I really don't learn from my mistakes

As far as my memory goes back, the one thing i remember from the past 1 week is that i don't learn...tsk tsk ..
One very cold afternoon, and we've been having tonnes of those, i was sitting in office, churning code @ 15 lines per minute, sipping warm water (warm water makes me feel warm)...and i had kept my glass of water in between my two arms and the key board...and i was sure i was being careful...when the phone rang and i without thinking made a dive for the phone and there...u know it, i toppled the water glass. It's not the warm water that was the problem, it was where it feel!!!...you got it...in the right place, making me more embarrassed than anything! So i go outside and park my butt in the sun so it would soak up the water.

One would think, i would be more careful next time around. Well...let's just say ...twice burnt, third time shy ;)

The one thing i should have learned, if nothing else, is that when one drinks warm water, one needs to be careful how the cup/glass is handled. This time round, i have my drink yet again placed between my arms on my work desk and i am merrily typing away. I want to consult my notebook for something and i reach for it, in the process, u guessed it right, toppling the glass....and yes it fell again, right in between my legs. And this time it was light blue jeans, so the comic relief people would/will get outta the sight cannot be lost on you.

Oh well...that day is over and i am really praying to god i don't repeat this mess in the future...the truth is though that right now i have a coke can placed right between my arms and it's just another calamity waiting to happen.

Have a great week ahead you guys...

I have always wanted to write this..

every time a celebrity is convicted of some crime, lots of people will say things like "he thought he was above the law, what now?" some others say the contrary "the system is such, people who are in the public eye are made the scapegoat"...
for the former kind, the law has been proven to be a puppet in the hands of celebrities so a certain sense of invincibility surely comes with the power and money one poses, so i don't blame common man in thinking that.

but the later, do u really think that if a scapegoat had to be found in anything, the law would find the man with the money, with the power responsible? don't you think that even these law enforcers are answerable, they cannot make random decisions. to say things like sanjay dutt has been made a scape goat, oh come on, do u really think, the police would go the extent that they did to convict him because............i don't see a reason do u? somehow his name came up in some investigation and the entire judicial system turned against him? he had originally pleaded no guilty to illegal possession of arms, but later when it became clear that he wouldn't be let off the hook, he pleaded guilty. there has even been a tape of his conversations with the gangsters but he was not found guilty of terrorism or acts of. yet the system reeks of partiality!

or in the case of salman khan...he runs over sleeping people, kills one, the case is mysteriously dropped and yet "the system is against him"? ... he spends a total of 6 days in the jail, for killing endangered species and yet he is the hunted?...

i wanted to vent and i am done! phew...
i know that sometimes some cases are mishandled because of all the media attention, but i don't think the above 2 cases are genuine and the accused were rightly accused.

So i have decided amongst the weekdays, the best day is Thursday!!!...

I don't have anything against the other days...well of course except for Monday @#$%^&*...who in their right minds could even LIKE that day, but Thursday is truly the cream day...every week

1. Gourav returns back home (yipeee...)
2. It's grey's anatomy day!!!
3. it's the friday to the weekend!...you know the weekend is here!!!...

So yes thursday is truly the most important day of the week!...
So now i was telling my last blog how i was infatuated by the series "24"... after completing the first season...which was yes...24 episodes long...one episode for each hour of the day...i have decided to not pursue it...it's so full of crap and miscalculations, the producers and writers sure think that we will believe anything that they tell us!...really..anything? snap your fingers and people who were suffering from amnesia, get back to reality!...people go w/o food for a whole 24 hours...and yes anything you throw at Sutherland, the lead, he will get out of it literally unscathed!!!... the viewers are really taken to be too naive...

So this past weekend we were in Austin, what a beautiful place it is, every time i go there, i fall more and more in love with it...so this time we went to the inner space caves near Round Rock. It was wonderful to see nature's creations...something so beautiful formed out of something so common...limestone!...and it takes thousands of years for those formations, and they were plenty and beautiful...i am going to put the pictures we took here, except that the pictures themselves are not as pretty as the caves :(

so another week is here and another week to finish some old tasks, some new goals and roles...life never ceases to amaze me with it's numerous tasks...

