Wherez the party yaar !!

Saadi dilli !!!

Internet cafe in Srinagar, GD/PI preparation , Sensex falls due to correction, have you had sufficient lemon along with your drinks "concern","where's the party Yaar" kind of marriage reception of a friend,keep going straight ..cross Toll Bridge, Dhaula Kuan, Moolchand, AIIMS, take left from the #$%%^ red light and you reach the venue half drunk to sieze a few more drinks of Bacardi "life is calling" Rum, and tiring dance to the tune of "mundiayan to bach ke rahin" ..trip back home comfy bed with a Night @ a Call center by Chetan Bhagat. Life is happening and am enjoying, you too do the same have a safe and sound sleep untill I finish the night at call center connexion !!!

You are here !!

I am back !!

Had never dreamt that I would fall flat on ground so soon.The people made me realize "You are here" and the "I am back" fun was gone too early.

I am carrying two cabin baggages with difficulty wading my way through the tight aisles of the plane full of "apne log" from Frankfurt. I had picked up a copy of Times of India ( hereafter TOI) and on my way to the seat had made good plans of how I am going to enjoy my long awaited reading orgy with TOI.TOI has been such an integral part of my mornings in India.I had been given the aisle seat and the guy on the next seat is an indian of about my age, we exchange smiles, he helps me in fitting my bags into the overhead bin.While I was just adjusting my bags he grabs MY copy of TOI and asks where did i get that , told him it was there with the flight attendants.Showing no courtesy and without even a piece of thanks he starts reading MY newspaper and after full 20-30 minutes when his hunger is satisfied he pops the paper back to me which obviously is passed onto another gentleman sitting in the front seat without my bating an eyelid.

It was kind of a realization to me.Why we Indians are in general so discorteous.I was just expecting some respect for my personal space and for him to ask a simple "Can I borrow this " etc etc. We need to learn a lot in terms of public manners.We have been grabbing things, pushing people aside, shouting at them, spitting at anything or anybody at our own free will,Taking a U-turn in the middle of a crowded street just because we don't care about the other road users - All these amount to disrespect to your fellow human being and nothing else.

But yeah after a long long time eating yummy spicy Indian food was fun and am not satiated.Even after two weeks of being back in India the list of mouth-watering items is still pending.

Have a safe journey

So the party is over and am heading back to India today.Not written anything for long 'cause there was nothing unusual or comic happening around here, I got so used to all the surroundings for the past few weeks .... but now when I'll reach back the contrast and differences will get magnified and I know for a few days at least it would be a little odd .

As is the case with all others I too am going back laden with lots of goodies ( mostly e-gadgetry ) got the latest tech gizmo iPOD nano and my very own lappy !!!

Today one lady from in here asked loud and clear in my farewell party if I was married .... aww after a little blush I said no and next she shoots the least expected question in public ... do you have a girl friend ? ..... I was thinking may be she next bumps with the usual question that you get from unknown chat mates from angrez places you meet on yahoo mesngr have you had --- ?? thank god she didn't !!!

bye gotta run run run for India !!!

1 2 KA 4 - weird

My aptt number in the hotel is 2104 , the extension at my cubicle is 1241 , the cubicle number is 2140, the extension of zip code of our US office address is 1214 .. weird !!! isn't it.

'know what i mean !!!

Another very frequently used slang in here.

Lots of water has flown down the Connecticut river since i last blogged.Been to NY thrice, saw US open match, visited Niagara Falls.Wanted to write detailed account of all the visits but couldn't.

Am conversing with firang folks pretty effortlessly now, no need to put in any conscious effort.

Travelling long distance by bus in here was great fun, makes you feel closer to people.Then only you realize that US is a big collage of humanity, one can see all shades and colors of people here.I seriously feel that the actual inhabitants must be feeling as foreign in here as anybody coming from outside given the fact that there are so many people of other nationalities in here.

A nice description of my trips follows soon.

I ain't telliin nobody nothin

Cause nothing is happening in life :-) !! got used to the air, the cubicle, the slangs, the status meetings and am immersed in lots of interesting work ( in office ).

Yes and No .....

One more of the slang expressions used frequently in here to mean "not sure" I think .

