holiday season...

hello guys,

this post is intended for mature audiences, reader discretion advised. 

(its just a line i picked up watching videos at HULU.com, endlessly, they have a lotta free vids, some sitcoms, nude clips, completely legal, very boring movies and so on and so forth. that should tell you what i've been doing)...

people, what happened to the world we wanted to live in, no, we thought we wanted to live in anyways, i cant find one person who says life rocks, and i'm pretty sure this is not because of just the "winter blues". i mean i am so bored, i am practically trying to find out the luminosity of the light bulb in my room so that i can maybe attribute my dull and lazy attitude to it. or counting how many hair are stuck to my blanket (i said reader discretion advised, vide supra, if you think that was grose, watch out), looking forward to that laundry basket to fill up so that i can have reason to go down and wash my clothes (which is not gonna happen cuz i have many underwears and i dont do anything to make my clothes dirty), also looking forward to get some more groceries (which i did the last time i wrote) and so on and so forth. 

a part of the reason, apart from my immense boredom, why i am writing this is that i am sick of discussing problems to my friends, who inescapably feel bad after i miserify them and want to do anything to make me feel better, sick of discussing girlfriend issues cuz nobody has one, and sick of finding reasons for it, which leads to some spirited discussions but m sick of that too, sick of planning ahead to go to a club and then cancelling because the cab company wont pick up the phone, sick of sitting in front of my laptop all day looking for some good movie to download, and waiting for it to download, sick of the buffering time taken by watchthesimpsonsonline.com, which gives my laptop all sorts of adwares but i still go and visit it, no hammer it, till i find an episode that is working fine. sick of eating raman noodle soup (creamy chicken flavour) for breakfast, lunch and dinner with same old set of vegetables and same old flavour, sick of the right arrow key on my laptop thats not working properly and feel free to add on...

if i was a drug addict, i'd have attributed these symptoms to it, but i know that thats not true, so there is nothing wrong with me. its the world thats goin insane...

and oh, this is when i have another 2 weeks of holidays...

enough... i'm gonna get a life, soon...

time to buy some booze i guess...

 

too little too late??!!

hyello darlings,

i have observed that i am drawn to blogging only when i am not pathetically tensed about issues like who will be the next president of the united states, when will that damn paycheck come in, when i am gonna finally get a life, when will i stop cooking food for myself (this one has nothing to do with my single status, just that i am not that good a cook, and dont know many recipes), when will i know what i have to do in life, when will i get a hair cut (that might be today), sucker, when will the exams end, when will anybody who i know will do anything stupid so that i can make fun of him and laugh my guts out, when will it stop snowing here, when will i get rich, when will i start going to gym regularly, when will i develop a reading habit, when will this list end!!.

congratulations if you saw that little adjective in what i've written above, drop your name and i'll add you to my biggest fans list, no questions asked. but seriously guys, thats about all the reasons why i have not been blogging for a while. and it is days like today when i am done with my long due term paper and ended the semester, and when i have already watched 2 movies today (that'd be Go and Wimbeldon), and when it's not freeqing cold outside (its 12 C outside in mid december in chicago, has to be  one of the miracles, or maybe its just that Bush decided to spend some billions on heating the whole city while he was away getting what he deserves, a shoe at his face, in baghdad, or it could be obama, but does he have that in him already??), i got distracted, sorry, what was i saying, never mind...

oh ya.. the reasons y m not blogging regularly... well thats all that had to say for now... i think... its time to buy some groceries, which are very darn expensive in chicago by the way... 

pause

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pause (this means that i'm waiting for that guy who is supposed to go with me to call so that i can leave)

pause

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pause (one pause equals 2.76 min)

pause

how many minutes??

ya i'll let you get back to your pathetic lives, ya ya, its no secret, all our lives suck right now... 

try n hav fun

ciao

welcome to amreeka

So as you guys might know that I have now shifted my headquarters, or should I say, the awesome blog factory, to chicago, which is in america by the way, and no its not the capital, and yes its where the future president (of USA) is going to be from and yes its also the place where the Italian Mafia rocks (they actually have the sofa in Al-Capones' favourite club "preserved"... ewww...), and yes its near springfield where the awesome family of simpsons live (I sent them an email, but they never replied, I just dont think they ever grew into the future, cuz bart's still in 4th grade after trying to win Mr. Mischief of the year for over a decade in a row) and finally, as you might've noticed, I have become addicted to the simpsons...

So... how is amreeka different (spelling mistake intentional, in case you didn figure out y, I'm trying to hold on to my Indian roots)...well... here are some of the possible differences...

1. its a very very mean place when it comes to supporting poor people like me, u need to be able to spend about 28000 Rs just to cover your rent and food, home made that is, and cut out on booze, and if you are into smoking, thats it.