Couch Potato!

So i have never considered myself a couch potato...until (drum roll)...now....
I have discovered this love for a couple of shows and infatuation for some (grin)...

The shows i love and will not miss them no matter what...
1. Grey's Anatomy
2. Monk
3. House
4. American Idol

Infatuation:
24, Office, South Park, Seinfeld, Private Practice, Simpsons
Now i cannot seem to ween myself off of these...and i am quite excited about my predicament. LOL...i like this physical/mental state I am in...
so until i find something new to occupy myself with...

Bitter Sweet

(This is an old post, which never got posted...)

I am sitting at work and i have no motivation to work. None whatsoever, i have a never ending list of things that i need to finish, soon enough, but i cannot find the motivation to work. There are reasons for this and i am not sure if i should write them here. how appropriate it would be if some present/future employer googled for me and found this blog post about me cribbing about my work and such!

Now this coming vacation is making me very nostalgic about my childhood and how things were then and have been since. of course i have grown up, moved from one city to another, gotten educated, married but the heart still craves for those "good old days".

Some of my fondest memories are going with my Dad to get ice cream and he wanting mango and me wanting chocolate and i would be amazed how anyone in their right minds would want to eat a "mango ice cream"!!! Enough already with that fruit! But now i like that so much myself, i actually like fruit flavor ice creams now! it's a far cry from those days. Another very distinct memory is sitting down to tackle math problems with my Dad/Grand Dad and it used to be a huge nightmare, but it was always exciting, always one to "show off", I would try and do math problems from lessons ahead so that when they sat me down for a math lesson, I would amaze them with my shear brilliance :)... Dad would never really praise me...but i would just be happy to let him know that i knew the stuff!...

So now 2 weeks to get back to the place where all the above and more happened...can't wait to touch my pillow!!!...India here we come....

27 days to go!

i am on a constant shot of adrenaline, i am sleeping, walking, talking my impending trip to "India". That 5 letter word brings this huge smile on my face and i begin to dream of who all i will meet, where i will shop, what i will eat and how the trip is going to be so short :(

I am going HOME after 4 years, the house i have a few thousand dreams, laughs, breakdowns and memories in. I am going to go to Delhi, my home, Mumbai, Gourav's home and Jabalpur, my Mom's home town, which is also where i did my Bachelor's from. I can't wait to see my grand father, whom i am very excited to see. After 4 years, in which i have not had a chance to speak with as much as i would like, because of my own incompetence to make those calls and his to hear me. There have been so many new additions to the family, weddings and kids, i can't wait to see them.

And i have this whole new family that i will meet for the first time, which are my own and since my wedding, which is also getting 1 year old :), i have been getting real close to. Having a sister in law and a brother is law is fun! they side with you, very much like your own siblings who fall for your partners charms!

This is going to be one hell of a trip and i cant wait to land. 27 days and counting :)

This has been the longest time when i have not written anything.
I have been lazy, very lazy. Not that there weren't interesting things to write about!

I have spent these past few weeks admiring my mom a whole lot, not like i have not always been extremely proud of her and proud to be her daughter, but some of the things she does and has done are just exemplary!

My mother is a very strong lady, she has a lot of strength and courage. When my sister and I were very young, i was only 4 years old, my Dad went to Nigeria for a two year deputation, my mother, a doctor, by occupation, stayed in India with us because she was worried about our education. Staying with two children in those days, alone, was quite an amazing task for a woman, with children so young. She did a splendid job, my sisters and my dance classes were never stopped, she still managed to take us out to our favorite places and do all the things that we would've done with Dad around, we did miss Dad, but we managed well. My sister had an operation in this duration and I had a fracture, but my mother didn't get hassled by all this, sometimes my Grand Dad was there to help her, other times he wasn't. We had very bad neighbors who gave her grief for no fault of hers and i remember her being to agitated by it but didn't complain about it to us. Dad and she manged things so well despite the distances, it was amazing. It was like a bout of bad things to happen to her, just before we were

My Dad had to tour a lot, so even after coming back from Nigeria, he would travel to Vizag on a monthly basis, my Mother's strength saw us through it all.