Life has smoothened a lot now .We have gotten used to the foreign faces and their styles. We now know for sure which breads to pick for our breakfast out of the given dozen varieties, got used to buckling up as soon I get in the car and various other such subtleties.

It is really difficult speaking on face in real time and making the people understand when they have such a different accent and jargon of their own. You might consider yourself a champion of english but the way they speak it in here is very different.It makes you realise that we definitely speak a lot faster than what is needed and we always tend to eat out words.The people in office usually pinpoint and ask for those particular words which you either pronounced wrongly or hurried through just may be 'cause you were not very sure of it's usage or whatever.e.g. one person said that i would be able draw the complete picture only after speaking to Mr X , my manager pointed you would do what to a picture just because he had said the words "draw a picture " a little too fast. The trick is to just speak crisp and clear and give proper pauses.There is no fuss about the accent it is about speaking clearly.

I am neck deep in work these days and it is fun to work with some added responsibility of co-ordinating with the folks back in India and passing on the status and % completion to managers and others in here.It is definitely amazing to see that those TEFRA and TAMRA are not mere imaginary frankensteins which were created to bug us , they are a bunch of real rules which actually get applied to real money and people.The death claim is not a mere transaction it means much more.

From India everything seemed so virtual as if we are playing a video game wherein our opponent sends a puzzle in the form of a new tax law or some new ruling which has to fit in somehow with the existing behemoth and we keep on playing our shots by asking queries to the client , they play back their best game by trying to complicate the puzzle more and more as the game progresses and finally in the end we are victorious when there is congratulation mail saying your puzzle is solved and is a part of the system.Stay awake and alert for the next round of the game.In here it seems a little less virtual and the game seems to yield at leat some physical output.

I appreciate it ....

This is one more of the hackneyed expressions that people in our office ( the Americans ) use .....

Here everything is so weird and foreign.Each and every expression of yours carries a different connotation than you could have imagined.I used the word white skin with a canadian girl and she pops back "Are you a racist".I can't imagine what hell would break loose if i ask for a "black" shoe polish or "white" linen.Black and white have an entirely different history and meaning in here.Talking of idiosyncracies , the Americans have named lots of commodities of daily use in their own way, Tomato Sauce is Ketchup and silencer is muffler, nothing else works.It has to be the american way only.

Life has been nauseatingly overwhelmed with different seasons of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. running on all the channels.Every channel has one episode daily at one time or the other and the weekends are FRIENDS day only.In these the characters are at different stages of their lives.Shandler and Monica had their first sexual encounter in one and in the other they are going for their interview to adopt a kid and in a third they are looking for a new appt. and all of them are nostaligically remembering all the naughty and funny days spent in the appt which monica and rachel shared intially.The advertisements ( even they are called something else in american english i don't recall though may be commercials ) are boring on American TV.They have to learn something from the indian TV.We have such a good collection of adverts produced these days that it is definitely more watching commercials than the actual programs.It seems Americans are big fans of comedy.There are many comic series running on various channels and each one is really interesting and worth the time it seems.Here they have freedom to advertise liquor and also it is mandatory on them to display and speak out the side-effects that a particular medication can cause.It is not the way that we have in India wherein they will make sure that within a span of 3 seconds they speak out a para of security risks and display in the smallest fonts the known side effects of a medication.

Yeah Americans are big shopaholics.I can not imagine how are they able to finish the amount of groceries that the people buy at one time.Customer is the real king in here.Somebody show the kiryana merchant in my city what consumerism means. He would make sure that you buy a rotten piece of bread and later on refuse to take it back citing the reason that the Company won't take it back.I can imagine what kind of mayhem it should be in here in the marketing arena.The marketing folks must be rubbing their a..... nice and strong in order to make a mark.

My lady manager recently had a slip of tongue when she said in one of our meetings about some issue that it is a real pain in the ....... ( she was quick to come up with a reprieve ) hand ....

Country Roads ...