2. Chicks, well... they're there... but thats it... nothin you can do about them, if you can afford to get drunk in a hip club and with the help of 20 ml shots (cost: $5/Rs 250), then you can get some, untill that, sight seeing describes what best you should do... and if you got all worked up by the hot Indian ones you saw at the airports, they either dropped off in London, or got an urgent message to go back or something, cuz its just not possible that they made it to amreeka and no one landed up in a radius of 10 miles where you are... I still want to believe that "good luck" hasnt betrayed me...

3. Americans are poor too... trust me... so you can actually talk to them about the pathetic prices, and if you are lucky, they'll let you into their secret store or the secret market that opens at the river bank on sundays between 10am and 2pm.

4. You cant buy anything in small packs, an apple, $2, a whole carton of apples, $10, and they just dont care that you are gonna waste almost 75% of that... or they are just too poor at maths to figure out that there can be a price tag below $1 (Rs 47, last I checked).

5. The "Indian food" is not exactly Indian, if you are used to copiuos amounts of cheese and mayonnaise in everything ther, then its a different issue... and the ones that is, well... you wont be able to afford it...

6. your luck is gonna turn upside down, to think about it, you are upside down, all the time (THINK physically, transversing the barrier of mantle and earth's core). ya, so the luck, if its not working for you there, its still not gonna work, but if it is ther, it wont here, and if you are one of those who likes to blame everything on luck and can make excuses and stay happy, well, then you are lucky...

7. shoes (sport) and jeans are dirt cheap... and they are all made in Asia, cant figure out the economy though...

seriously, whats with the lecture, anyways, i'll cut it here, but the bottomline is, you MUST have a constant source of income (in $s), else, well, may god be with you, better, try looking for the devil, i have a feeling he might listen to you...

whatever...

just another... ya ya... I'm done now..

FS (forward script): I know this episode is goin a bit longer than usual but i also know that you guys have not been completing your new year resolution to ameliorate your pathetic reading habit (source FBI). so read on...

Final day:

I'll spare u the deatails... I know U guys dont really care now that its been too long since the last post... and to be frank I wanted to write about something else when I realized what I've done to my greatest fans... to Me and Myself, sorry guys...

Anyways... I got the loan, wrote the sanction letter myself actually because I didn wanna watch the 'good' man struggle with the keyboard, maybe I felt worse about the keyboard, whatever. 

Only regret, I cant fool anybody anymore with my Arsenal cap, actually its better, it saves me the trouble when a football enthusiast (and believe me there are many), or worse, a ManU fan (and there are more of these) comes and starts counting the times when someone missed some goal in some game anywhere in the last ten years and says Arsenal sucks. What do I do, well, I say ok, but they're gonna belt U this time, then they reveal they beat them hands down last week and that they are out of the league and I shut my mouth as these guys prepare their 'Arsenal' of jokes to go with the evening Beer. 

Well u got the point, I'm goin into Baseball now.

Cubs rule... beat that... 

PS: For once I am taking the better (easy) route, I'm in Chicago, and god save me if I try to be supportive of another team, sure the white sox fans try to contest me every now n then, its not as hard to direct their assault at the nearest cubs fan drunk n holding a pool cue though.

cheers... 

just another day... the sequel...!!!

day three:
Mr "I dont care who" body: "hanji hanji, are beta, when do you need the sanction letter?"
Me: "uncle... as soon as possible, i have a visa intervw on 1 jul, coming tuesday"
"are to take it tomorrow, abhi to u have time"
why the hell did i want to be honest, i have no idea... but hell... think of somethin, make him work... n then...
"uncle... u atleast please check if the documents are in order"
"ok ok"
yeah... i won this round... i was not gonna take a no for an answer...
"beta chai peeoge?"
do hell with your chai "ummm... ok...", i figured till the time i'm stuck with him with my chai, he'll be working on my case...
"ye lo, keep checking the documents that are ther on this list..."
another hour passed as he tried to teach me the significance of the documents that were not there, however "aap sindhwaniji ke bete ho to i'll still pass it, but"...
what the hell now...
"you took an education loan for your B.tech right?"
"yes uncle, from prashant vihar branch"...
"ok, i think there can be some complication"
oh my god... "what uncle"...
"nai beta we are not authorised to sanction a second time education loan, it has to be done by circle office"...
oh you wanna play tough huh..."here uncle, papa se baat kar lo..."
"hanjiiii... hanji hanji... haaaanji... haaanjiii... nai but we have to take permission from circle office... ok ji... lo beta"
over phone "hanji papa..."
"yar inse kuch nai hone wala... u do one thing, take a letter from them and go to the circle office... or better still fax it to them, i'll find out somebody ther to take care of it"
"hmmm... ok..."
"uncle aap letter bana do... we'll fax it to them"
"ok"... n then began letter no2... first half hour he was trying to figure out what to write... i guess this was the first time he had this kind of a problem... but he sure looked old enough to know his stuff... anyways... i bear again...