Now my parents are back in Nigeria, Mom is working for an IV clinic, and I am amazed at how fast she learned the new technology, not that it was easy, being used to old ways and not used to the computers that were pushed her way, she is someone, whom i had a had time teaching, Ctrl C and Ctrl. V, but this lady has now mastered the art of Microsoft Powperpoint! i was delighted to see the presentations she makes, complete with a graph!!! She doesn't take any help for house hold chores, my Dad helps around, but despite the grueling hours at the clinic, she still goes for her walk, makes the most splendid meals, takes care of the house, socializes and does all this with a smile on her face.

Mom, i am so proud of you and i strive to have your patience, perseverance and simplicity. If I could even be 10% of you, I would call it an achievement.

I love this weather...spring by far is the best season followed by fall! the best thing i think the Dept. of Transportation does is put bluebonnets on the sides of highways, so the whole place looks blue and green and you can see parents taking photos of their kids with the flowers. it is an absolute delight!

my life has been very hectic a work, and that is unfortunately having a very bad affect on my food and my gym. the former i am seeing too much of and the later hardly! so i am back to square one, those 2-3 happy weeks of regular gym ming are a thing of the past...i need more motivation to go there and not just sit and watch some damn movie or TV. aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh....

so India didn't make it to the world cup! thank god for that...if it had sneaked in to the super 8s because of other's misfortune i would have been more angry and the Indian team more cocky, it is time for them to really get their act together! And as the BCCI is very "wisely" saying Ghee (saturated Fat) should be banned, yes that indeed is the solution to our cricket woes! There is so much going on in India right now that it's just amazing how one country can concentrate on so many "big" news and events at the same time. There is the Big Bollywood wedding of Ash and Abhishek, which if you ask me is not getting enough media attention, and enough speculation. What these people in the public eye should realize is that we make them what they are today, the adulation, the attention and the insanity it all is because we want to know what is going on with them, so donot please shun the media and not give us the scoop we are looking for.

But truth be told, I really donot care about the wedding, except i want to see what Ash wore at the wedding and the other guests, that is all i care about, so i am hoping atleast some pics are put somewhere!

Then there is the Richard Gere Kissing Shilpa, Oh My God, i am besides myself with rage, how in the world could Richard Gere, come to 'some' show and take advantage of 'one of our dear indian girl' like that! Who cares what the cause is, what the reason for all this and who all contributed to this event and what this event will help in, i don't care about it, i want to go and burn some posters of Richard Gere, make spoofs of his films and when he finally gets back here, stone his house!

***Clarification**** I am being sarcastic above please do not think i endorse the "Shiv Sena" view point! As some people have pointed out that they have not been able to see the sarcasm!

Phew, then there is Sanjaya Malakar phenomenon happening!!!! It truly is just that! One started of as being a joke on the hugely popular American Idol show, how now become quite the rage that the show needed, now they will not admit this, they are making a huge deal out of it, that if he wins, so and so will quit and this will be the worst season ever, but what they dont realise is that in most seasons by this time, people loose interest in the show, but this year the ratings are high and people like me are watching it solely to see what the "wonder kid" will dish out this time, a wacky hair do or a bad rendition of an old favorite! One thing which i love and admire about him is his strength and ability to stand up there and take all the criticism that is being hurled his way, every week Simon will say something mean to him, i don't know how they think that helps, for he is not there of his own accord, they chose him to be there and now the public is voting for him, what is he supposed to do? He is doing his best to come out there and entertain people. I don't think anyone should be mean to him, but what i do know is that the public is mean very mean and for his sake, i don't want him to win the contest, cause the public will not leave him alone, like it is his fault! But the incident at the game that he went to is i think a good indication of what can happen. I have heard and read a lot of people saying because of his Indian background I should be proud of him. I just think this is misplaced patriotism. But that's just me, and i will not support him for this reason, in fact i don't support him at all, i just admire his courage.

