Unloading my think tank...

This post comes because I'm waiting for a colleague, the lovely Emma, to get free so that I can discuss something with her and then continue with my work. Until then, I'm stuck with nothing to do. So if you want to thank someone for bringing me from my oft-self-induced break from blogging (for today, at least), you've got Emma to thank!

Lets start with a cliche... life's been pretty hectic. Its been crazy the past 1.5 months. It was crazier after Dec 08 and up until April 09, but I'd rather forget that. The work I do here is awesome, I work with some of the best minds in telecom industry and my profile absolutely kicks ass arse (now that I'm in England... ) There are such humble people in my office; almost all are armed with PhD (in khatarnaak subjects like high speed data transfer using helium technology etc.). I'd rather not get started on them actually... it will be an un-ending post then. (Not really, but you get the drift.)

I didn't get paid for the month of April, since the Finance lady was on leave and hence couldn't get my papers through to the payroll. But I wasn't complaining then. I did get a lot of stares and "are you sure? absolutely?" questions when asked if I wanted an advance on my salary and I'd refused. Salary advance after a 4-month hiatus from work and I refused, why, you ask? Allow me to explain.

I wanted a fat increase in my bank balance, suddenly. You see, because I opted for April+May salaries to be credited to my account at end of May, I have a cool amount of money in my bank. OK, to hell with modesty, its in £££ (GBP)! Groovy baby *like Austin Powers says* Just the thrill of having 2 months salaries at once was super ... err thrilling :D

And what did I do with it? If you thinking it, whack yourself. I'm a girl and in such times, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. S-h-o-p-p-i-n-g! And in UK! But before that, we had dinner at Rainbow Cafe. Uber cool place if you are a vegetarian and don't want to ask the waiter what's in the dish everytime you order something in this meat-loving-country-with-so-few-veg-choices.

So shop I did, including an ultra-sexy pair of Red Nike shoes (pic coming up soon). I also bought a cool cycle: Dunlop Mountain Bike - shock absorbers, disc brakes and 18 gears!

Yes, I ride my cycle to work everyday! Reminds me of school days, but only I'm now wearing formal clothes and big sunglasses while riding them, as against a dork in school dress and 2 plaits *going back in time and imagining me then* (yep, that would be me from 95-98 when I used to ride a cycle to school.) Ah, bad memories. No not all of my school years were bad, but most of it was. I was bullied real bad and I didn't have the courage to stand up against it. Can't blame me; you see, the bullying came from the teachers. Notorious, most of them. And I don't remember my 11th and 12th at all. Yes, AT ALL. Wierd huh? I nod my head in agreement. The other time I was talking to my friend, who lives in Reading. I remarked that I haven't remembered having spoken so much to her during our 4 years of engg (she was in Civil while I was in Comp Science) as much as we have since I moved to UK 4 months back. She goes, "What are you saying? We were together for 6 years. 11th, 12th and 4 years of engineering after that. And in 11th and 12th, we were in the same class, except for Statistics and Comp Science." Huh, really? I'm completely blank about those 2 years of my life. Like written with a marker and wiped as and when a day passed. You can imagine how much fun I would've had in my 11th and 12th. As for the awkward moment with my friend, I acknowledged being a silly goose and not remembering those 2 years.

The scene at the place where I live (with 2 Zimbabweans, 3 Polish, 2 Nigerians and 2 British toddlers, apart from me and hubby) is, not as you must've imagined after looking at the number and diversity of people living, i.e in chaos, but actually quite ice and relaxed, thank you very much. The Zimbabwean lady goes - "how do you have your hair so long? Do you have extensions?". She says the other day - "I got my indefinite right to live in UK granted today, so I'm gonna wear a bikini and go to the beach with my cousins. My baby can stay with my husband. I'm gonna come back at night and go clubbing with my friends and sisters. I'm gonna get piss drunk and completely sloshed. I told my husband I'm not breast feeding my baby for a day or two." Wierd people in this country man! Celebrate, no one forbids you, but why drink and forego breast feeding to your 8 month old? Drinking is a huge problem in this country. Smoking too. I see kids as young as 8-10 hanging outside pubs and looking for half burnt cigarette butts, so that they can have a go at smoking. Parents are not allowed to raise their voices or even beat the kids, so kids (most, not all) turn into bad habits to very young age. Whack them I say, if they steer towards anything bad. My mom used to, very often I must add. Hehehe I was a naughty kid!

OK, Emma is still busy. I'll go and see if I can disturb her again. Adios!