another hour and 80 words later he wanted to know who should put the signature on it... "guptaji... will u please sign it?,"
"hmmm... are get it done from saab inside na... i dont know if i'm supposed to sign it... "
naya panga,i bet u can smell rotten fish here too...
20 min later...
"here... u got the fax no..."
"ya... here... ########"
"are ye to send hi nai ho raha..."
wow... ab fax bhi... plz work plz work...
"han... sent..."
uuuhhh... nice... i should be smart here and let my dads contact in circle office know abt this...
"hello... uncle me nikhil speaking this side... sindhwaniji's son... did he talk to you...?"
"han beta... bolo..."
"Uncle, i've faxed that letter dad told u about..."
"fax...??? beta you have to bring the whole file here... then we'll take care from here itself... we'll need to see all the documents you see, cant really do it on the basis of a letter"
"uh... but u only have to give permission to these people here in the hub to grant me second time education loan"
"han han, u come here i'll take care... if you rush now, u can make it before lunch starts here"... beep... right!!!
"uncle..? hes saying i'll have to take the file there itself..."
"hmmm... what is he gonna do with it i wonder... ask your dad"
are yar... kabhi to stand up and take a decision on your own "papa...? hanji... he says i'll have to take the file there"
"what are these guys doin i dont understand, ok you take it there... drive carefully"
"ya ya"
right...

after convincing the guy in the HUB that i'll bring the file back and that he doesnt need to keep a photocopy of all the documents here, i move on...
i got 30 min to reach there before lunch... 25 min later m there...
"Mr somebody no. n-1, I just talked to you, m nikhil sindhwani (rings a bell, telephone bell perhaps ??!!!) "
"han han... bolo..."
"aapne file magwaee thi, here it is"
"ok ok, come with me"
N then he takes me out of his air conditioned cabin, shattering all my hopes of watching him work here while i try to recover from the shock this heat is giving me... only this time... i swear... never again...
he to Mr somebody no. n
"ye dekh lo zara inka...", to me "he'll take care"
after scrutinizing the documents, "hmmm, but isme to no proof is there, no loan account statement, no property papers, how can i give permission on this basis, and the letter the HUB people have written also has no details, chalo i'll still take care, u come after lunch, did u have lunch..???", ohhh... how polite of him... ass****...
"no uncle, i'll find something downstairs..."
after a twister and a fruit salad, not to mention after a long search for a decent food joint and finally taking it as a certainty that creator of my luck has decided to play with me again, espcially after a 15 min wait for my fruit salad or fruit chat should i say, at the local rediwala, i start back, all determined to get this thing done asap n get the hell outta here, then i saw nirulas, and the "it sucks" feeling peaked... ok... control now... dont blast just yet...

and then came the biggest blow... I knew i was missing something... My maroon nike arsenal cap... its not there... no prob... if this jerk finishes up the work soon, i can go back n check for my cap at the HUB office, please god, not my cap (ask my fans how possessive i am about the cap, i could kill anyone for it, exception... myself...)

"Uh... uncle..."
"han... sit please... i'm gonna have to write a letter for the senior officers here, they only will sign and approve"
and here i thought this was it, the last hurdle, how naiive...
"ji... ok... u gotta do what you gotta do..."
"hmmm... i can do this by myself but since some vital details are not there, i'd like you to stay and tell me about the missing pieces"
"ok..." atleast i didn have to convince him for staying here n see to it that he does his job properly...
a half an hour passed, time check, 3:15, we got enough time to take this letter n get it signed from whoever is supposed to sign it... n then take it back to the hub n get the sanction letter... this is where i introduce you to the guy who invented Murphy's law, the devil... i bet i saw him smile in the 5 sec nap i unconsciously took while the guy beside me was learning his lessons on how to write sentences and use MS office to cut and paste from an already saved format to be followed by editing, hopefully in the near future. I do remember that he knew the significance of saving the document cuz he was careful to do it after every letter he'd find out on the keyboard and after hitting it.
i'll spare you the details (what...!!!, i'm not that mean), of what followed in the next few hours... he finally completed the 140 word letter at 5:45 pm... sure enough it was because of my contribution to his knowledge of MS office that WE completed it...

i'll just describe the conditions at his office and that of my mind, hot, humid, no windows, i'm thirsty n he's not asking if i want tea or anything else, n my beloved cap might be lost forever because of this man... I think i did find out that i can be patient and what is called a cool customer, at least on the outside, actually, ONLY on the outside...

anyways... i leave with the assurity that he'll push the letter to the desired channels and promptly call me the next morning once it is done so that i can deliver the file to the HUB. I believe him n leave... i had to find out of my cap is still there...

