Ahangaarathinte Divasam!!!

The above title translated in English (for the benefit of my foreign readers) means... 'day of arrogance'... I believe i have done sufficient justice to the demonstration of 'arrogance' with the 'foreign readerz' bit already... Hence, in the interest of heeding to advice from caring friends (read as, fear of being abused for over bragging - yetAgain) i ll try and refrain from the same as much as possible.

As usual, the content of this post is motivated by no more/less than a fiercely pricking conscience which requires me to post something here, every once in a while in order to... in order to... alright... for no meaningful reason. And given, that i am yetAgain fresh out of topicz... i ll try and summarize the past few weekz of my *ahem* *ahem* humble life

And the nominations for the most happening events are:

1) Appraisal meeting with manager finally over. Fer the under-enlightened, an appraisal meeting is one where an employee of a company, takes a tiny peanut (read as work he has done over the year) puts it on a pedastal and then shines the spot light on it... It goes something like... "I dont know if you heard the latest rumors, but, McAfee is indeed firmly well balanced on my two broad shoulderz" ... "Single handedly spearheaded a critical project, which without me wouldnt have released at the time it did" (alternatively read as - Gave them those crappy documents you dumped on me last year... and told them to read it to figure out what to do... oh yea...!!! And also, had zillionz of coffee breaks with them... else the project mite just have released in time instead of 15 days behind schedule)

2) Finally, finally, finally ... went on that bike trip that i have been looking forward to fer weekz... 'Yes it was exhilarating... yes, it was thrilling.. yes, the view was magnificent ... and yes it was an amazing feeling...' are a short list of things our trip planner has threatened us to put up on our respective posts or orkut profiles, if we wanna live to see another day. (Check out pics here)

3) Ooooh.... and she finally said, "Baby just kiss me... kiss me... hold me... hold me"... after almost 2 torturous hours of watching the film 'race'.... I am not sure, what exactly inspired the corny lyrics of that song, but without a doubt it was more inspiring than the plot of the movie, which had so many twists and turns that one wonders if the author had ever heard of a concept called as 'Central Theme'

4) Got tickets to the IPL. First day, first show. April 18th. Expected guests include SRK, Vijay Mallaya, Preity Zinta, Juhi Chawla, Arjun Rampal... bla bla bla... so on and so forth... Wow... talk about star cast. One cant help but have the eerie sense that Mr. Murphy (of the famous Murphy's law) is gonna jump in there somewhere. One can definitely expect it to rain helter skelter. But then again, with all 8 teams bringing in all their cheerleaders to the match, perhaps a rain might not be the worst thing that could happen.

5) As i look down i see my eternal foe who I had promised to myself i would be rid of before the onset of May. Yup, every hot/cold blooded Mallu man knows this foe. It is none other than his very own set of - One Pack Abs (Recent versions come in different architectures - I have a roommate who sports a 3 tier architecture that bears resemblance to ancient Mugal architecture). Now the problem with being a software engineer is that the maximum effort one is ready to put in, is limited to a 'Double Click'. Recent dreams include, a pop-up while browsing the internet with a Dialogue Box that reads -



Whilst you are sure that you have clicked on that OK button atleast a 100 times
you wake up only to find your age old foe still down there - the evil grin on his face!!! And you know in that moment that this is a friendship that is gonna last a long time - pass the tests of time and tide. Girlfriends, annoying teammates and snoring room-mates 'll come and go... But you and me buddy... 'Yeh janam janam ka rishta lagta hai' ... [;)]

Happy singles awareness day

6:14 PM - Sunday, February 24, 2008

Well... Its Sunday evening 6:14 P.M., and I can literally hear most people blurt out... WTF are you doing in the office at ... at ... at? GOD!!! I most certainly would love to say, well, I got a truck load of work that I have to do, but then, nothing did be farther from the truth... The truth, well, being the isolated adrenalin pumped - warm blooded young guy, b/w a bunch of roomies whose ideas of a gr8 weekend vary between installing a new flavour/version of Linux to checking out the latest Design Patterns in Object Oriented Program - not exactly lot of fun.

I would have to admit that picking up the phone and randomly choosing just one friend to see if they did like to hang out - wasnt exactly gonna win me the 'Best Weekend Planner' of the year award nor gonna produce significantly exhilirating weekend, but then, in an age where they can sell in hundreds of thousands an excercise machine that simulates jogging, while lying down... well, does anyone have a record in history of Lazier generation? (I guess completing that sentence is not even necessary)



Without doubt, in an ideal world, this very instant i did be at the peak of a mountain/hill enjoying the view after a day long trek of the mist and forests below? Heck, if it be an ideal world, i did be at the top of this mountain in a tent with two girls i had randomly chosen from, (by throwing a die), from a gang of twenty models who had co-incidentally(dont you love it when things just work out) come up there to take a break. Unfortunately, being in the real world, just narrowly removed from Utopia, meant that i have to settle for slumping in a rotating chair, cup of coffee in hand wondering how i could possibly squeeze a little more life out of this slow painful weekend.

