December Blues..

I have started living life in slots of hours instead of by day and night. Which is pretty boring because all my days have merged into this one long day, and have no clue whether it is 8 am or 8pm...except for the fact that it is dark outside...which is a pretty primitive way to find out whether I should sleep or wake up.
The same with food...I feel hungy at unearthly hours, like 3 in the night(judged by the darkness levels I assume its night), and then I eat whatever I see first..again back to stone age I think..

Anyway, it is that time of the year when I miss my family the most..Christmas and New Year..and I already am deep down under the blues though it's still time.

Well,I miss Christmas not because I am waiting for a red nose on reindeers (I think he needs to get a car or a helicopter and go on a diet, but I'm digressing here) but because I miss all the glitter on the roads and the malls, and the amazing shopping we used to do ofcourse.

We normally celebrate New Year's with wine and a full blown feast, and the last I heard the bubbly has already arrived in a certain home at Parle.
In fact this has almost been a ritual and most of these years, after or during the feast my friend used to land up at my place, we would reminisce about life and cut cake in the terrace at the stroke of midnight under the breathtaking canopy of beautiful firecrackers.

Well, this is a depressing column that I've written and I know that the usual sarcasm is noticeably absent, but then restricting a girl from shopping in December is not a very nice thing to do is it?

'Tis the season for lights, trees and holiday cheer!!!

Stuck in my head

I love this song, and it suits my mood just right these days….

Time after Time
Lyin’ in my bed I hear the clock tick and I think of you
caught up in circles confusion is nothing new
flashbacks warm nights almost left behind
suitcase of memories time after

Sometimes you picture me I’m walkin’ too far ahead you're calling to me I can’t hear what you’ve said

Then you say go slow I fall behind the second hand unwinds

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me time after time If you fall I will catch you I’ll be waiting time after time

After my picture fades and darkness has turned to gray
watching through windows you're wondering if I’m ok
secrets stolen from deep inside the drum beats out of time

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me
time after time
If you fall I will catch you I’ll be waiting
time after time

Wow...we have one of these too...

Finally tomorrow it's my day..

http://www.lefthandersday.com/

Apparently 13 th Aug is Left Hander's Day!!!!!!

I'm celebrating by getting up on the left side of the bed tomorrow!!!(Well....beware...)

Face Off

The war has begun....between me and Corp Fin.....and right now I'm definitely not on the winning side..
Today's paper felt like one of our Karate camps, a brave face and a sinking heart at the sight of the morning jog trail...
I have no knack for this,I mean I'm neither a CA nor gifted with the brains of Einstein(though I doubt he would have grasped it either). I've realised one thing that hard core techies at heart are not meant for understanding the vagaries of money. We see only two cash flows, either a green one if in IT or in pennies if in research.
So where's the incentive for us to discount anything at all? I have lived for most part of my life without calculating NPVs of companies I worked for, and I don't think I did real bad there, so why should I want to divide everything in sight with powers of some mean little discount number?
But then that's something I cant do much about, and I have to learn to live with Corp Fin,the brigt side being, its only two more weeks, and after 2 weeks I'm going to make double sure that I forget every darned thing about it, after all my peace of my mind is the only thing around here that deserves a huge NPV...

Small talk before the lecture...

Crazy conversation-
Me. Any idea what we need to do as a part of LDP tommorrow?
G. Do you know, we have to run tomorrow as a part of the LDP
Me . Why tomorrow, why cant they keep it after the exams,I'll run all they want after the exams.
...Laughter
P(In true managerial style). Don't overcommit...
Me.(make a face...i'm getting good at making disgruntled faces)...no seriously,anything as long as is after the exam..
P.Maybe they will make us shift the farmer and the bull(or cow or wotever ) outside the reception to a new place
Me.!!??!!(that was one more face....it meant 'wot the f#$%')
G.what nonsense
P.Arey it is not as heavy as it seems,its made of wood
me.huh?( i think i've lost the thread and the purpose of the conversation already)

P continues with some story about the by now much talked about bull/cow/wotever, and how it was picked up in some market by someone...
I feel the pain of the poor wooden farmer standing night and day trying to stationarily till the grass outside the reception...

Suddenly activity behind us, the lecture's over, and so is our conversation..the LDP working in teams is still shrouded in mystery....will have to wait till tommorrow...

Mental note...I'm forever grateful to the person who invented the 3 dots in written communication, as in '...'.It makes for uninterrupted flow of thoughts,and arbit blogs

Elections...

I wish people would
1.stop spamming with silly surveys
2.stop mailing the surveys to the profs,with extremely erroneous conclusions...the survey conclusions are totally wrong,if it qualifies as a survey in the first place....
3.stop being mean , that too on public mailing lists...I mean if you don't like the font, why tell all of us...
4.stop negative campaigning..
5.and basically just leave us alone...we are adults and know how to vote....a party doesnot buy votes of intelligent people....

About CP

Thankfully I don't mean class participation here.We have enough of inane talk in the marketing class.
What I mean by CP is Chicken Pox.Sorry for mentioning the C word here, but thats the most current thing that is in my mind right now ,and the most happening virus in Hyderabad.

