Rant Rockus Rant

Long and devious rant ahead.

Before further ado let me say that the title of this post has been shamelessly ripped from a cool movie Run Lola Run. Hmm...may be I will watch it tonight...expose Dinkan (my roomie) to yet another torturous past time of mine. I have already started the slow poison method by putting on some "acceptable" music at midnight (ala Rock On, Avial, Rabbi), which will gradually graduate to Metallica, Iron Maiden etc.

Another change I have induced in almost all my roomies is reading. One guy refused to change. So we kicked him out of the house. He decided to go one up on us and get married next week. Poor dude. (P.S: All the best!) The reading material ranges from "Men are mars, Women are from venus" to "The White Tiger" with "Alchemist" and "Colour of Magic" thrown in. (P.S:Note to self. Should read the three unread books. Its a matter of shame now!) Another important change is that a couple of them have changed to lavish spenders. Spending more money than ever on pubs, booze, cigarettes. I hope they got their salary today. Got mine as a pay-check. So it will take atleast a coupleof days to process. A weekend ahead and all I have in hand is 4 rupees. No kidding!

Got sick yesterday. Had to waste a precious leave. But, in the end it was well worth watching Laxman marauding the Aussies. Sublime. I swear I had several orgasmic moments watching him play a few impossible flicks.

I am still to come to terms with my work here. I guess it takes time to undo my love for TBMS and channel it to PowerCenter. Hmmm...the difference can be better illustrated by an example. Imagine marrying a girl in the old fashioned, arranged way. You see the girl, like her, fix up the dates. Get engaged. You spent a lot of time chatting away idly before marriage. You become accustomed before you actually marry. My experience with TBMS is somewhat like that. I had a good one and half months training, where I played around with the product with lots of sample scenarios thrown in before I started my actual work. PowerCenter is a whole lot different. Imagine marrying a girl in the old fashioned, arranged way (again!). This time, imagine you are working abroad and have only a fortnights leave. You come home. See a few girls. Fix the marriage with the one you like the best. Marry within a week. You have no idea about the girl. Now imagine that girl to be the most complicated species ever created by God. Women are complicated anyways, so multiply that by a big integer. My situation with PowerCenter is similar. It will take time. But I relish challenges. I am sure I'll tame the wild woman...err product!

Read several books since coming to Bangalore. I will write reviews of them in Reading Loud. Resmi, I haven't forgotten!(yet!) I will list the books to make myself look hip and cool.

1. Chronicles of Narnia (all six)
2. Heidi
3. 1984
4. Keep off the grass
5. Seven Ancient Wonders
6. Six Sacred Stones

Currently reading Fight Club which will be followed by White Tiger unless something else catches my fancy. I should stop here lest the coolness freeze me to death.

The major past time, apart from generally loafing around occassionally drunk (have you loafed around drunk? Its fun you know!), is playing cards. Don't know what the game is called in technical terms, but we call it "28". I was a roll with beginners luck in the start, but now things have settled down with only rare occurences of dumbness. Another past time is trying hard to catch glimpses of the ladies living opposite to our house. A ladies PG, 4 stories tall is opposite to our house. Lots of babes wandering around at night (with mobiles in ears). We switch of the lights and stare on wishing to see "something". Pathetic! But its fun and quite mandatory if you live in a house with 5 other hot-blooded males, who are needless to say single.

On some days dialogues go like this, similar to the scene between Mohanlal and Mukesh in the movie Vandanam, translated for the benefit of my countless non-mallu fans:

Guy1: {With a victorious smile in face} Aliya!!! (Dude!!!)
Guy2: {Excitedly} Para, para. Enthelum kanda? (Tell, tell! Did you see something?)
G1: {shy} Full naked! (English translation the same)
G2: {sarcastic tone} Ayya. Angane first day onnum full um kaanan pattoola. (O rly? You cannot see full naked on first day itself)

Yeah, yeah. Its the same dialogues from Vandanam. Now sue me!

So life goes on. I go to sleep, quite late at night, contemplating my existence, only to be interrupted by a roaring truck. Bloody Dinkan snoring. He snores like a breed made of T-Rex and a Tata lorry. So, I finally fall asleep around 2-3 in the morning after a heavy dosage of music streamed through my faithful mobile, only to wake up at 6 with a blare of cacaphony akin to a concert by donkeys. I rub my eyes only to see Nigel (another roomie, the one getting married) has switched on the TV. Our digital TV has a fucking, bloody problem. Everytime we switch it on, the starting channel defaults to Star Plus and the volume goes to the max! It can drive you crazy and in some instances suicidal! Imagine hearing the big bellow of baritone about saas, bahu, sanskriti shit at the highest volume possible at 6 in the morning? A "must" experience I say!

Since I wake up this early, I get to office at around 8:30 and life goes on a cycle all over again, interrupted by a flurry of emails throughout the day. Emails seem to rule my bloody life now.

P.S: I will be making an appearance in the STC India Conference at Pune this December. Is there anyone here who is going to make it? (If you have no idea what I am talking about, then you are qualified to be there!)

Mallu Alert!

Being in Bangalore its not tough to run into mallus. In fact, its easier to get run over by them! That said, its much easier to recognize them to avoid problems like:

• Being embarassed after passing lewd comments at mallu girls.
• Being chased by mallu boyfriends/brothers after passing lewd comments at the girls. Girls in this case need not be mallu.
  
• Being an ass after speaking to shopkeepers in your broken hindi only to discover them reading 'Mathrubhumi'.
  Demonstrated instance: A student sang the song 'Ek Do Teen...' in his mind to confirm the hindi for 12 while buying stuff, only to be stunned by shopkeepers response in Malayalam. That particular student currently writes awesome blog posts!
• Being locked up by the Police for swearing in Malayalam not realizing the constable himself is a mallu.