Dont even ask why I'm here. Ever since blogger is blocked at work, my mind seems void of any ideas to write about soemthing. Earlier, I used to at least write a post in whatever words and save it as draft or post it anyway, but now I cant do that either. After I go home, I'm way too tired to write what I'd thought earlier, so I leave it at that.

In other words, this shit is getting stale.

Never mind, I'm not gonna quit writing only cuz I am outta ideas or am tired. Long live this blog!

We watched Transformers the other night. Tuesday, I think. My what a movie! You can say that again, and see the movie again. Such special effects! I am not too much into alien-theme movies (they really bore me to death and I start yawning, even with all the stunts going on in the theatre; and really, lets just stop speculating so much about them shall we?) but this one was refreshingly different. A bit of comedy too was in, and well, you ought to watch it. But watch it with a guy, I dont think a group of girls would enjoy as much *giggle giggle*

I took part in carrom (womens doubles and mixed doubles) and badminton (mixed doubles) as part of annual day sports. Lost in carrom, and I was looking for excuses to skip work anyway ;-) Badminton match is coming up this saturday; and I havent held a racket since school. So lets see how that one goes. Best of luck to my partner for that!

Ummm there's this girl in office. She... she's a little... wierd... she's nice and simple and all that... but she... she keeps touching me all the time. She says hi with a nice smooth hand going down my back (I think she does touches my back cuz she comes to my desk from behind... I shudder to think what would she touch if she came to my desk from the front...) Then she comes again for snacks and the touchign resumes, she stands too close to me when we are waiting for the lift, and insists on ... touching me. Once I politely told her not to touch my bare waist when I was wearing sarees saying I get ticklish and highly unconfortable with that... but I guess she didnt get the hint fully... *sigh* I cant even avoid her, cuz all her other friends do that to her. I feel sorry for her... like I said, she's nice and al that, but she neednt touch to make me be friends with her. I mean, I'm okay with hand around the shoulder (like pal sort of thing) but nothing beyond that, please.

Uh oh, lunch time. I'll back to finish this. Did I hear my blog groan?

Me obviously! Who else would even come close?! I'm so cool that the word cool was invented when the world witnessed how cucumber-ily cool I was, and still am of course.

Yea I'm in a jolly-good-sing-a-song mood!

What happened was... umm ok from start. Me and the husband came back from our long weekend and we had amazing fun on the way back. The train journey was fun and though it (the train) was almost empty, we played and yapped like 'twas nobody's business!

First up, we played... umm whats that game called? That silly ass game where you make a lot of dots - looks like square/rectangle filled with dots separated by spaces. Get the drift? Like this -

. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .

There can be as many dots as you wish. Then, each takes turn to connect a pair of dots - horizontal or vertical. One pair at a time. When you connect a pair such that its a square (all 4 dots connected), thats a house and you get a point. Num. points = num houses. I know, silly game. But its interesting once you start playing it. I used to play this a lot when in school, tee hee :D

So we played this game and it rocked! I won with 39 points/houses and the husband, 38! Hah! Loser :P You should've seen him sulk, such fun.

Then we played tic-tac-toe. Yea, another school game. The husband, wounded from the last game's defeat, cheated and won 1 out of 5 games. Rest, draw. Hmmph.

It was getting late, so we decided to pull our blankets and hit the sack. But neither of us wanted to sleep, so we played "The Personality Game". One person thinks of someone famous, and the other should ask 10 questions (that can be answered with yes or no only) and should guess the personality. 3 guesses also allowed too. We took turns to play this game.

The husband goes first - I got that one. His was Laloo Prasad Yadav. How predictable since we were sitting in the train! Have some creativity man geez.
He also thought of Rooney (Wayne Rooney - no. 8, Manchestah Yoonited), Hilary Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Arundhati Roy, Selvar Mani (from the movie Sarkar, really!), and few others. I got them all except Hilary and Monica. I know, I'm cool.

And when it was my turn, I came up with such good names; the husband had a though time guessing the right personality. Salman Rushdie, Trinny Woodall, Rupali Ganguly, Bobby Darling HAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHHAHAAH :)) The husband got almost all. Then there was one which was really difficult but I have to give it him, he got the answer right. This is how it went -

The Husband - Male?
Me - Nope.
TH - Indian?
Me - Yes.
TH - Entertainment Industry?
Me - No.
TH - Politics.
Me - No.
TH - Singer?
Me - I said No for entertainment industry, didnt I?
TH - Does she write?
Me - Yea, when she's free.
TH - Is she below 30?
Me - Yes of course!
TH - YOU?!!!
Me - CORRECT!!

