The rainy days

Its been raining a lot for the last few days. And I just had a long long weekend; Diwali holidays, a five day extended weekend. Today morning, its still raining. And I am on my way to the office on a bus. As usual, everyone's now back to work. And the rains have made the traffic situation worse. Moving at a snails pace. Fortunately, I managed to get hold of a seat. It will probably take close to 1.5 hours today. The ride is very bumpy, although my phones spellcheck compensates for that.

Its been a very long time here, for various reasons outside my control. If the rains don't stop by evening, I might as well come back again then.

Bus rides are comfortable, although I have a few arguments against them. My new office is farther from the old one, and its in the heart of the city. The only viable road to the new office is heavily crowded during office hours. And I thought riding a bike to and fro would be very painful. It's been about a week bow that I have been travelling by bus. Although it has been quite comfortable, I end up spending more than 2 hours of my day in travelling.

So I have been able to get back here after such a long time. Last week I was trying to read some articles on my phone to use up the idle time on the bus. But it didn't work out. The roads were bumpy, and I had to concentrate very hard to avoid the distractions. Writing, in such a scenario seems a little better since you don't have to focus for long stretches. Think a bit, write a bit.  Wait... Thinking....

Looks like its raining inside the bus as well. The roofs are leaking a bit. I have changed two places inside the bus, but looks like its leaking from everywhere. The roads are flooded. It is advisable to take the bus instead of your bikes in such weather, if you are in Bangalore. Its better to be inside a leaking bus instead of being in the splashes of the vehicles on the roads, especially, when you are going to the office and you are not carrying a spare set of clothes.

I am just 15 mins away from my office now. Have to get prepared for de-boarding. Its going to take a bit of effort.

Posted via Blogaway

Ready for Launch

3...2...1... And launch

Whenever I get a piece of square or rectangular sized paper, my brain is hard-wired to make a paper plane out of it. I must have made at-least some thousands of them.

And after they are made, I make it a point it test it well. And confirm whether it passes the flight tests.

Anyone else still plays with paper planes? Oh and by the way, when I was a child, I always dreamt of being a fighter pilot. But my ambitions crash landed when the optician told me that I have to wear glasses now. That very day, I cursed myself of not listening to Mom and not eating enough green vegetables.

Posted via Blogaway

The Race Begins

The 8 Week Fitness Challenge - "The Biggest Loser"

The race to the day when I won't be a bachelor, begins. Just over 2 months is what I have to get in shape. And a circle is not a shape when we are talking about our bodies.

8 weeks is what I have to achieve whatever I can. And I have got competition for that.

"The biggest loser" competition, I mean. It's a competition in our office. And that starts from tomorrow. I have been making my preparations for a week now. What, you might ask!!!

1. No gyming for a week.
2. Eat as much as I can to gain weight, which I would be losing from tomorrow.
3. Get enough sleep so that I am not sleep deprived during the 8 week program.
4. No hair-cuts or shaves.

There are 23 participants (none have backed out yet), and I have no idea who they are. Tomorrow is the first weighing day, and I hope I should weigh at-least 73 kgs because of my early preparations. I weighed 70.5 a week back.

There's a prize for the loser as well, I mean the winner. And I have good competition I guess. One of the competitors, I already know, is my team mate. Although he has a good chance to win, but 

"What's a competition where everybody doesn't hope to win!!!"

I am wondering whether I would win if I lose about 5 kgs or more. That would require scandalous amounts of determination, herculean self-control and mountains of motivation. 

I would be updating my progress, and others' as well, with all the statistics and all other news about this. Watch out for the announcement of the winner. I am quite sure you would see my name at the end of 8 weeks. Fingers crossed. 

@My Friends: Don't host any parties during this period, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

@Colleagues: PLEASE!!! No more team lunches till the results are announced

@Fellow Competitors: I have everything planned out. Beware!!!

Random post at midnight

Image courtesy: Wikimedia

I was talking to a friend today. He said, "People update their blogs only when they are sad and gloomy. When they are happy, why the heck would they want to sit in-front of their computers typing out their thoughts? Rather they would hang out with friends, have a beer, watch a movie and enjoy their nice time."


Well, I do agree.


I recently started a chain mail and added everyone on my contact list (at-least those I remembered). This time around, the response was pathetic. The last time we did a similar thing, Google had blocked my gmail account for a day stating that the limit of the number of mails that could be sent in a day was crossed. They said that I had sent more than 500 emails for that particular day.  

Dumb!!!!! 

