Fly High

Its been two years in the making and finally the day is here. I am quite tensed up. The flight to Atlanta is at 0400 tomorrow. I have to check in a couple of hour earlier meaning I have to leave home tonight.

Hopefully the travel will give ample oppurtunity for blogging.

1000 Turn adventure

The thousand pillar temple turned out to be thousand u-turn temple, with us around in circles trying to find the way to the supposed kakatiya marvel. Finally after going back and forth on the same road a few times, we managed to get the right directions and turned into the lane leading to this architectural wonder. Wonder it might have been, if we actually saw a thousand pillars. Actually a few pillars would have been impressive, but we could identify only a couple from among all the scaffolding erected to restore the place. The whole structure was probably 20m X 20m, which was a massive let down after temples like Suchindra and Madurai Meenakshi. We ended up taking pictures of a few stray puppies and pondering over their lineage, imagining up german ancestors for them.

The 1000 pillar temple

The German Lineage

We decided to hit Ramappa temple next. This time around I had gotten a better hang of the place and all the poring over the google maps came to our aid. We found the Mulug highway with resonable east, which led to the Ramappa temple and started out on the well maintained road with all the gaiety we could muster. Munching on a packet of chips we drove about 50 kms through moderately interesting terrain, passing a few toddy workers, lots of fields and lots of cattle on the roads. By this time, a bullock cart minus the bullocks was spotted by my travel partner and she promptly expressed her interest in filling in for the absent animal. I obliged and we took a few pictures of the 'feeling in the bullocks shoes' (or heels or whatever) scene, and even joined in towards the end to get a taste of all the shoe feeling that was going around. Rumbling and murmuring from the nearby bushes from the not so amused owner of the cart send us back to the car and we again got back on the road.

A little while later we encountered a few bulls (docile ones if anyone's wondering) feeding lavishly on the side of the road. Again my ever enthusiastic travel partner wanted to be a part of the country 'naatinpuram' landscape and we ended up taking a few pics with them eyeing each other suspiciously. The bull thankfully did not act upon its suspicions and the story ended happily with us getting back to munching on our chips and the bull back to its hay and all the by standers laughing their asses off looking at the little white devil with the scared face posing with the bull as if for a facebook best friends display picture. Next stop was at a similar spot, when we felt the need to get in touch with nature on seeing the picteresque paddy fields glowing in the sun. So again a photosession ensued and we drew quizzical glances from passerbys which we neutralized by clicking away at them. That seemed to appease them all. Everybody wants to be a model.


The joyride was sadly cut short when I stupidly drove into a diversion and ended up scraping the bottom of my car. This led us back to Warangal, with a moaning car, leaking some unknown fluid, for rest of the uneventful ride back to Warangal, partly because I was worried about the car, and partly because of some random remarks from miss smarty pants. All the worrying turned out to be for nothing as the car was fixed for a hundred bucks at a maruti service center which was luckily open and we ended up hitting another temple and driving back home to Hyderabad in really high spirits..

The next trip ought to be much more fun since RTR is coming back soon and Naved has already booked tickets for the 19th..

Hiatus

A year back if somebody had told me that I would prefer taking out the car instead of my bike, I never have agreed to it. Yet two months into having a car here (after bringing my car over from Kerala), here I am driving around everyday, to office, to classes, meeting friends in my Esteem (Di).

Its one of the worst engines to have been brought out in the last few years, I am sure (Heard its a Fiat engine producing 56 bhp). But leaving the engine out of it, the car is perfect for me. Especially since I did not pay for it! Its comfy, and it gives awsome mileage and come to think of its not much more to pay for the comfort than my bike. Might come to 10-20 bucks more a day, which my roomie Jayan swears is lesser than what he pays going by share autos here in hyderabad.

Once it starts moving above 20 kmph there nothing to complain about. It touches 140-150 if given enough time, and is resonably light with its power steering and shock absorbers. Not that I am an expert on cars and I have barely driven a few models of cars. I certainly know it is horrid to drive bumper to bumper. Quite impossible with the AC on, and in Hyderabad, the heat forces me to confront the impossible quite often, especially when out on the road with teammates at noon, off to lunch or a team member's wedding.

But now late nights in the office have become convienient and much more safer. The other day, giving in to nostalgia I came to office on my bike and that very day made me stay in office till 11 30 at night (that too after a whole day in training, then an hour of aerobics and then an hour in the gym), and I do not know how I made it back home at night through the dust, the glaring headlights, and worst the idiot pedestrians of Hyderabad. The bike is certainly looking at an early retirement.with maybe a few honorable rides just to get groceries.