At this time, I have to admit that my rationale, for being here is as weak as choosing the lesser of the two evils.. either this or having roommate X, shove his laptop in my face, sporting a thousand watt smile, for finally having installed some flavour of bling-blong-bla-bla that has a more robust bling-blong-bla-bla than the other bling-blong-bla-bla whose bling-blong-bla-bla just lacks in bling-blong-bla-bla, bling-blong-bla-bla and bling-blong-bla-bla. Without doubt putting up such a sentence in a blog, whose the majority of friends of the author are members of the IT industry mite sound slightly risky, but, it should be noted that the author has been inspired by a fellow friend, who chose to pillion ride with the author from a choice of 4 other bikes, simply because he 'mocked', 'What is life w/o a few risks?'
It goes without saying that the author then decieded to give his pillion rider(whose till that moment in time the definition of risk was to travel at 50 plus km/h on an empty road) a piece of his mind. It also, should go without saying that the author is unable to wipe the smirk off his face, recalling the shrill sounds that came from his pillion rider, seconds after he pushed the electric start on the bike. (*evil laugh follows*)

Well, in a complete change of topics, the author would like to wish his fellow readers (all one of them including himself) a very belated Happy Singles Awareness Day - also, more popularly referred to as 'Happy Valentines Day'. He he... !!! Guess all the singles out there know what I mean... !!! Its been fun reading your blogs!! Goodnight world... Take care

February 12th, 2008 - 8:55 a.m.

A bike slides into the office basement. Its an Apache 160 RTR, showing shades of its once splendorous metallic black surface admidst its now spotted skin. The gaze of two guards drift continuously b/w the juggernaut of a bike and each other's eye, while only wasting fractions of milli(if not nano) seconds blinking their eyes off. Shocking sights they say, can be fatal to those now sporting shades of white hair. Then again, there are the exceptionally shocking scenes that can prove fatal to a mere mortal enacting any time period in this play called life.
The rider watches as one of these guards tries to pinch himself awake and the other stares with disbelief at his watch. Rohit George Mathews, they say, has NEVER..... never been sighted at this premises in these wee hours of the morning.

Confessions of a Born Procrastinator
31 posts, last published on 04-Dec-2007

Not as suttle as they look ... these ones... :)

Disclaimer: Stolen from PreethIII's album on orkut... Not my work of art.

Here it comes...

The word you are looking for is shocking, confounding, stupefying, astonishing or even eye-popping... "Two posts in the same month... On the Procrastinator's site... Ya... somebody must have hacked his ID... Or lets hope so.. The hacker must definitely be smarter, cuter and have a better sense of blogging than the previous author, who has by now won unanimity amongst fellow bretheren bloggers, in being accepted as bench mark for ground zero skill level in all of the 3 above"

Sorry to dissapoint you folks... Looks like yours truly might be torturing you for a bit while longer... Atleast as long as the world continues spinning or till such day that the Indian football team qualifies for the World Cup. I am sure by now, many people have rushed to the core of the Earth to see what they can do to save fellow Earthlings. See folks... not that bad... atleast we agree on which of the above two is more feasible.

The immediate question pondering the mind of 'HE/She who must be being tortured right now' is what brings our hero back to the blogging arena or even better, what pre-posessed demon driven soul inspired this chap into the blogging arena. Bhetto bhetto(sit down folks)... today i will tell you the tale of a kingdom not far far away... For the sake of female readers (yes there is a prince with a face his mother could love)... For the male readers... "Brothers, i dont know u but, if u send this link to 10 friends, i promise, out of every ten phone numbers that i get, i will donate one to the nearest boys hostel. If u have heart plz fwd this, dont neglect. its true. god bless u forever."

Long long ago, when Abhishek Bachan was still a virgin and Matthew Hayden never used to wet his pants screaming "Sreesanth, Sreesanth" at night, our hero was still wondering, " Saale, ye bande blogs kyun post karte rehte hain (y are this nuts bent upon describing their daily naughty naughty habits on the internet)" while happily coding away on his PC* (translated as scrapping away on orkut - to anyone who is not my manager/team-lead/mentor/serious fellow team mate desperately looking for promotion), a fellow classmate pinged him... The conversation went something like this:

Anphy:"Hey, Ro... What you upto?"