This time, the chain hasn't even been able to collate even 15 links. That's understandable I guess. People have settled now. Some married, some too busy with work and some have perhaps forgotten their old friends. I am not complaining though. That day, I was a little low on work, so didn't know what to do. I was bored of Facebook and Twitter and then I remembered all my friends. :D

A piece of work

When my MAC crashed!!! 6 times in 10 minutes. Had nothing else to do. Aaargh!! Monday mornings are hell. Last night I hardly slept for 3 hours.

MAC frightens me again

I was in the middle of some important work,  and was also completing the last edits to my blog when this screen freezed my huge monitor. It asked me to restart my system. And all the attempts of saving my work before hitting the power button failed. Frustrated, I went for the power button, with no hopes of getting my work back. But to my surprise, after the restart, everything was saved for me. :)

Thanks Mr. Jobs, but I thought it would be a good idea to let the user know why exactly the computer wants to shut down.  Weird though, I never found out why did it want to restart.

Update: This has been happening very frequently of late. I noticed that whenever my phone (HTC Hero) is kept connected to my Mac, it either refuses to start or I get this "Restart" screen. Seems the rivalry between Apple and Google have just taken it to new levels. Bad for me :( . 

The apple site says this : http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2238.html

At my desk

Hi yet again,

I have got so much of time these days in office that I decided to write some blogs from here. This is one of them. :)

Oh yes, did I forget to mention? I have booked a Pulsar 180, which will be delivered sometime next week. I didn't have much choice with the kind of budget I had, and this was the best I could get. I had liked the Yamaha FZ-16, but then it had a terrible dashboard. So, finally after a lot of thinking, I went for the Pulsar. I know Pulsars are everywhere, and I would look common, but, now I have made up my mind, and stopped listening to anybody about other bikes. :)

What more? Last week was very hectic. I don't know why I am not able to sleep for more than 5-6 hrs. It's not that I don't want to, but there are so many things to do, I don't want to miss them.

Somedays back, I thought I waste a lot of time thinking about where to eat, and what to order, and then there was cleaning dishes. :) For me, I guess, eating is not at all an important part of the day. I just push in anything I can get hold of. It's unhealthy though. People who stay, live or eat with me often have very special expectations about the kind of lunch/dinner they want to have. And they would travel great distances to have the special taste. I can't do this. Any kind of food is good for me, as long as it isn't among the few things I don't like. Capsicum, Pumpkin, Saaroo(don't know what is it called in English). Anything else is just fine for me.

Happy Birthday !!! Not Mine....

"System Software Engineer". This is my new designation at a new office, at a new place. A lot has changed in the last 1 month. And I have adapted to these changes well. The first change, and the most important, at-least for me was the drastic change in temperature and humidity. 1 month back, I was near to the western seas, and right now, I am about 10 kms away from the eastern seas.

About my office, well, its not a very big one. Though the campus has a pretty big parking space, it is rarely crowded by vehicles. The whole campus houses only about 200 employees. So, on an average, we get a mail every week or so, inviting us for some one's birthday. They even put up a printout near the entrance whenever someone's birthday comes, with his photo and name, and wishing him "A Very Happy Birthday". Well, that's not unusual, I guess. I am expecting pretty much the same thing, in a few days. But, they only have a passport size photo of me with them. I am wondering if the photo in the printout will be visible from a distance. Or may be, just before my birthday, they will click some photographs of me, for the printout. It is a black and white printout they paste near the entrance.

Today, there was yet another printout near the entrance, a black and white one. I wasn't wearing my glasses when I reached office. I was sweating and so, in a rush to reach my air-conditioned cubicle, I ignored it. Normally, I would have read the name and have had a look at the photograph.

I was engrossed with work after that and had completely forgotten about that printout. During lunch time, I heard some people talk about someone's birthday. Since it was in Tamil, I only picked up the word birthday. They were probably discussing about the person. When I next checked my inbox, there was an invitation for someone's birthday. I was feeling hungry, and so I was happy with the thought that I would get to eat something sweet. I also thought that I would jump on the cake, the moment it was cut, pick up 2-3 pieces of it, and run back to work. The mail didn't have the name of the person, which I thought would have been a mistake on the sender's (HR) part. They always mess up with things, I thought.

I again got busy with my work. I had to go down to the reception after some time to submit some documents for the tax thing. So, I thought I would have a look at the printout now. After submitting the documents, I walked toward the place where the prinout was pasted. I still wasn't able to read the name from a distance. I wasn't wearing my glasses yet. When, I was within my reading distance, the printout seemed to be different. The picture was unclear, and so was the name. At-last, when everything was clearly visible, I understood everything. The message was,

A Very Happy Birthday To
"Server 1"

And alongside, was it's picture, which defintely wasn't that of a human being. My hunger was gone. I was wondering, who would be blowing the candles!!!!