Bye bye, people!

No,I am not closing this blog down!

Everything around me is changing. The surroundings, the people, the weather (which has become a little pleasant in the past couple of days), the relationships I share, everything!




All was fine until June 24th (Wednesday) night. On 25th morning, my roomie announces that her marriage is fixed and the date ahs been finalized and the date is less than 2 months away from now. First shock! That same afternoon, another one of my roomies mails us that she has to report at California on Monday (29th) and she has to stay there for 2-3 months. Another one of my roomies says she might get transferred to Bangalore. That same night, the cute-guy-next-door says he has got a super offer from some company in Singapore and he’d move there in a month’s time! What the heck! Why the heck is all of this happening too soon? Why haven’t we been given some time to cherish the million memories we have?

It has been close to 2 years for us in that house and we have had so many nice experiences being there right from our owner who can’t hear to Brinda’s lip-smacking food to dirty paan-spitting neighbors to cute-guy to learning Bengali from the newly-wed girl next door, it has been an amazing ride. And it is getting over!

We all knew we had to part some day; that all the fun would finally come to an end one day when all of us have to go chasing our careers/married lives. We knew it right when we became roomies. But now that it is happening, it seems so hard to digest. And before we know, there will be farewell hugs and we would not be roomies anymore. God, I hate the thought of it.

P.S: My mom has finally permitted me to stay alone. When all my friends leave me (that sounds so senti, I know), I would have to find another (affordable) house for myself and stay there. It would be a new experience and I don’t know whether I would enjoy it or feel awfully lonely, but I want to give it a try. We will see that works out. So, finding an affordable house in the same area is a mighty task and I have to indulge in that routine for some time before I find a suitable house. I know this paragraph is a little too long to be a P.S. but bear with me because I feel really whiny and depressed now!

P.P.S: MJ passed away. Isn't there anything that can go right in my life??? (the way Ross whines in F.R.I.E.N.D.S.)

Nocturnal? Not me!

Last week I had to work in my first ever night shift and I was as nervous and excited as my friend when she was ponnu paathufied - the traditional “seeing the bride” ceremony before a marriage where the groom’s immediate family (of at least 30 people) visit the bride’s house and ask the bride to do everything from sing to dance to even code a bug-free Java program (God, I am never going to get married) to climb Mt.Everest (That, I may be able to achieve). Anyway, I had a longish weekend from Friday evening to Monday night. And finally, as with all weekends, Monday (night) too came too early.

And I was at office sharp at 8:30pm, waiting for my first ‘ticket’ (To know what this ticket means, read: ITMARK me!) with all the curiosity of a little pup in a new home. And then work started flowing my way and never stopped until it was 6am the next morning. It was as if I was bowling the best I could, but I had an in-form Jayasuriya batting; with my captain shouting (swear words, obviously, duh...) at me at regular intervals. Talking of which I am thinking of the Indian Cricket Team’s performance (or rather the lack of it) at the ICC T20 WC, which I shouldn’t be unless I can afford my posts to contain really objectionable words.

2 nights passed by without any major hitches and on the 3rd night, it was a little less hectic and I was a little more hungry than usual. At around 2-ish in the night, my stomach started making these strange noises, not unlike Barkha Dutt does on her shows. Also, I realized it was as empty as her head. I then understood what they meant when they said “Empty vessels make more noise.” However, I was prepared for such ‘situations’ and had bought a bag of Potato Chips (I could actually use a lot of calories, you know) for the night and started munching on it like I’ve never seen food before. I felt quite full at around 3-ish (actually, the chips packet had become empty) and I headed to the pantry to have some tea. On the way to the pantry, I was startled by a hyper-active frog and almost fell down (which was so not funny!). Apart from the frog thing, there was nothing much eventful that night.

The next morning, I slept till 10:30am and then got up to have breakfast (No sir! No matter what, I never skip food) only to find my stomach turning and twisting and before I could know, I was puking all over the place (quite disgusting, yes!). But still, I went ahead and had some curd rice and was about to take a bath when I heard the water pipe farting big time; there was no water in the tank and there was no power to switch the motor on – which also meant no sleep during the afternoon. We (I, the cute-guy-next-door, his roomie, another neighbor) did everything we could from bringing an electrician to calling up the EB folks and nothing worked (I could actually understand how helpless Dhoni felt during the WC matches).

That night, again I was at office at 8pm and called up my PM, who has been extra-ordinarily kind and gracious and supportive (I hope he reads this before writing appraisal comments) and told him (actually, reminded him) about India and power cuts and took leave for the rest of the week and bunked night shift. Now I am back in the day-shifts and am sleeping through the day at work (which is not very unusual), but unable to sleep during nights (and that is killing me). And I feel so bad for my BPO friends. May God give them the strength and courage to go through with it. :-)

Fell in love!