If you wake me up at 3 in the night ,I'll immediately go and see I dont have any kind of 'outbreaks'.
And I have started washing my hands as soon as they get dry from the earlier washing off hands procedure.So basically it is the height of paranoia, and I guess I am now doing what is called as 'auto suggestion' ,so i'm mentally itching now :P .

Apparently it is because of the awesome scorching killing heat of Hyderabad, oh man , i wouldnt want to be in Hyderabad and outside the campus in this weather.
But the campus is heaven,and no airconditioner is more than 5 minutes away..so the heat is still ok...

It's funny how I can write stuff about CP when there's loads of work to do, and I couldn't think up a topic when I was idling away at home for almost a month...!!!

Just pray my next post is not about the various lizards in my room(I'm going to charge rent from them now..enough of freeloading..) or the frogs on the lawns..

PS:Please take all the posts with a pinch of salt , I am not responsible for anyone in the animal/viral kingdom feeling alienated. This is not a personal statement, I have nothing against the nice green frogs I don't come across or the lizards outside my apartment.......

ISB first week

This place has an awesome campus and even more awesome people. The first thing that hits you here is how everyone is always so ready to help and even readier to do it with a smile. The first week was induction, and was really hectic...we had two parties in the first week itself. They know how to work hard and party harder :) They have team building activities in the first week,and outdoor activities. The first party was by the alumni for us. Since the weather here in Hyderabad is really unpredictable..its scorching one moment and raining the next..we had an unplanned rain dance,and man,was it awesome... The parties typically go on till 4 in the night :) The most surprising part is that the next day you see everyone bright and early at 8 in the morning for the day's activities....talk about Insomnia :P The alumni are the best I've ever met and the most helpful ever ..that's how I hope I'll be in a year's time..... Oh yeah, my studio overlooks the Microsoft building and this is how impressive it looks !!!

Silly Rhyme....

I wish I were a fish
with fins and scales
I would swim with a flourish
and all the mermaids would pale

I wish I were anything
but a nerd at MSWord
or .Net or java
or SQL or Perl

I wish I were a book
of poems galore
and stories of fairies
and other folklore

I wish I were anything
but a programmer at work
writing silly poems
and posting them here........

Leaving for good .....

It's not going to sink in.... I just know.Me leaving Mastek that is...Maybe I'll feel real bad next year ....but that's how I am,too dispassionate ...

Anyway,I have spent 3 years here, and I hardly know the people here now,those I started out with were totally different....and they are no longer here, so I guess I can't really feel sad because I'm leaving. And then these things happen,you meet people you lose people, you go away and then you go apart. What remains is memories, those too,only if you don't become pyschotic or raving mad though!!!

But I sure feel relieved that there's no more Appraisals,no more judgements and no more meetings atleast for another year.
No more travelling to Mahape in a rickety bus with suicidal drivers, no more aching battered bones and bottoms!! So that's that I guess.My current Chapter in Life is about to conclude. My countdown has already begun......

Re-Reading 'The HitchHiker's guide to the Universe' - Laughing uncontrollably all over again!!!!

ISB

I got an admit!!!!

It's been a long time since I've written stuff here.
I always think getting ideas is the easy part, writing them down is the real thing, because the first thing I have to climb is laziness. I hate putting down the first word, but as soon as I write it ,it's like a cat loose in mountains of fish and rivers of milk. All the ideas want to get printed at the same time, and the end product is normally a very haphazard paragraph,where I'm struggling with the clamour of the words and the ideas. It's like my life, I need to prioritize. But again, what's the point of prioritizing an instantaneous article? After all who would want thoughts to behave as if they are in office?Atleast I think that's the only place where we use words like 'Prioritize'..
I'm reading Frank McCourt's 'Angela's Ashes'. It's got some beautiful excerpts about the author's schooling. I realised that in those times where the world had still not learnt the word 'diplomacy' and were going at war at every opportunity; and Hitler had decided that he needed to kill anything living in sight; the level of schooling was really something that we in our jet age can never expect to reach.
Their methods might not be sound, the schools were not curiosity or children friendly, but they managed to cultivate some great authors and scientists and artists. They were not factories, the professors loved their profession, mainly because they didn't think of it as a profession. It was something they loved and cherished.
They used to cane children with a genuineness of creating someone and something great. The students still remember the poetry and the professor.
Now we have nothing but convenience. We have convenience coaching classes to get that edge. The student listens twice or thrice to the same thing which requires no great curiosity or even average intelligence. We have convenience careers called 'Alternate careers'. Most of them involve looking good and dumb.
Then come the engineers and the doctors.They all think they are the salt of this earth, ask thim who wrote Gulliver's Travels and they'll draw a blank. Ask them to recite a favourite poem, and they'll pass you by thinking that you need to be put in the looney bin.
We have turned into nothing but robots, with only one agenda.Money.That's what has killed humility, graciousness, gratitude and lot of other things. I wish we could go back to where people were important, where parents meant love and not pocket money, where schools made succesful people and not successful careers.
But thats like hoping for earth to be reborn, and like all things good degenerate, the education system is rapidly going down the abyss of money and greed........