Hahahahahahah it was so fun watching the expression on his face at that time! I told you I'm cool. Then I told him that now he cant start thinking of other realtives like Bombaywali buaji or Jamshedpurwali buaji hehheh, only I can ;) Also, when he'd have asked just 3 or 4 questions, I'd warn him, "Ok 9 questions over, you have only one left." What?!, cries the husband :))

Then, when we met my sister (I abosultely love her), she kept asking me stories about how we met, did we sneak out and meet often (before getting married, of course), did we travel to meet each other, did we stay together etc. (yep we Indians are very nosey). "Tell me everything in detail!", she commanded. I tried to answer all her eager questions as calmly as possible, censoring info wherever needed. But the husband kept prodding and nudging, "tell her about the time I came to see you when your mom was out of town", "tell her about the time when you came to pick me up at the airport and the flight got delayed and we ended up missing the last train home and stood at the bus stop drinking coffee at 2 AM", "and tell her that you split the coffee on my pants", "tell her when I came to see you when your mom was at your uncles' place", "tell her about how we went to the secluded beach and got fully wet", "tell her how I gave you a piggyback ride when you got a shoe bite", "tell her how we watched movies at your place till early morning". SHHHHHH! She's my kid sister!
But it was actually sweet seeing him talk about those days with that sparkle in his eyes - yep, there lies love :)

This morning, we went to play tennis. After that we went to the beach and drank coconut water (mmmm my favorite drink). The husband's was sweeter than mine, so he offered me his and says, "You take this". I found that really, really sweet :)

And I bought Rs. 6000/- worth sportswear "sports lifestyle" wear from PUMA. They've got some kickass stuff. Very fashionable - suits me just fine. And I let my purse strings and myself go loose :D Retail therapy always helps. And I'm not saying only when you are feeling the blues ;)

I have seldom come across a person who doesnt like Amitabh Bachchan. In fact, I wouldnt want to trivialise his popularity by linking him to some article in wiki about him. I wont do that; cuz he's famous. He's adored by everyone. He started from ground zero and look where he is now.

He rocked the 70s (VERY important note: I wasnt born then) with his chequered pants, wide collared shirts and that awesome sideburn. He wooed women with his voice, with his awesome hair. He started a style mantra by merely tying his shirt into a knot because the shirt tore just before shooting started. The next day whole of Bombay had people tie up their shirt into knots!

His style of "hain", and "vijay deenanath chauhan" still make people whistle. KBC, inspite of no new format, survived simply on his charisma.

And who can forget the outfit he wore for the song "Saara Zamaana" in the movie "Yaarana"? It was a RAGE! Lightbulbs flashing as he moved to RD Burman's famous song...

I can go on and on about him... yet it would not suffice.

But...


see the pic below. Did he really have to do this? Ohmygoodgodwhatwashethinking?!!



Its a pic from his latest movie - Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.

OK - on the topic of the pic - first of all, what the heck?! As if his ad campaings were not enough, this came up! And pray, why do people (by people I mean, the film crew) say he's looking like Jack Sparrow - oops - I mean, Captain Jack Sparrow in that ridiculous outfit above? He's not even CLOSE! He's just the epitome of faux pau in that pic above. Even the girl in the pic (behind) seems to think so.

As a fan, I'd like to say to him - "please, aisa mat kijiye... apne image ke baare mein na sahi, apne fans ke dil mein jo aapka image hai uske baare mein to sochiye..."


PS: Am going to watch Cheeni Kum tonight... mmm should be a "sweet" movie ;)

...I am in office at an un-our-home-planetly hour of 9.15 PM?? Fookin all ye people in Big Apple watchin' ova us eh?

The call is going on (and on since an hour and a half) with the Colorado Springs team (yea not New York, I didnt know what CO is called - Big Orange or Small Pear or Medium sized Mango), and its going on even now.

In between, the call shifted from the conference room to a workstation (dont ask why, its "business confidential" you see), and I was there too, sitting and starting at my screensaver, which is awesome by the way, since I work on Linux. My desktop is KDE, and man, they have some amazing screen savers! Boo Windows boohoo!

This time, the screen saver was, hold your breath, chemical formulations of some very interesting substances! Check these out...

** C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁ - Sucrose / Sugar
Betcha you didnt remember that from high school!

