second last week of dec

Saala, what happened on saturday is what I call "Major-League chutiapanti". And it was ALL
brought upon me by myself. I know some people hate me but I should have realised how deep
it goes.
This is one of those events that happen in your life and teach you a lesson. Hopefully, it will
help me at some point of time in future.

By the way, I moved into my new place in Thoraipakkam. Its 6 km from office but quite spacious. One thing that sala keeps freaking me out is why in the name of hell , can't our cities be
clean.. And plastics must be banned with immedaite effect.

Tunnel and the dark light

I may have just seen the light now ... Is the project end near ?
Can it be possible ??

So help me GAWD.....

Its wet out here

Its been 2 straight dayz now. And the rain don't look like stopping any time soon.
Kinda reminds me of Forrest Gump in Vietnam. "And it rained, and it rained, and it rained..."

Its 4:30 in the morning and my deadline is coming nearer and nearer. Kinda reminds me
of something I read in LA at the clients' place --- "STATUOTORY WARNING: Dates on calendar are nearer then they appear."

Here comes the big monkey ... Kinda reminds me of getting my a$$ back to work.

And its' raining still...

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

Jsy wanted to let it out ..... The delivery is today ... Came to office on wednesday morning ..
haven't left yet :(


Feel like this ...

Opportunities ???

Accenture has just opened their office and it sits bang across the street from WIPRO. That shud
be cause for worry for our management. I hope it is :)
The building is nice, the entrance is quite inviting. I also find myself looking more at the
building then the road ahead, while driving back home.

Should I take the left turn .................

TOTD

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
--ROBERT FROST

Imperial Hubris

I have come across a couple of mails that show an interact b/w Madhu Trehan and a US based Indian. The gist of the interact is - how Madhu proved that we are better off then what NRIs think.
GAWD .... I just can't tolerate this everything-is-fine attitude. I am reproducing one such mail and then my take on it.

============================================================
Madhu Trehan writes regularly for Outlook magazine.one of her readers responded to her mail and she is replying to that letter. Both the letters are shown below.

******************************************************************************************************
Hi Madhu,

I have read your articles ever since I was a kid and you were at India Today. You have often come across as a balanced person not prone to Gandhi nonsense, until now. I live in a White Nation (the US) and have never felt like a second class citizen. Only a blind and a deaf person can compare the pride of a US citizen with the indignity of being an India.

A US citizen trusts his government, knows his/her death will never go unpunished, while an Indian solider is there to die. Elite is a bad word in India because 95% of our country lives in abject poverty.

Next time ask the waiter in Taj who served you the Rs 400 drink, how much he akes in a month. The Durban who opens the door for you, ask him how much he makes? I bet his monthly salary will be around your dinner bill.

Shame on you and journalists like you who have failed India in the past with coloured reporting and are doing so now. They should feel ashamed. Rather than calling bush names, maybe we should hang our heads in shame on PM's like Vajpayee who is too old to walk, too much of a coward to protect his people.

Maybe, just maybe, the day people like us (the English educated hence smarter) start feeling ashamed enough we will start making changes in India rather than just exploiting our servants and labour class. It anguishes me to read this national character articles. A nation that cannot feed its people (a la Orrisa) has no character, a nation whose children move around *** (Mumbai) has no reason to feel proud, a nation whose elected reps call religious riots "opposite reaction" has no future. Once again, shame on you and all of India. I am ashamed to be an Indian and shame on you for suggesting anything else.

Chet (C haitanya)


***********************************************************************************************************

Her response was:

Hello Chet,

I will answer your letter point by point.

Your name. You can be Chet or Jet, stay away from the sun, fake an American accent, but you will never be able to run away from Chaitanya. He will always be there even though you hate him today.

Gandhi, whom you hold in such contempt, despite all his controversial behavior, is largely responsible for the fact that there is no white boot on a part of your anatomy today.

You live in a white nation but you are not white and never will be. You can fool yourself to believe that you are not treated as a second class citizen. You choose to forget the Dot Busters, the Sikh who was killed because he looked foreign and rampant racism. How many times a week do you have to explain where you are from and spend your time EXPLAINING India to Americans? I cringe to think what you say to them about India. We do not need spokesman such as you. You will never be able to share a good desi joke with any of your new friends. If you can't laugh together; you cannot understand each other. You will always be an alien.

Yes, we are economically poor compared to US but we do not have to suffer the highest rate of teenage pregnancies, kids coming into schools and killing students and teachers, the highest rate of suicide among college students, alienated parents and children, lonely old people dumped into old age homes, drugs being offered to eight year olds (as my daughter was when she was in the UN school in New York), serial marriages and divorces.