Something is wrong with my net connection at home. I have Reliance NetConnect using a USB modem and it has not been working since last week. Now, that is what has been keeping me from blogging (much to the relief of readers). This morning, I called up the customer care and they said something about a credit limit. Ridiculous concept – they give you a USB modem, tell you that you can download/upload up to 2.5GB and that your monthly bill would be 850+taxes (unless you go beyond 2.5GB of usage) and then your internet doesn’t work (even after you have paid your bills well before the due date) and they say, your credit limit is only 500 bucks and you can’t use more than that. What the heck!!!

I had gone to my home town (Coimbatore) for two consecutive weekends (some thing that I rarely do for fear of tiredness throughout the following week). The first weekend of June, I landed at Coimbatore North railway station at 6:30am and it was drizzling ever so slightly – a drizzle that could wake you up from sleep, but not make you wet, a drizzle that is like the droplets of water that hit you on your face when you are walking beside a waterfall. In the distance, I could see all the hills surrounding the city – the hills and the drizzle and the fresh, unpolluted air and the serene city (so far away from the rush and madness of Chennai) and was interrupted by, “Enga ammini pogonum?” – a burly auto-driver who, for some reason, reminded me of Teddy Bear and I fell in love with my home town all over again. The people here are, by far, the most respectful of the lot. Even fathers address their sons with respect – eg., instead of “Enga da pora?” (Where are you going?), they ask, “Engainga thambi poreenga?” The majesty of the hills (the elephant hill right behind my college, the Western Ghats where we used to go for summer camps/treks), finding virgin streams of delicious nectar (siruvani water), taking bath in small waterfalls which requires quite a few kilometers of walk into the forest and the amount of greenery (there are two institutions that keep the city green – The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and The Forest College campus) both within the city limits! All these (combined with the piping hot Chennai during the following week) seduced me into going there for the second consecutive weekend.

During the second weekend (yesterday and the day before), there was no slight, cool drizzle, in fact, the sun was out and although it couldn’t be called hot, it was warm outside and we (myself, my sis, and a couple of my coolest cousins) could roam around the city. We went to the zoo (I know what you are thinking right about now) and then to Pizza Hut – initially we decided to order pizza from home, but I decided against it because of this. :-) Anyways, we had pizza and fun and quite a bit of yelling from my mom who had cooked lunch for all of us and all the food had to go waste! :-)

Here I am back at Chennai and all the heat it offers. I guess the next weekend is going to be a visit to Pondicherry (with friends) or Kumbakonam to a few temples.

Happy Birthday!

I know I wrote a post just yesterday. But I had to write another one now to tell this...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RAFA...



Here is wishing u success in the next 5 French Open tournaments!!! You are a champion and will always remain one! :-)

ITMARK Me

The past weekend was one that made me extremely happy – a weekend filled with hugs and kisses from my family – mom, sister, cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents – it made me very happy to meet so many relatives after a long time. I had a great time – cousins pulling my legs, talking about everything from movies to cricket to hot gossips! It was the perfect weekend…

When everything is going great guns in my life, there were a few moments which made me go “What’s wrong with me?” All such moments were because of my work place practices. It amazed me to know how much it has changed the real Me.

Things to prove I am an ITMARK (IT equivalent of AGMARK) software engineer.

1. I was at the ‘Sadabhishekam’ of my grandparents and there was so much smoke coming from the homa-gundam; I started wondering why the smoke-detectors work only during fire evacuation drills.
2. The other day, when I returned home from work, instead of inserting the key into the key-hole and turning it, I reached for my ID card to swipe it to open the door and wondered where the swipe machine went.
3. I stay far away from my mom and always talk to her over phone. Now she is in Chennai and for calling out to her when she was in the kitchen, I shouted “hello amma” instead of “amma”.
4. I write “Pls do let me know if there are further concerns” in personal mails.
5. My idea of flirting has become, “Which technology did you say you are working on?” (No wonder the cute guy next door runs like crazy in the opposite direction when he sees me walking towards him)
6. I am in a Production Support project wherein we resolve any ‘ticket’ raised by the user when they face any issue with the data in the database/in the application. It made me nervous when my friend said, “I have ‘tickets’ for the concert”. I started thinking about how to resolve it.
7. My roomie was looking for one of her DVDs and asked all of us to search for it and I said, “I’ll google it right away” without thinking. I was glared at by all of them.

God help me!!!