Procrastinator:"Nothing much. Truly bored. What you upto?"

Anphy:"Kuch nahin. My favorite blogger has not posted for a while, so, life's dull"

Procrastinator ponders upon this thought, "favourite" and "blogger" in the same sentence... Isnt it scientifically established that it is statistically less probable than "President bush" and "intelligent conversation" coming in the same sentence.

Anphy:"Which blogs do you read?"

Procrastinator:"Read-a??? blogs-a?? (in that typical mallu accent).. What are you saying? I am doing much more interesting stuff like counting the number of yellow dots when I close my eyes"

Anphy:"hmmm..O ye of little faith..read this.. 'http://someLinkHere.com'"

Our procrastinator(brave as he is known to little to be), still pumped up after watching Troy, deciedes to charter into un-explored territories.

Half hour later

Procrastinator:"Wow... twenty marriage proposals as the comments of one post... wow... I have read that girls are nuts... but this nutty... seriously?"

Anphy:"You men... you will never understand women... their intricacies, their subtle complexities.. Its beyond you"

Procrastinator, ponders, "women?? intricacies...?? Isnt that what we spent a whole one hour, last nite on FTV pondering??? Neways... plan acha hain..." (brilliant idea is about to be shaped into reality). Armed with his weapons of mass destruction - paper, pencil, ruler and *ahem* - not that you idiot, this blog is PG 13 (suitable for all audiences)- i meant eraser, he chalks out the most devislishly brilliant idea. Plan ->Che din - ladki in (Project CDLI)<-
Step 1: Think of crap
Step 2: Write first iteration of crap
Step 3: Use thesaurus on every 'WOC - word of crap' in first iteration
Step 4: Add moral of the story - preferrably copied from google.com, copy paste "poem/romantic quote" from any site.
Step 5: Add pictures of N95, Ford Fiesta, Yamaha - R6 and label them "My new Mobile", "My Car" and "My bike" respectively.
Step 6: Click "Save Now"... wait for effects.

6 months later
Anphy: "Hey, hows your CDLI working out?"
Procrastinator: "No good... after two hours intense chatting yesterday, forwarded blog link to gal, to get her to smile"
pause
Anphy: "and... "
Procrastinator: "not the effect percieved... it was supposed to have her rolling on the ground laughing... desgined as comedy you know"
Anphy: "and... whats the worst that could happen"
Procrastinator: " uhmmm... 10 minutes into the blog, she ended up crying, said she wanted to get back with her 'Ex' and that she was ready to forgive him?... Havent heard from her since"

10 minutes of laughter and sounds of things falling on the ground later...

Anphy: "Ha ha... do you have the link?"

Procrastinator: "http://yetanotherachievement.blogspot.com/2007/05/love-and-nothing-like-it.html"

Go figure...

Meow Meow...

Thats what I had decieded I would name this post. Mind numbing is not what would aptly describe as the rationale behind it. There comes a time in everyone's life where he would willingly throw of his thinking cap. For the author of this post, it comes at a time that he did be easily willing to shell out of couple of 100 bucks for any mode/form of engagement whose simplicity in nature and subtle yet profound levels of deception would help him in his guile(and arguably - not vile intent).

80% of Bangalore's population would have guessed by now that I am sitting in a training room, with limited Internet access trying hard to hold my head up - yet sporting a convincing enough look to both my manager (sitting a couple of seats away from me) and the resident tutor that I am indeed doing justice to the lakhs of rupees the company is throwing away to "train" us. 70% of this 80% would also have guessed by now that I am using "unfair" means to prevent these tormentors from refraining me from my birth right -
GMail, orkut and blogger.

Its been 5 minutes since I typed my last line and that can be attributed to Mr. Trainer here, walking up and down, and stopping for what one might say is easily a disturbingly long period of time at my desk more often than one would comfortably
categorize as "occassional". I might add that this does really not come as surprising given that I am unable to wipe of my face a smile, coming from the combined effect of reading my friends blog and the sounds of "click-click-clicks" and "shit-s@#$%-s@#$-f!@#-arghhhh"'s coming from the neighbouring computers. Poor chaps... Apparently Minsweeper is the only form of revolt they could resort to.