The US had a president who was senile and deaf (Reagan), one who turned out to be a serial *** offender (Clinton), and now you have one who didn't know the heads of state of major countries and ignored warnings of a terrorist attack months before it took place. The US is responsible for massacres in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Chile and the list goes on. The rest of the world does not view America with the rose-coloured glasses you have been brainwashed by the US media to see thorough.

And, how much does a waiter in Jean Georges restaurant in Trump International Hotel in New York make compared to the price of the drink he is serving? The labour class in exploited all over the world.


You seem to very upset that I am pointing out we have a national character to be ashamed of and we should do something about it. Your insistence that we stay ashamed and do nothing about it is perhaps to make it easier for you to live in a country where the only religion is to hang out at malls and accumulate consumer items you don't really need but have been dictated by advertising to buy that, to keep the US economy going. It is not by accident that Americans are flocking to yoga and meditation classes to buy happiness.

You have done well to leave a country you are ashamed of. Call yourself an American but sooner or later your disguise and American Halloween costume will frighten you enough to get rid of it. I love America's energy and have good friends there. New York is a centre for an enormous outpouring of creativity and imaginative thinking. Every country has its own problems. It is for the people who belong there to take responsibility for change.

If you are so far removed from India, ask yourself why you are so anguished with my article. Chaitanya is raising his head, Chet is in trouble.

Regards,
Madhu Trehan
============================================================

My riposte starts now:

Note that Madhu's response starts out on a totally tangential plane. She informs Chaitanya
that he will never be able to run away from himself. How in the name of the holy fcuk is
that related to the arguement at hand is totally beyond me.
Also how Madhu has inferred that Chaitanya hates himself is again something that
goes over the top of my head. Is that just because the poor fellow addresses himself as Chet "also" ?
Out here in Chennai I find it difficult to pronounce some of the names. So I call them
with convenient shortforms. Does that mean I hate them ? Sh!t ..... & I didn't even know it :)
Many of us here in India also have shorter names. Does that mean we hate ourselves ????

Then she proceeds to inform us that because of Gandhi, "there is no White boot on a part
of your anatomy today". I think she is referring to our collective brown ass :)
Around the time we got independence (Note: we GOT independence; we did not
TAKE/GRAB/SNATCH it), many other former colonies of GB became independent too.
They did not have Gandhi or leaders of comparable stature. Or even leaders who followed the
same methodology of achieving self-rule !!
The plain truth is that GB, at the end of the 2nd WW, was too weak and highly indebted
to US. There was NO way it could have held on to the colonies without getting into some
major-league sh!t. Does that mean Gandhi had no role to play ? Hell, of course, he was
instrumental as the "symbol" of our resistance. But giving him major credit for our
independence, is stretching it a bit too far.

Madhu proceeds to inform Chet that "he is not white and he never will be". WTF is that ?
Where in the article does Chet claim that he is white. He only implies that even though he
is "NON-NATIVE", "NON-CHRISTIAN", "MINORITY" - he is not treated as second
rate citizen.
Now comes the best part ... Madhu tells the original poster that he is treated as second class;
even though the poor guy himself is claiming otherwise !!!!!!!!!
Does Madhu know something about how Chet is treated that Chet himself does not know ?
:P

From my personal experience in LA I can certify that US is a mind-bogglingly diverse
nation. At least in the cities.
I am not talking about the Bible belt or other areas. It almost comes close to India in
diversity. Also, even here most of us have one or the other biases against other Indians. Has
any of the 'mainland' Indian ever given a fucking thought about how people from the
North-East must be feeling when they come to the 'mainland' ?
No nation is perfect, but claiming that there is widespread racism in US is a LIE. I did not
have a single such experience in over 4 months of stay whereas I could feel it within 10
minutes when I landed at Frankfurt.
You want to experience racism ? Just go to Germany.
Taking example of Dotbusters and anti sikh violence is plain BullSh!t. There are freaks
in most socities. I can also take example of the thousands of Hare Rama Hare Krishna followers.
What would that prove ??

[God Damn FUCK !!! I thought I will write a complete riposte to her letter to Chet. But I
don't think I will be able to do that. There is so much crap in her response :( ]

>> ....but we do not have to suffer the highest rate of teenage pregnancies..
Has she done a comparison of the teenage pregnancies there vis-a-vis in India ? I think that
count shud include child marriage, marriages out of poverty etc. While we are at it why
not include other problems that are unique to this country like Dowry burnings & female
infanticide. Ha loser.