Well I hope this blog will be an icebreaker after the long hiatus. I have been trying to get back to blogging, but with little success. I have not been doing much worth blogging about. Watched a few movies. Downloaded a few movies at home. Reread a few books. Thats about it..!!! (Dark Knight.. need to rewatch it.. Kung Fu panda.. cute.. Casablanca. worth the watch..Guards Guards.. pure Terry Pratchett.. Solitude.. reread nth time).

The dance classes have been going well, and I have started teaching the absolute beginners Salsa basics. The group has become stronger and shows promise of being a great gang to hang out with and go for some trip soon. Madurai is under discussion.

Now that I am planning to go home for onam, I am looking forward to taking a few snaps, and a little work with Photoshop. Kichu has inspired me. I mean, I think he even surprised himself with his knack with the camera and photoshop..! Same for Sujay. I would never have guessed that he had such an artistic streak hidden in him while we were growing up together in Trivandrum.


Hoping the trip back home will provide something interesting to blog about.

Stop, re-evaluate, continue...

When I was scrambling about to write the previous blog a couple of days back, I was facing a severe lack of subjects to blog about. Maybe the problem was that I was so used to having those umpteen number of colorful friends resulting in a fairly high number of humorous incidents. But the last blog brought out a comment from 'yama dootan' which has resulted in a bulb going off on top of my head.

"TINGGGG!!!" (or something of the that sort. You get the picture).

The gist of what he asked was whether I was happy after all this. Something to the line of me being unhappy after all this and maybe he being happier after having a ton of cash in the bank.

Now I am not sure whether the question was a serious one, or a understandably misguided opinion after reading what I did write. It is in fact understandable if someone would have assumed that I am not quite happy with what I have right now. I usually tend to tone down the matter and try to twist it to sound maybe a little more humorous than it actually is.

Now, what I wanted to point out was, never did I actually mean that I do not lead a happy life right now. In fact people who know me or knew me from back in Trivandrum would agree strongly that I am one of the strongest candidate for living one's dreams after coming out of their college lives (in a purely social context, because I am still getting paid peanuts). While most of the people I know are bored with work and do not have much of weekend life outside their extensively enjoyable day of washing clothes, cooking and watching TV, I can indeed lay claim to a little over dramatic line of 'Oh, such a hectic weekend. Wish I had more time to do everything I had to do'. On a lighter note, I have indeed felt the need to find a companion to spend my Saturday mornings with, but I would say that the following continuous marathon weekend involved would justify the 3-4 hours of cleaning/washing/the aforementioned extensively enjoyable work I too engage in (though I try to put it off all the time and wish I never had to do).

Pause. Re-evaluation of the current stand.

Savings: 0

Well, I do know a hell lot of people who have indeed become technical lakhpathis in their own right in the last two years. I am deviating from my normal unconfrontational approach to my blog (I do not think of writing about girls and related admiration of their species as politically incorrect, especially at the ripe age of 23, which according to me too young to become too mature. You can bloody afford to be a little bloody light when you are young. The fact that I am continuing this blog after a meeting involving a heated argument with on site has absolutely nothing to do with the abrupt change in intensity/quality of words being used). Personally I do not agree with the philosophy of living like saints and saving up money in your bank accounts at this age. Well if you were a young Warren Buffet it would be different, which is anyway irrelevant since he probably made his million before this, and he definitely did not make his millions sitting in front of a computer screen and wasting away weekends only cooking and cleaning.

The only point I see for making money in my opinion are:

• actual raw requirement of raw cash to buy the materialistic stuff that you need
• the raw pleasure of knowing that you are good at making money (maybe a little Warren Buffet'ish)
• some sort of predicament you find yourself in, infected by yourself (as in spending in the range of 20k a week in pubs on credit, which actually is a spin off of the first clause) or filmy style family need of pengalude kalyanam, or very understandable supporting retired parents.
  

Other than this, I feel the life that many of my friends/colleagues lead; working their asses of for something completely intangible and spiritually un-fullfilling, coming back home to a messy house being shared with similar minded individuals doing the same thing, lounging around at home in their lungis and still dreaming of a Dil Chahta Hai lifestyle; is completely pointless. True that a few of the are amassing wealth at an unnerving rate. But sometimes I feel many are forgetting the big picture. We might still be burdened with the same sense of urgency to settle down and dredge through life and save money which lingers from the gulf going, stone carrying malayali from the 1970s. In the last generation, almost all the chettans were having the time of their lives, going to the kayal varambu at night, stealing cocunuts (climbing involved), and drinking at such picteresque localities on a weekly to daily basis, or even stealing batteries from random cars/bikes and selling them to buy juice. All of them turned out fine in life by 30. Contrastingly 23 year old young men now are mellowed down enough to be sitting at the same point, only moving their fingers an inch to the left, right or down, and worrying about their managers shouting at them for not doing something which will (might, when come to think of it) accomplish something you certainly cannot see. I mean, I can understand if your manager shouted at you for forgetting to put in the fourth column before starting on building the roof. But what is it to me if I forget to put in a stored procedure into the production database (existence of which I now seriously doubt. I mean, I haven't seen it till now. Is it just an excuse to make up write all this bullshit) which is causing random error to popup at some Call center people sitting in Riverdale.