The past week is up there in my list of "worst weeks".
Not only was it a hectic week, it was sad and i was very week emotionally and mentally.
It didn't start on a good note at all, for I had a deployment of a new application, the deployment had a lot of hiccups, the network not being available, my import programs running slowly. But Monday morning things were running smoothly...with the initial user errors and some things we didn't think of happening and solving the programs on the fly. it was a hectic day and finally when i went home that day i just prayed that things would get better. Well they didn't, it seemed like everyone wanted me to do everything at the same time fir them and i was not really handling all the pressure well, i hate being the only one who knows how to do somethings. i wish there was a back up plan intact here, but it isn't.

Thursday rolled by and my life was really not going well, the only thing looking positive was that Gourav would be coming back from Kansas City that day. Around lunch time that day, i got a shock that would probably change our office forever. Our network Engineer had not been feeling well that week and hadn't been coming in, but we hadn't heard from him in 2 days and Jeff got worried about him and so thought he should go and see how he is. His name is John Thomas. John is divorced and used to live alone so when our calls to him went unanswered, it was concerning. So jeff went to his house and he saw John's car was in the garage but he would answer the door or the phone. So Jeff called the cops for he was really worried now about John. Jeff was the first person to discover John dead. John was probably trying to make himself a bath when he died, he was suffering from pneumonia. Jeff has not been himself since and we cannot get ourselves to get used to the fact that the guy who sat not more than 1 feet away from us is no more.
Jeff cried and that broke me completely. It's like when a person who you regard as your hero breaks, you think the end of the world is near. I have been not able to shake this feeling of utter chaos and loss from my heart since. i have spent some sleepless nights, thinking about John and how he must be alone...i cannot deal with the empty desk in my office. Jeff came that very night back to the office and cleaned John's desk, it's blank and it stares at me all the time and i cannot look at it. i have to pass it each time i enter the office or leave...

Friday was the day when i finally lost all control and broke down, the stress of all the work i had, seeing Jeff like that and John, it just broke me and all I wanted to do was run away from work. it was one of my weakest moments at work, and i cried. i felt like a fool after that, but it did some good, i just started doing things mechanically without thinking, so that might have been good.

I have been thinking how i am going to go to John's funeral today. It's not about me and it's not about Jeff, it's about seeing John....

May John's soul rest in peace and may God give his family strength to deal with this loss.

I just got back from lunch and i am in a huge dilemma!
I wrote earlier about these flying objects on the roads and how they scare me, so well today when i was driving back to work, there was this truck with a trailer attached to it, going in front of me. It didn't look very well kept and there were pieces of cardboard in it and some empty plastic crates. The crates were all loose and were moving around in the back of the trailer and this trailer was open at the end, so things could fall off!

nothing untoward happened but the crate fell, it caused people to change lanes and such, but the truck driver happily and ignorantly kept driving his damn trailer and took off!

now my dilemma is, i want to report this guy, i want him to tie his @#$%^&* crates together and not have them strewn around the whole Metroplex. but i don't know what the cops will do, i don't know if he has a license even, if this is his only means of lively hood and how i might endanger that. but i want such drivers taught a lesson.

what should i do. i still remember the registration number of the vehicle.

Ctrl F

Finally i am back to feeling a 100%, it's been an ordeal fighting fatigue, weakness, fever, cough...but now i am back to being healthy! What is not strange is that i had been willing illness to come to me, i mean i was praying that i would fall sick, that way i would get the much needed rest, but i think I pleased the god of sickness too much and the god of wellness too little and thus the infection and symptoms went for a bit too long. lesson learnt, too much praying is literally not good for health!

Meanwhile, for a lot of time now, whenever i have some time and am not looking for anything else on Google or wiki, i am looking for 1 of three things. Now for quite sometime now, i have been spending a lot of time, trying to find two lost friends and 1 series i used to see in India way way back and now want to see it again. Now, one of the two friends, Mandavi Saxena, I am writing her name here so that if someone who is in touch with her, reads this, can tell her about me. So she and I were very good friends in school, then i moved away, and for sometime we kept in touch, we even met some 7-8 years ago in my solitary trip to Ranchi. But after that, I have not been able to find her. None of my other friends who know her, know how to get in touch with her! to imagine that in this day and age there are people who do not have an active email address. Same story is with another friend of mine, but in her case, i have finally been able to get a valid email id and if Gods willing and Jagariti willing, she will reply soon!!!