Amitabh Bachchan is singing "Kabhi Kabhi mere dil mein khayal ataa hai ... magar yeh ho naa saka ..aur ae meri hamnfaz ab to yeh alam hai ke tu bhi nahi teri justuju bhi nahi .. " and the only familiar things around are the 4 indian souls sitting inside the Toyota Corolla rest everything is foreign , the country roads, the beautiful corn fields, the cruise bikers and the State Police cops wearing nice hats ( I had never thought that the cops we saw in hollywood movies actually existed but they do ) and lots and lots of american families . I was amazed to see that so many americans are married and have kids because the way the newspapers and websites presented the problems of americans living single lives and divorces i had thought America would be deviod of kids but yes there are kids and almost every family has on an average 4 kids .

The houses around here are have their designs the way we used to draw huts in landscapes in our childhood ,huts with tiled roofs and slanting on both sides. Except for the apartments the houses are mostly built on separate spacious lands contrast this with the way we have our houses built .. each house jostles for space with the other trying to pose it's own authority.That's the way we do in our public life pushing the other person aside because may be the way we have been brought up our psyche says that you need to push the person in front of you and you don't have to make way for the peson following you just keep holding your space. Here it seems there is so much individual space , you can feel free 'cause no one is going to push you down.The people are damn serious about following traffic rules and they will honk their horns as soon as you make a mistake while driving and the desis too drive with extreme caution and dedication to follow rules.I am not sure where our concious takes a dive when the same scenarios appear in our motherland. We would be honking horns shouting and turning to our destination with our free will and shamelessly flaunt a 100 rupee note if caught up in some kind of trouble.

When nature was calling I had to hold on for at least half an hour though we were driving in the countryside and it seemed most appropriate to me to give my contribution to the mother nature by watering some beautiful videshi grass but rules are rules and you are not allowed to litter on freeways in USA .For us Indians , the woods are the biggest aphrodisiacs ( for loo ) and we get the best satisfaction by relieving us on the roadside. Before leaving for a trip one makes sure that there is sufficient liquid inside one's bowels so that the roadside is not deviod of the highly nutritious supply vented out by the most sophisticated fertilizer plant made by mother nature.

I was once again amazed with the culture in which the people expect you to say hi how are you .. how are you doing .. how are you today ... to the strangest stranger you meet. It was once again confirmed that if you want a vegetarian diet served to you in an American Restaurant make sure that you say "NO BEEF NO MEAT VEGGIE" burger/pizza because a friend of ours ordered for some Cajun burger with lettuce leaves onions etc and when the dish arrived it turned out to be beef though the waitress was grateful in replacing it with a veggie pizza but the damage was almost done had we not taken proper precaution.Gotta go now and take my maiden voyage to try my hands at the coin guzzling US laundry machine !!!

In a trance ...

Am in a trance not because i've had 2 full glasses of red wine but because of the US factor .... reached EH this weekend only and am enjoying every bit of it though itz only been 2-3 days .... cooking the desi food in our appt kitchen .... the dustfree scenery ... the firangis and their slangs .. getting used to it all ... as of now there has not been any trip out of EH and hence the discovery of US is still pending ..

It is so inexplicably different that it was difficult to imagine .. it is understandable now how and why the people are so flabbergasted at the thought and sight of USA .... there are so many subtle cultural differences apart from the big ones that one can't imagine .How the americans are so polite and decent ...... you have to hold the door open for somebody coming from the front or back 'cause they always do it ..... you have to say hi howayya as soon as your eyes meet with anybody be it a stranger or one of your colleagues .

I have seen more species of cars in these 4 days than human beings , here they come in all shapes and sizes and brands ...... you won't easily see 2 same cars going side by side on the road ... they drive to the right .... why should they ??? it is so diff adjusting to this fact though am not driving myself but i tend to get the feel we are going to bump into the other car on the turn 'cause we are turning to the other right ..... also they walk to their right and as soon as i see somebody in the office coming from the front i tend to move towards left to give them a way and they too do the same 'cause they think right side is theirs , then there are quick exchanges of excuse me .... am sorry etc etc ..... and what to talk of cleanliness .... their offices are sparklingly clean but nobody seems to be attending to them .. in our office in India we have at least 50 men working on maintaining the facility cleaning each and every leaf of the decorative plants at least 4 times a day.The restrooms in our office is always crowded with at least 5 people in it at one time though only 2 of them are there for the actual purpose ..rest all are either mopping the floor or cleaning the sink ... here you feel so much scarcity of humanity that you seldom bump upon fellow beings whereas in India there is a disgusting excess of it.