So when they spend their lives without point, dropping out of IT to go back to studies, or back to their core fields, or even a flashback to the 80s kind secure Govt jobs, I certainly feel I have something special. Does it really matter that I am not making my millions at 23/24, and am instead having quite contended life, spending all the money on myself (especially vainly spending money on looking good and feeling good without a morsel of remorse). Come to think of it my philosophy throughout life was always taking as little effort as possible and achieving as much as possible, having as much fun as possible en route to all that bullshit.

Another problem with making all this money, living on Kanji and payar, is that you never learn to spend money well, enough to have fun, but safe enough not to leave you out on the streets. Yet another problem; many of them do not know why they are making the money that they are in fact making. Is it to build hospitals? At least that would have given a sense of purpose to an otherwise pointless life. All this leads to another stage that I would detest to have to be in. Waiting to get married, just because you are bored, just waiting to be 25 so that society will at least accept that you are getting married. You are settled, you have a ton of money in the bank, and now you can just write away your life and freedom to get married just so that you do not have to spend your saturdays alone at home. Was'nt there a ton of promise ahead of you?

It does seem a far cry in my life. I personally have too many things left to do. When am I buying a bullet and going for ride to Tripura (I might have to take up a map to actually find where in northeast India it is. I hope its the eastern most point. See, I am trying to make a point here and I would prefer it to be as strong as possible)? When am I going to live in Finland for a year and a half? When am I going back-packing with a mamoth lens SLR canon through the dusty streets of old Madagascar?

Well some people would indeed find all these quite reasonable questions, relevance of which is quite high, maybe not specifically in those places and camera models, but they would get the picture. But many other people would not. Even if they think that they want to do many of these things, I feel they never will. And there will always be few other who never dream of these things or anything for that matter. And doing all these things take time and money (Of which I have very little, but that you'll already know if you reach this part of the blog, remember the saving 0 part). So my claim that I am not going to get hitched before 30 might not actually be as far fetched as it might seem at first look. Take a look at the IT guys who are getting married at 26. Did they ever learn horse riding ? Did they ever fire a high powered long bored magnum? Probably not.

I keep forgetting what the point to all this random babbling was. I just hated being politically correct all the time. I got off my ass and did something and I do not regret it. I see many people who will benefit from doing the same, but will not get around to doing it. All I want to say to those people is, get off your bloody asses and get going on the road to finding your dreams.

Out. P.E.A.C.E. (damn.. there I go being politically correct again. Go fuck yourselves!)

Last wind of change..

As the years pass by (technically 2 years qualifies me to start using years as a reference of time to measure my life), we see various changes in us. Many of my last few blogs have somehow or the other dealt with these very changes. Anyway, since I have not been blogging for quite a while, I'll convert a mail into a blog. Well does it matter if its a lame one as long as the blog actually keeps going forward ?

There was a time when we used to skip a trip to the beach just because each one could not put in 5 bucks, and we could never in a million years comprehend how a single guy could possibly spend 20k a month. Right now I am at a point in my life where I could imagine how I could easily spend a lot more. Hell.. I had even made plans of investing and made detailed plans on what my imaginary portfolio was going to look like. Right now, forget savings, I am scrambling to keep my head afloat after my regular expenses. The only thing that seems to be a solution to my current situation is the next hike coming up, by which time I'll be wondering how in hell I made through this one year with so little money each month.

My circle of friends, may it be my biker friends, or my college friends, were never extravagant. Though there were exceptions to this rule in the form of Joji and Dasappan, the general rule was to eat from home as much as possible, walk as much as possible, take the bus as much as possible and put in as little money as possible for petrol when going for long rides and hope somebody else will pick up the tab for cigarettes, liquor and miscellaneous expenses and try to put up a face trying to show that you have put in your fare share of the ride. Gifts for friends were kept at the bare minimum, with people putting in an average of 25-30 bucks apiece, contributing to a grand total of 200-300 bucks. That bunny looks good.. but too costly.. lets get this shitty ass wind chime.