>> ... kids coming into schools and killing students and teachers...
Is this Madhu out of her mind ? Yeah, there were a couple of high profile incidents that did
happen in US. But these were isolated incidents whose causes are much more complex.
I definitely recommend the short feature "Bowling for Columbine" to those who want to
understand these reasons. By the way, does this moron called Madhu Trehan live in
Cuckooland ?
She is completely oblivious to the fact that our schools and colleges are heavily politicised.
There are cases where college students have openly threatened/harmed teaching staff and
gotten away with it. Does she have any mother-freaking idea about the volience that is
prevalent in some of our colleges ???

[Good Lord, I am getting better at it :) ]

>> The US had a president who was senile and deaf (Reagan) ....
Did Reagan turn senile while in office or after it ? Is this something that he or the American
public had control of ? Is being handicapped a sin ? Can we know the full context in which
Madhu has made this claim ?

>> ... one who turned out to be a serial *** offender (Clinton)
If Clinton is a sex-offender then Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a fucking pervert.
He used to sleep naked with his nieces !!!!
By the way, the definition of an offender is applicable when an offence has been committed. But what he and Monica did was consensual. Yes, morally it was wrong. But the main point is
that his wife did NOT take him to court for cheating on her.

>> ... The rest of the world does not view America with the rose-coloured glasses you
have been brainwashed by the US media to see thorough...
No Misses Madhu. You are very wrong jee. We, the normal people, criticise US too when
there are logical grounds to it. The only difference b/w you & us is that we acknowledge when
other countries have bettered us.

I could go on and on and on and on ........ and then some.

But the point is, Chet was just highlighting some of our more glaring faults. And Madhu
proceeded to kill the messenger when the message was bad. Let us all stop getting
worked up when someone points out our faults. Lets just keep working towards improving
ourselves.

Wow, I feel better now.
Back to my day-job now !!

N0 work i5 gud

Time really flies when you are free.
After a long time i was browsing thru my mails and found this joke that I recvd from a friend. Its
old but what the heck, it still manages to bring a smile on to your face.

CHEMISTRY EXAM

The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some ariant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, " it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you, and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.
The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

Is this surreal ?

I can't believe it's happening. I am ... I am ... blogging again. Within a few dayz' time !!!!
Now that management is off my shoulder (at least for the time being), moi thinks I better
get used to this grreat feeling.
If Saturday was good, then Sunday was even better :)
Went to Pondicherry for Venu's wedding. It was a good experience (& I m not talking about the booze).
This former french 'enclave' - subsequent UT - and now state, retains some of its old world charm.
The place is decidedly cleaner then chennai. And the local people seem to be quite used to having
non-locals amongst them. Funny thing I noticed was the cap of the traffice cop. It rose like a 3-inch tower and made the guy look more like a French Gendarme then a regular cop in laid-back Pondi.
Quite a few shops had Tamil names followed by English names followed by ... french of course.
Even though this was my second trip this must range as a much better one.
But the best part was the traditional telugu wedding. Its not much different then a regular north
indian one, but the traditional music is much better then the god-damn Mohan Bands that one
finds in Delhi.

Damn this job

sigh. its that time of the month again.
when i get to update my poor little blog. (what were u thinking ????)
i used to hate management work 100%. but after
the recent stint in Production Issues, i think my opinion has changed.
now i hate it 200% :(

thanks Jesus H Christ, Amit is taking over from monday.

neways, happy dayz r here again as i move into the new adventure called .NET
and it starts appropriately... with a trip to MayaJaal :)

this is also "that" time of the year, when i get to know how many peanuts more i will take home from oct. GAWD .... i can't wait :P

After the hiatus

A month has passed & now only i get the time i hv waited for. I get to update the blog.
continuing from where i left off, the trip went well. Even the indian customs part !

Things hv been hectic in Chennai. Got my bike as planned; though it gave me a scare on monday.
I had a brake fail :( ...... late at night !
It happened near a place Thiruvanmiyur at arnd 10 p.m. Anyone familiar with Chennai will
know what kinda busy place that is. Thankfully i was not driving too fast when it seems that
the nuts for the brake plate came off.

But with His grace - nothing untoward happened.
Thank you, my lord :)

This has been a nice year for me , personally. I have made quite a few investments for the first time in life. The house - the bike. But the big thing is yet to come.
No, not for me; my bro. I think that shud wrap up my filial responsibilities by november.
Not completely, of course, but to a large extent.