As I continue to browse across various websites I come across, IBN-LIVE.com (Supposedly, India's highest rated online news channel). Today's headlines read: "Pack of laughing hyenas commit suicide after succumbing to depression: World wide campaign to study causes for mass suicide attempts from sections of both human as well as animal society. Eye-witness report: Many of these unfortunate souls who
have either gone into depression or have attempted suicide were last seen browsing the following site: http://yetanotherachievement.blogspot.com

My heart felt condolonces for all to the families of all this unfortunate group who apparently braved to venture through more than two paragraphs on the above link. The United Nations has declared this as the biggest emergency to hit the World since the retirement of bombshell actress Carmen Electra. President Musharraf and his sincere followers were so grieved by the incident that they decieded to declare a year long 'Period of Emergency' in the country. It is yet to be determined which of the two incidents grieved them more, but as a matter of certainity they have succumbed to the combined pressure of the two incidents. Let us observe a two minute silence for these poor crushed souls.

Ting ting ting ting.. the bell rings... I see less than 5 minutes for the end of today's class and am hence decieding to wrap this up.. Show over folks... Take care... Oh and yeah!!! If anyone hasnt guessed why this post has been titled "Meow meow", its for the simple reason that I am still recovering from the horror that last weeks CAT(Common Admission Test) was.. I would love to tell you more about it, but, then that would require a whole new post ... Wouldnt it Miss. Shaila Srivasthava?? ;)

Out of ideas!!!

If resolutions were gals, I would have had an irrefutable image as 'the PLAYBOY' of modern times. Since the dawn of time I have been flirting with 'rEsOlutionS'. My best night out on recent times would have been this New Year's Eve. A mammoth 5 resolutions. That (I did like to imagine) is more than Hugh Heffner could hope for on a single night. Unfortunately, while short-term flings/relationships are widely myhted to be every guys euphoria, somehow this doesnt exactly fit the picture.

So, in an attempt to be more consistent, i have taken, yetAnotherResolution - to counter this anti-resolutionist flirt within me. Yes, for all those who saw the irony, this would indeed mean long term committed relationship's with each of my resolutions, but, ah well - it was time for a change anyway.

Summed up, this is exactly why I am updating this blog, at this very instant of time, though I am as short of clues as the skirts dawned by Nisha Kothari, on what I am going to be penning down here. Out of the back of my head, all I can think of is:

a) Yes!! Yes!! Yes!!! Finally, 1000 kms on my bike means I finally get to take it above the - oh so slow n torturous - 50 km/hr. (The manual said something about proper mating of engine parts require me to keep speed below 50 km/hr for the first 1000kms). And the natural thought process was, well, since I havent had much luck in the mating department for GOD knows how long, atleast let my bike enjoy the pleasure.

b) Its been over a week since I wrote point number (a). So doesnt look like I ll be making any drastic life moulding changes anytime soon

c) Ah yes!!! There has been the break-up. Not the best of phases in one's lives to be in. But I guess, in modern times tis has become pretty much standard protocol.

Its funny what effects different situations in life can have on different ppl. Some people go into depression. Takin crazy decisions like ... dats it... no more gals/guys in my life. Wont ever get married.
Some, well, its routine for some. Ah!!! Dat jus means getting to sample yetAnotherGuy/gal. Bringin bk the initial euphoria of a romance just blossoming.
For me, well, like every other human being out there I like imagining that I am unique. That kind of explains to me why I am continously jumping from crest-to-trough-to-crest of some erratic sine wave, where sittin atop the crest has a loud speaker blurt into me ears.. "Yes, it was inevitable... Don tell me u din kno as u started of" and sitting down in the trough goes somethin like... "21st century man... When will things stop queing up into this inevitability wala lane??"

Break ups do teach you a lot of things I must admit. (I am not an expert in this field, so feel free to correct me if one feels these are not generalizations)

a) It reveals to you a side of you, you never knew existed. Window-2/4 of the JoHari window I believe. As you analyse the thoughts in your head, you hear a lot of "WHAT". Dat doesnt sound like the me I know.
b) You learn that gals are much better at advice than guys. Rarely, I think one will find responses such as :
- you know, a friend of a friend knows a call-girl
- get another gal, nowadays u can easily get laid
- hmmmmm... Dat reminds me...who do you think will win the coming Indo-Pak test series.
can be clubbed into remotely the same category as endearing/ empathizin/ useful. Yes, feel free to use the above comments in any court of law to de-justify the usage, "He meant well and that's wat counts".
c) Does breaking up due to circumstances mean that one cannot stay good friends? Especially if one know's that they have spent some pretty good times together.

I cud go with a (d), an (e), definitely an (f) and probably put in a (g) or (h), but the thought of the sound of "thuds" on the table from people concurrently falling asleep in different corners of the world raising yetAnotherTsunami, is somewhat concerning. After all... why break apart some lovely couples i know who are having a great time togehter. After all Que-Serai-Serai.

P.S.: Yes, I have been very very vague. You were not meant to understand wat was just written... :)