** C₁₀Cl₁₀O - Kepone Chlorodecone.
Its a fungicide/insecticide.

** C₁₀H₁₄N₂ - Nicotine, an insecticide.
Wha..?!!?! Nicotine is insecticide????!??! Isnt that whats there in tea? :O

** C₄H₁₀FO₂P - Sarin Enantioner.
Its a chemical warfare agent.

** C₁₆H₁₈N₂O₄S - Penicillin G.
Next time you go to the chemist, ask for C₁₆H₁₈N₂O₄S and see him wow at your intelligence!

** C₉H₉NO₃ - Adrenachrome. Its a hallucinogen.
Does it cure someone from hallucinations or induce them and pump the adrenalin??

** C₂₃₂N₉₂O₁₃₉P₂₂ - Deoxyribo nucleic acid. Commonly known as DNA.
*gasp* DNA? But how can it have a single chemical formula? Isnt DNA of each individual different? Then what makes it so if not the chemical formulation itself?? Intriguing!


(The End.)

God I'm am so stuck! The code looks fine, dont know whats causing it to behave abnormally. Its been two days I've been racking my brains over it, still it stares at me in the eye and dare laughs. Please, give me the output as I want you to. Pretty please. I promise you an extra dose of comments and nice-sounding variable names *hands folded* I shall also make use of fancy names for methods and will use required imports rather than typing * and overloading you. I shall also promise that you will be my favorite language, moreso than English and Hindi. Also, Punjabi. No, really, you are and always will be my favorite language. *silly grin on face, prayer in mind*

*deep sigh* The program refuses to budge. I will try smooth-talking again.

News is, India thrashed Bermuda. Oops, old news that would be. Nonetheless, BERMUDA?? BER-MU-DA? This whole cricket world cup thing is getting so stale. Really. Hubby's all gung-ho and buys the Pepsi Gold (told you he was still a kid) and sulks big time when an Indian batsman (dont ask which one, they all are a bore) doesnt hit a six off an easy ball. He refuses to eat any dessert (cuz its sweet) when India loses a match. He jumps off the couch, making me go 1 feet high in air, and rams his fist into the air and yells, "YESSSSS YUUSSSSSSS" almost, everytime, startling me. He makes a sad face and asks, "Will India qualify? Please say yes." Well, how would I know honey? But I dare not say that. I have to say India will win, and the world will be a better place to live. Makes him happy as a 3 year old. Thats adorable I think :-)

And dont let me get started when its hockey! Enough said. Its fun anyways :-)

M breaks the news that her mom has breast cancer, advanced stage. Scary. 6 months of chemo. She's cool about it, and says thats because her mom is so. I hope and pray things go well and she recovers painlessly.

Makes me think. No one should ever get a disease. No one should ever die. They should pack their suitcases and leave, if its absolutely necessary, as they'd leave for a vacation. That would make everyone a strong person.

And looks like I'm the sounding board for everyone I know. They (friends, colleagues, you get the picture) come to me with problems and its so hard keeping all of their secrets. The gossip monger in me cant do anything about it, and its like I've been sworn. Darn! If only...! Jokes aside, I try and help. Else, I ask them, "Whats with the rising price of potatoes?!!" or "So seen any UFOs lately?". Throws them way off the track, and the expression on their face is priceless :D

... just buzzed out. My head's spinning. Ah, just when I thought I found the bug in that code.

Anyways, time I had a creative pursuit. I'm craving from within to create something really beautiful and have it adorn the walls of my home - like a painting, or scarves, just about anything. My mom is coming over this weekend, and she's a self-taught pro in stitching, embroidery, crochet et al. I will bug her for sure.

Side note - Is it weird that, post-marriage, I don't get homesick? I do miss my mom, at times. But my friends keep asking me whether I feel homesick, and quite frankly, no. Strange?

And Karan Johar, that guy keeps cracking me up when he's hosting KwK. He says things like, "but at the end of the day you all are professionals". And start of the day are they sworn enemies?? Another one - ".. at the end of the day he is a married man with kids, such rumours are bound to affect his family". Well, during lunch was he a bachelor? Silly, he cracks me up real silly I tell ya :-))

I will end this post by writing a recipe on how to bake a vanilla cake:
1. Buy Pillsbury Vanilla Cake mix.
2. Read, and follow, instructions on the back of the packet.
3. Eat.
4. Thats it no more steps ;-)

And be nice by inviting me over to have it with you, since I worked so hard to type the 4 steps. No kidding. Seriously. (cough I am so funny cough)