The americans must never have been told to save electricity or turn off their engines on the traffic lights on the other hand we have been fed with the advertisements from DD claiming that we have to give our future generations the perfect glittering earth .. the non-renewable sources of energy are so much scarce .... here there seems to be no dearth of energy or power you have to use it and spend it all off. I know this all is based on the very small picture that I have been able to draw with this small exposure of mine to the giant America but thatz the way it is ....

the more the better

i think i need to write more often over varied topics .Lots of thoughts come in the mind as prospective topics but then i forget and the writings that could have come out at the spur of the moment go down the drain.

this weekend went with at least 10-12 hours of reading "Gone with d wind", sleeping and surfing ... had to doze off a lot in order to avoid the extreme heat of north indian summer. I have not written any readable post untill now for anybody and hence don't feel like advertising this as the blog has got no content for really worthy readers .... wanted to write something about Gone .. but feeling sleepy and am short of words and ideas right now... so may be later.

hERO or Villain

My Inner Hero - Wizard!


There are many types of magic, but all require a sharp mind and a cool head. There is no puzzle I can't solve, no problem I can't think my way out of. When you feel confused or uncertain, you can always rely on me to untangle the knots and put everything back in order for you.

How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

Characteristics of a cata-blog

i started hitting upon blogs with the CAT prep only ... all the blogs that i used to visit had somethings in common .. almost each one of the blog had a movie/book review , few rantings about life in general , the life in IIM or some other B school, the worse than hell work schedule , less than 4 hours average weekly sleep, excessively pompous use of language, written by a software engineer cribbing about his job and gradually turning into a big cataholic finally the results are out and the protagonist goes to a B school, he is amazed with the heady mix of kaliedoscopic kinds of people he meets , the demi god profs and some of their fundas are lucidly explained for the lesser beings, gruelling studies for a two year period ,the summers where our fellow is pushed into a bustling indian city where he learns some fundas about real corporate experience and back to hell for another year , then the much awaited placement time comes and our fellow is recruited on day one or two and bang he enters into some hip hop company and mostly the story ends here.The journey was interspersed with excessively brilliant pieces of literature garnished with excellent comic lines by our hero about his childhood / boyhood / visit to his granny / stifling journey by bus/train or picking up some social issues etc.cata-blog is a phenomena happening all accross the country .
I wish to continue shouting it out to the wall .. ( not advertising my blog to anyone until it gathers a critical mass )

bORED TO DEATH

This was the title of the chat room that we used to create in our training period when we joined as novices in KKC company.It is said igorance is bliss and it is really true inspite of all the counter-arguments it is true that if you are unknown to certain facets of life you are happier than a great lot of people...
I am bored of all this sham here and there everywhere it is an artificiality engulfing the life ... am bored of this mediocrity that i am getting into day by day since the day the result was declared and i had this bare fact facing me that i have to bear this for one more full complete year before i get yet another chance to fight it out against what seems to be the entire human race ( it appears the whole human race fights for those coveted few seats in the elite institutes called IIMs ) .... am bored of this chat client , this black screen , the online notice board bearing useless forwards put in by similarly bored junta .... the yahoo messngr, those same "8 jobs inside" mails frm jobsahead.com ... those Stephen Coveys and Robin Sharmas telling me that i should be thankful to the entire universe for being conspiring for my victory and my success .... the partial premium , the death claim , the co-owner ... all the errors being thrown on the wrong screens ...
these are not the rantings of an unsucessful being ( or may be they are ) but the true feelings going thru my mind right now !!! let us hope that a better being turns out of this Manthan ( a rigmarole but with positive connotation ).This is going to continue for few more months or weeks before i find out a decent target and an equally enjoyable journey towards that goal.happy reading !!

me too on road

yeah me too arrived on the scene .... with so much hoopla around blogging ... let me join the rat race .... would be posting every now and then about the life, the me and to grow with my readers ( if i could garner some : ) ) .... just wait and watch ( rather read ) .