Ok now the third thing and arguably the most irritating, most tempting and most sought after amongst the three! When i was maybe 12 or 14 years old, there was a Japanese series that was aired on Indian television, Oshin. It was one of the most popular, non-Hindi series ever to hit the indian television! The showed us a significant part of the series, but suddenly for no apparent reason, the series can canceled and was aired no more! Back then, there was no Internet and i had more pressing matters to deal with, like my friends, school, the games we played and so much more. But now for about 8-10 months, i have been looking for a DVD collection or any such digital copy of the series, but so far i have come up with zilch. I do find some DVD collections on amazon, but they are in Japanese and cost like $2000 but other than that i have found wiki entry and some blogs and even IMDB mentions it, but i cannot find any digital copies. Not netflix, not blockbuster, not eBay, nothing.

But my search shall continue, i am not going to give up this soon...

Why is that one cannot tell someone something that matters to you and they not pass on the thought to someone else? And then those super geniuses have to trespass your thoughts all the time!

The week-end that was...

The weekend is over...and i must say it was one of the nicest weekends i have had in a while...of course i was running fever for most part of it and gourav was nursing a twisted wrist, but we still had a very nice weekend. gourav was gone during the week and therefore the time we had together seemed rather special! It started with me trying my hand at some traditional Indian food, since it was shivratri on friday. I had set my heart on trying some traditional food and i surpassed my own expectations! i was highly impressed with the outcome and so was gourav! then sat was the "finish" chores day and we had a cousins movie night and i saw an amazing Indian movie, now indian movies in general run for 3 hours or more but this movie was 2 hours, so it had that to it's credit and so i was thinking even if it's bad, it's a short torture....the movie started with all these vibrant colors and wonderful acting by boman irani and can you believe even raima sen!!! she's not unbearable. but i think the cream on the cake was amitabh bachchan. I cannot stand a screaming amitabh, but this was a surprisingly calm amitabh and very controlled performance by him.

The last day of the weekend saw me trying my hand at some daal-bati...it's a Rajasthani dish and it's very very rich, with lots of ghee in it! And i did make them well, only to feel guilty about the loads of ghee both of us had consumed that day!

Sometimes people say some things which make u see what kind of people they are and sometimes the things that one should've said and didnt say also tells you what kind of a person he/she is. One such moment this weekend, gave me an opportunity to learn something important about people this weekend.

Valentine's Day....

I like the redness, the chocolate, the love, the cutsey stuff all around...it makes it festive and i am a stickler for anything with fanfare...
Here's what i don't like though about valentine's day...the fact that it becomes another Birthday...it's not that, it's not meant to be. It's a day to express one's love and happiness so do something together...why does it have to be associated with a gift?

if people need a reason to be with their loved ones...that's their problem but to add gifts to that...no way....

it was fun to see all the festivity around and i must add my office sure knows how to make it special...but let's not go silly and start buying gifts worth a hundred dollars...that's just borders on guilt!

Lost Memories.

Yes i have lost all of them, right from my first days in USA, birthdays, trips, random snaps, to my parents trip to USA,...i have nothing ...i am very very lost and seem to have misplaced so many precious moments of my life. How did this happen? well i think i was trying to backup my old Desktop and probably put all photos in a "safe" place in it so i could just transfer them onto my laptop. What does survive is everything after February of last year...phew....

So what has happened is that i cannot find the folders. No matter what i look for .jpeg, .bmp or look for folders by the name of photos or pic(s) or backup or memories i cannot place those folders. I have looked even in the recycle bin. But i have come up with zilch.

It's so bizarre, i am one of those people who has infinite faith in the computers and therefore didn't decide to backup precious things before until that fateful moment when i decided to switch from the PC to the laptop. Now i am distraught. All i have are those photos which i had put on yahoo photos and as we know yahoo compresses photos to bee-size so though i can view them, i cannot download them or do anything useful with them.