Then came the move to Bangalore where I started out living with 8 other roomies in a 2 BHK, happily paying 1.5k rent every month, even vetoing a bill to shift to a better place paying 500 bucks more. We all started frequenting Marathahalli and Brand factories skipping up a level from 100 buck Tees to the 250 buck ones and half price Branded Jeans to the envy of mates back home.

Now after 2 years, I find an irrestible urge to pick up any 38 sized shirts, whatever the prize( and what ever the bloody color). It never does matter, whether I have any money or not. The motto is, I can always make it up next month. My wardrobe, though not a designer haven yet, still sports all the popular international brands.

The 25-30 bucks gifts went upto 2-3 k gifts, as soon as Shinu's and Naomi's influence started creeping in. And it is not a bad thing at all. Who said being materialistic is bad. What the hell do we make all the money for ? Debasish, Anitha and Spoo did their part too. Birthday gifts ballooned up from 200-300 buck affairs to 4k affairs. Wedding gifts have stopped being cheap 6 piece dinner sets and have elevated themselves into the proper TV ad levels, with nakshatra.. Ash rai dancing around in all the flames ....and resulting in a diamond pendant/ring/...whatever.

Even though I never actually started drinking per se, I've begun to feel its a waste of time going to a pub and wasting all this money without having one of my Long Island Ice Teas just to blur the laser beams a little when I try to scare away all the people with the mix of Salsa and Hiphop I get to practice for the odd 8 hrs or so of dancing at the studio these days.

Music. Even that has changed. Rock to hip hop and now onto house, which I can't get enough of these days, especially while working... People must think I am mad looking intenty into the computer screen, typing my ass off and bobbing my head to a trance beat.

....... Enough of this.....

Well, I hope I can break off from all this 'change' blogs and actually start blogging about my real life.. Maybe I'll stay a loser a little more time aye!!

The river runs through it

I've just got back from my lunch and its 12:02 AM.

So you get a good picture of how my life is playing out here at work.
The trance album I picked from Davinder is blaring out of the headphone lying on the desk. The various tea/coffee mugs of the day adorn my desk. My onsite manager is talking to some dumb american client over the VoIP put on perpetual speaker. He makes me put on the VoIP throughout the night to coax me to work a little more through the straight 15-17 hrs I do work right now.

Surprisingly I have found out that I am a workaholic, atleast in a minimalistic way. Pleasant. Just to put it to the test: I had come to office yesterday around mid morning and left office today morning (or yesterday morning.. as its already crossed midnight). Nobody from college would have guessed in those days that it would turn out this way, with people like me and Mad working our asses off, while the hard workers from college would be the ones who would find it difficult to find their place in this world, and still be searching meaning in life.

Life is pretty routine these days. Waking up late, coming to office, all three meals in office, going back in the middle of the night to a lonely house. Weekends are routine too: Classes and Naomi. I am glad for the break from the weekday monotony. I cannot say that its what I dreamt of, but I would say it is what is keeping me going on, and what makes my life somewhat different from the numerous others' I hear about. Mag is coping with work and preps. Divz is also becoming a workaholic. Neema is screaming her head off every chance she gets. Jonathan is still after that gal.. Everyone feels a little lost at this point, I feel..

Though it has not happened fully yet, but life is getting diluted, slowly. I can just see the bright colours of life just being washed away in the steady currents. Not just for me, but for everyone around me, everyone from school, from college...

As the months flow by and slowly start amalgamating to years, the friends we knew have started dispersing into the wind. It has still not yet kicked in, but it has started, and is very clear, and is there for anyone to see. Maybe the last generation never had to experience this feeling of dilution, and that too, so fast (what has it been .. one and half years?) . Atleast most people would have been back home in kerala where the maximum distance you can be away from a friend is dubai, which is just the 15th state in kerala, after the far away kasargod, right?

Friends have started getting married, and the ones who have not started are complaining about the same thing. Two years is too less to have lived free... how can I get married to that geek (pointing to a pazham cherukkan in a pic)?... how can I marry someone I do not know... what do I do with my life now..?

I can only imagine what it is going to be in a couple of years when the hangover of college and school has finally left us.. left us to be alone with ourselves... and our new lives....

Each one of us is trying our bests, I am sure, to find our place in this world, and carve a niche in it for ourselves....

Cheers to life..

will iTcrack.. or Will i? !!

I've been working on the same, small, apparently simple issue for the past 50 or so hours over 4 days. When is it going to crack?

Debugging through the mess of postbacks, usercontrols, literals...
I might just get lost in it..

Maybe that is just what I need right now..

Technicality

"How do we come out of silent mode in my phone?"

Well, this question asked to me by my Technical manager will throw enough light into the technical aptitude of the people running my project.

No wonder the client is more than ready to kick us out as soon as possible..