The list is practically endless.

My roomie often boasts that he can recognize mallus at sight and he has a 100% track record. Though I was apprehensive about it, I have to say he has a 100% track record in my presence. I rather look for more subtle ways to recognise mallus. For example, we recently had to look for a key duplicating place (Bangalore is expensive. No PC or Internet, yet. Decided to be a burglar at night, since I have a lot of time at hand during night.) and we had conflicting information from everyone we asked. I found a real estate signboard. Real estate and mallus are inseparable entities. My hunch was right! Mallu man gave us the right directions. So, I also have a 100% track record with 1 out of 1 mark!

So, lets get down to an incident yesterday. After having dinner, roomie said he needed to buy a medicine. I tagged along to the medical store. Few girls had just gone in before us. Pretty ones! :D Roomie started getting a mallu vibe. He said he was sure they are mallus. Then a couple of them went to a display board showcasing private ladies stuff and started talking in Malayalam. I was in a very sadistic mode and asked loudly to my roomie in Malayalam.

"Dude. What is this medicine for?" The girls were offcolour and looking at us now.

He went a bit offcolour and whispered, "Later. Later."

I whispered back, "Tell something!"

The shop guy came back with a medicine and said, "We don't have the exact one you need. But this is the same medicine from a different company. You do know the usage right? Its a highly potent laxative."

Girls were trying hard not to giggle. I was trying hard about my escape route. Roomie was trying hard not to be mistaken with a tomato. But hey, he still maintains the 100% track record!

Saw this wonderful cartoon on Rock On!! Check it out!

Fly You Fools - Indian Comics about Life.

Editorial Integrity? Bah!

Rediff is becoming a haven for bad editing these days. Writing is sometimes bad, but there have been some really good articles lately, such as  The forums are filled with nothing but crap. Comment moderation is a total farce. But more importantly, there have been several severely opinionated articles gracing the front page lately. A prime example is an article on Nano and Moditva. When you click the link, this particular article appears as though its part of the news section or more specifically the Money section of Rediff News. The article is nothing but a venom spewing, right wing thrashing work from a guy who is probably a pseudo-secularist-intellectual. I have nothing against people posting their view points. But, a portal like Rediff should never take sides in sensitive issues and have some editorial integrity. Atleast, if their intentions are the same as I mentioned, it should be explicitly stated and probably a short bio of the author should be given. A news site should never appear to endorse statements and arguments which have very little merit. Just go through the article and you will grasp my point.

Where are the editors? I hope the comment moderators have not taken over the editorialship as well!

Tagged!

Its the end of the second week in Bangalore. Life has turned topsy-turvy. New people. New places. New me. Blogging has pretty much stopped. Got full net access from office, but there are too many tasks to be done and it doesn't feel good to blog while at work!

I live pretty near to office. Just about a walk of 3 minutes. Decided to step into office today eventhough today is a holiday on account of Vijayadashami. Nothing pressing to be done, but today being an auspicious day, I thought I would come here and do a little writing. Lots of stuff to write, but thought I would take up a pending tag. This ones from Praveen.

Here it goes

1.What have you realized recently?

I am a moron who is getting older but certainly not wiser!

2.Have you given your first kiss away?

Its still available! For free! A hug will be given as a bonus! Only ladies need apply! (a little backstory: I have been hit by too many gay men, which is very disconcerting!)

3.If you were to be stranded on a deserted island, who are the 11 blog buddies you would take?

Please put in your names if you want to come with me! Applications will be closely scrutinised and there will be testing interviews!

4.Where is the place you want to go the most?

Home...

5.If you have one dream to come true, what would it be?

I would rather not give preference to one dream. What will the other dreams feel? All my dreams have feelings you know!

6.Do you believe in seeing the rainbow after the rain?

Duh! Is it a question of faith now? I have seen it. Multiple times!

7.What are you afraid of losing the most now?

Everything I have. I live in constant fear.

8.If you win $1 million, what would you do?

A lot of things. btw acceptance of the money depends on how I win it!

9.If you meet someone that you love, would you confess to him/her?

Sure...

10. What are the requirements that you wish from your other half?

Long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...I had written another tag. I guess the same still applies. Ah, those were the days...
http://rockusnarus.blogspot.com/2006/01/eight-things-tag.html

11.What type of people do you hate the most?

Bigots. People who split other people for their own good. Utterly selfish people.

12.What is the one thing you can’t live without?

Life?

13.If you have faults, would you rather the people around you point out to you or would you rather they keep quiet?

Frankness is good. I especially love that sinking feeling you get when people are frank with you! :-P

14.Are you a shopaholic or not?

When it comes to books. Only books. I can be a bit sophisticated when it comes to buying stuff like booze though. Get the best you can afford!

15.Find a word to describe the person who tagged you

Crusader!

16.If you have a chance, which part of your character you would like to change?

The part which thinks too much!

17.What’s the last shocking thing you’ve seen or heard?

ICICI Bank going bankrupt!

18.Would you rather have love but no money or money but no love?

Now that I have money, I would prefer love.


Now on to the second tag!

I have to name my top 5 addictions.

1. People. I need people around me. To talk. To fight. To share. The people I care about.
2. Writing. It keeps me sane.
3. Good Food and water. Can't live without them!
4. Music.
5. Internet.

I am not tagging anybody. Just remember that I have put a charm on this post. Been learning some black magic lately! If you don't do this tag after reading this, you will have constipation for 10 days and a flying donkey will crap on you just as the sun sets.