays two houses from ours, is absolutely unfriendly. She doesn’t talk with anyone, not even with her own kids, really!!!
• Our next street has two houses on sale and both have the lawns completely dried up. That’s because the banks own those houses now and utility bills are not paid, and thus the city has stopped water services to those houses. And, that means our street is very beautiful and perhaps the best in the neighborhood. With such colorful people, why not?

My wife and I sighed and went back to our backyard to stare at the sky to see how many meteors we can spot. I forgot all about the gossip, until now.

From Russia With Love

A good friend of mine is looking to get married. He has his profile on shaadi.com. Guess what? This Kannada huDuga is getting mails from quite a few girls from Russia (no, NOT the mail order brides!!!). Apparently, a few Russian girls are ‘active’ in hunting for an Indian boy through shaadi,com, for whatever reason.

My friend forwarded me two of the mails he received. Enjoy!!!

Hello!!! My name is M!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How yours affairs??? You are surprised to my letter???;
Dear I, has very much liked me yours profile.;
And I wish enter with you contact. It would be more convenient,;
if you will write to me, on mine e-mail: <>
I with impatience wait for your letter!!! Your photos!!!Dialogue with you.
Once again, my e-mail: <>
With the best regards, sincerely, yours M!!!!

Hello my name is T. To me of 26 years. I live in Russia city of K. Looked your structure and it is very much interested in you. I very romantic girl who searches for serious relations. I do not want and I have no time to play with You in what or games. Therefore I ask, that you wrote, if you will not play not what games. And Will be serious in our acquaintance. If you are interested in me. And if you really search Serious relations I ask you write mine E-Mail: ( <> ) With big Impatience I shall wait for yours the answer. T

Old Lady Blues

I am sitting in my office, seriously working on a bug fix and my cell phone rings. I pick up the phone and there is an older lady with a husky voice on the other end.

“Hi sweety!!!” she says.

I am like “Hello, who’s this?”.

She is definitely in the mood….”Ummm, what are you doing?”.

Well, I am at work and this sudden call from some unknown lady. I am totally lost “Hello, who do you want?”.

By now the voice is really soft and husky “Ahhhh Ross” she says.

“Nope!, you got the wrong number” was my immediate response.

And, the huskiness goes away. The voice is suddenly completely normal. “Ooops, sorry” were the last words I heard before the call was abruptly disconnected.

Well, I still have her number in my caller ID…hmmmm…..

Veni ! Vidi !! Vici !!! – Almost

When I was studying Engineering in India, it was a big deal to wear specially designed class T-shirts every year. Students from each engineering branch and batch had their own T-shirts. Once, Electrical Engineering students from my batch had a real nice T-shirt with the following written in big bold letters:

Vidi ! Vici !! Veni !!!

Creative ? or Dirty ?

You figure…but I gave out a big clue already. And yes, I loved it.