Neways, a trip to Delhi in november is just the thing the doctor ordered for me.

Sayonara - till next time.

On the move.

This has been a much better return tirp then expected. Till now. Yet to face the indian customs
so really can't speak for the whole trip.
Oops ... did I mention that I am writing this from an internet terminal at Changi. Arguably this
is one of the best airports that I have ever seen. And i have seen quite a few.
Gotta flight to catch but I will update this blog with the details of the trip l8r.

Last weekend

Whoa !! finally time has come for me to go back to Mother India. I will be flying out on
monday, this week.
I think I can safely say that this was a much better visit then the last one. I managed to not
screw up anything big :)
The management has also agreed that I came up to the expectations.
The only word that sums this up is - Wow !

Coming to the past few days activities... went shopping today. Jaggu had to buy some toys for his
niece and I accompanied him with Shiva. It was fun to see the collection at Toys 'R' Us.
Some of the toys showed some funny movements when pressed at some points on their self. I
dont know what effect this had on the guyz. They ended up squeezing every goddamn soft toy
on the aisles that they cud reach; and at all points !!
The only word that sums this up is - Perverts ;)

An interesting fact that I came across is that the San Fernando valley is home to almost
90% of the p0rn that is produced in US. Hmmm - I should have guessed it earlier :) The other day
I saw a car bumper with the slogan "We get paid, to get laid"
Note: This 'fact' has not been cross-verified by me.

Coming back to the task at hand, I will be reaching Chennai by wednesday night and the clients
expect me to submit a design by Friday !!
This is going to be a good week. I know.

Things looking up

Hmmm .... finally I had a better weekend then the last few.

Went to see STAR WARS: Revenge of the Sith. The universal citywalk adjoining 101 freeway is
ACTUALLY a nice place to spend time. The movie was OK; given the hype.
The theatres are IMAX but the movie wasn't :(

Sunday was even better - I found out I was running out of money !
Its a good thing that I found it out while I still had time; otherwise claiming reimbursementsis a nightmare once I reach India.

Neways, the next week starts now - letz c wat itz like ...

Dissapointments

As I sit here in my studio apartment, I reflect that this is my first post from the land of the brave and yada, yada ...
[I think I got something wrong there, but .... what the heck]

This was the memorial day weekend and I was stuck in Los Angeles. All my plans for going to San Francisco are now truely demolished. I had planned to go to Disneyland yesterday - I did go and I did not go. If you are wondering what that means then I will tell you 2 facts:
- I live in the Woodland Hills - San Fernando Valley area
- I don't have a car.

To those who still don't get it; you see, Disneyland is in Anaheim. And I consider this a social & moral responsibility to inform innocent travellers that this Anaheim is NOT the one you reach via metro in downtown LA. Rather, this Anaheim is in the neighbouring Orange county.
I came to know this, the hard way :(

After starting from my room at 10:00 am, I finally reached the elusive destination at exactly 3:33 p.m. God, if I had a car, I would have been nearing SFO by then !!!
Neways, I really hope somebody gave public transportation the attention that it needs, here in the US. Rest comes later.

Crossing the big pond. Again.

Seems like I will be heading for LA this weekend. A coulleague is visiting home back here
in India and I gotta go & take his place for a couple of weeks.
I hope this trip is better then the last one.

But that means, I might not be a very active blogger for the next couple of weeks. Totally
depends upon the workload.

Day 1 ?

This is the second day of my blogging. Since I am blogging after a full week, I was wondering
if I should title this as "Day 7" ...... neways.

Finally managed to get sharepoint services running hale and hearty on the win2k3 box. I have
been having too many problems in customizing lists on the damn thing. I wonder why M$
documentation can be so shoddy at times.

Tipe of the day:
While adding a new column in sharepoint if you choose a "Number" column with a calculated value,
then you should enter the formula in the box below that field. Specifically, there is NO field with
the title "Formula". The docs mention a "Formula" field that is not there !!
Yeah, yeah ..... i know, sounds lame.... but I spent a lot of time searching for this stupid field.

......
.....
[2 hours later]
....
.....

As it usually happens with me, I am proven wrong once again !!!
Seems like u hav to click on the "Calculated" radio button, for the magical field called "Formula" to appear.

Day 0

WOW.
I have my own blog now ! Today is definitely a red letter day in my life. This is my electronic birth !!!

But, rt now I have this strange 'what next' kind of feel. Hope to get used to it.

This has been another hectic day at work and I am through with correcting bugs.
I hope tomorrow brings some surprise.