I did have some photos on my flash drive but i cannot find the drive itself, so till i get that i am sitting here memory-less. Well not really but i am pretty sad and uncomfortable about the whole situation. I love to go back and look at photos of things we would have done earlier...it's the only way to relive those moments. So all you shutter bugs out there, please make sure that you back up your photos and that you use a proper web service to safe keep them. I have learnt my lesson.

The Sun, the moon and the Stars...

One of my favorite memories from childhood is going to bed and my grandfather reading me bed time stories...there was story of the king and the queen whose children are taken away and how they get them back, then a story about a washer man, lots of tales from China and Russia...and of course when he didn't want to tell me a story and was trying to dodge the bullet...there would be the story of the boy who cried wolf...not one of my favorites :)

But my GrandFather or Baba as we used to call him...did a lot of funny and interesting things with us, he gave us puzzles to solve, math problems to do, i owe my high grades in Math to him, take us for walks and tell us jokes, taught us how to sit in the sun on a cold winter afternoon and eat sugarcane by ripping off the skin with our teeth...eat roasted sweet potato and peanuts...

When we had jaundice, he made sure we didn't eat boring food, so he would improvise with the little that was allowed, and would make us drink that awful papaya juice, he would climb on a ladder, propped against the papaya tree and get the juice out of the fruit! pretty incredible but back then i didn't think so, i would make faces and howl for i disliked this juice so much...now i feel silly having created such a scene even after i knew how much effort he had put into this.

My Baba is the perfect example of the grand parent who spoils his grand children rotten, dreams big for them and loves them so much...

He's one of the biggest reason why I want to go for a vacation to India, I miss sitting with him in the sun and discussing politics or talking on the phone with his clients and helping him decipher some of the game show questions so we could win some prizes...

Grand Parents are a luxury and I am glad I have all these wonderful memories to cherish...

I spoke with a friend recently after 9 years!!! we spoke briefly and then chatted and i was super-duper nostalgic, remembered the silly jokes we have shared, the giggling sessions we have had, the crushes, the icons, the gossips, the coffees, the shopping, the late nights, the teasing, the families, the clowns, the friends, the class-bunking, the movies....
old friends are like the sunshine after days of rains, or the first rain after a long summer. it's yahoo messenger at 2 am in the night and sipping coffee to stay awake knowing perfectly well that the next day you have to go to work but the fingers dont stop typing and the mind a playground of old memories...

Capital Punishment

In the past few months, there have been a few instances of sentencing criminals (in the eyes of the said law) to death. And I have been trying to evaluate my thoughts on the subject. Earlier i thought I was against it, for i didn't think that humans had the right to decide if another human had committed a crime and that his life was therefore theirs for playing with. But that was not the only reason for my aversion to this rule, i have often wondered how people could change after a crime, agreed that at the time the crime is committed, it personifies what the person's made of..but if after 5-6 years or more he is punished, is it ever investigated if the person is still the same, if his opinion on the damage he has caused has changed, it's not as though "once a thief, always a thief" or "once a rapist always a rapist".

That was in the past, sure i still think that courts need to re-evaluate a defendant's morals when deciding on a punishment, but i know what my problem with capital punishment has been. I think that the people in the society in which the crime was committed should be the judge of the criminal and how he/she should be punished. For instance I do not like the way the Husein family (Uday, Quasy, Saddam) has been dealt with. The crimes that all these three committed were against Iraqi people and not against US, what then gives US troops to kill the two sons and say we have brought justice to the people of Iraq, no they have not, nothing makes them law enforcers or the savior of the people of Iraq, it's the people who should decide how the three people should have been punished, surely they met with an easier death if everything we know about them is true, if they did the things they are said to have them, aren't the people mad that they didn't get the chance to be a part of the punishing process? I would feel betrayed by the process if i had been a victim of their cruelty.

Now that is my problem with capital punishment, every rapist, murderer (with the wrong intentions for a murder) should positively be executed but given that the law is enforced by the people who were the victims, not some third party which just decides to take action for it forwards their means and ambitions.

So i do condemn the hanging of Saddam Hussein for it was not given the treatment it was meant to be given, it was not fair and certainly not handled properly!