Its not there... Breakpoint...

just another day??!!!

picture this if you can... this is much well depicted by office office (the tv series), only when it does happen you hardly feel like laughing... but do remember one thing while you go over this long post, there is no sarcasm or exaggeration, its true facts and the rest depends on how well fit you are to live in virtual reality (basically your imagination, sorry if it was a real bad one...)

visa date... 1 jul... with a lot of contacts pulling strings here n there, only to speed up the process mind you, finally the property is transferred to our family, which would serve as collateral for my education loan. working days left for visa interview: 6. PNB, "the name you can bank upon"(thats their tag line), assures me the loan on time...

working day one:
Mr somebody: beta go to that person over ther.
Mr somebody 2: hanji...
"sir education loan, Mr Sindhwani must've talked to you about it".
"Oh, You are sindhwaniji's son... sit sit... kya loge... tea?"... i think i remember the guy from one time when we wanted to get a home loan, he shooed me away like a dog, only then i hadnt mentioned that i was sindhwanijis son...
"no uncle, thanks... i really don drink much tea", of course i do... my blood has more caffeine than oxygen i think... but work is more imp here and any distractions are not welcome...
"sure, could you wait a moment, i have this report i've to finish, they're coming for inspection today u know", guess i should've had that tea, i didn mean to disrespect him...
"sure"... my first big mistake, for the next 2 hours i watched him struggle hopelessly trying to figure out how (and what) to print out. other people of the staff joined in with their so called expertise, n sure enough there was a bundle of 4 sheets at the end of it... well done... not to mention that these guys eat up paper faster than all the termites in the world put together. all for no reason... cant the bugger coming to check the report see it on a comp...? anyways...
"uh, uncle?"
"han.. ek min beta..." n he was back to educating himself with the core banking software...
finally he managed to get the thing signed from whoever was coming... who didn even bother to ask what the reports were... n commented, "ye to raddi he ji... kuchbhi nikaal dete...!!"... well... finally he suggested that i leave the documents with him, he took my phone no, in case there are any documents missing n he needs to contact me... i couldn help imagining where it was headed "as you say uncle..." understandably reluctantly...

working day 2:
"all done uncle?"
"han han... jus a min"
30 min later... "show me the documents once..."
he started calling for things... PAN card copy, this certi that certi, n relentlessly pulled out every peace of bundle me n my dad had prepared, all organised neatly, all my dads docs in one bundle, mine in one and my mums' in one... all to no avail...
an hour n thirty minutes later... "chai peeoge beta?", i was not gonna let him have it this time... call dad... never mind roaming...
me on phone now "ji... ek min... ", "uncle papa wants to talk to you"... hand over the phone, i guess he told him something senti as i heard the man opposite me saying "are sir... ghar ki baat he... koi aur joota ho to wo bhi mar do mere sar pe... jaisa aap kahein, waise hi kar denge, sanction letter to me abhi de deta hu"... me??... very hopeful at this stage... i even started to give room to people standing behind me, for all the draft queries (n there was a considerable lot), other loan wallas also, waiting patiently for the crowd to clear up... when it did, he started typing the letter, lets call it letter no. 1. another hour later, i had the letter, signed by the manager n all... when i came to know this was not the sanction letter, i had to take this to someplace called a HUB...

20 min of driving which narayan kartikeyan would've have been proud of (yukkie complement i know...), n i'm ther... only to know he cant do it today... lotta work u see... but sindhwaniji ki application he... "you come n collect the sanction letter tomm beta... i'll see to it its ready"...
"but uncle i was hoping i could get it today..."
"are... bahut kaam he beta... "

and it began all over again... digest this, i'll have more tomm...

hello... Mr. BALDwin.

This title is not to be confused with one of Enid Blytons', and if you do meet him, please try to explain for me that the similarity is hardly noticeable... plz...

70% males suffer from baldness or start to show signs before the age of 30 (source wikipedia... if you cant find it there, then somebody must've removed it). Another, "A number of primate species also experience hair loss following puberty, and some primate species clearly use an enlarged forehead, created both anatomically and through strategies such as frontal balding, to convey increased status and maturity"... (i'd mention the source but i was not sure if the lines following this were in my best interests)... Now, coming to the point i wanted to make...

I want to tell you guys about a serious condition that i've been suffering through... its called... "premature balding which is uncalled for" and i've tried to find all possible solutions (and played ginny pig for most of them) to force it to take a detour from the inevitable. Yes i am getting BALD.

This is probably the worstest (dont blame me... Bhargav introduced me to that innovation in english grammar) thing that can happen... wouldn't it break your heart to see a strand of hair stuck in your fingernails whenever you take them near the scalp?... there it'll be... curved like twisted mouth of the devil who just devoured an innocent bird and was not even sure why... or when you wake up one morning and find that a significant number of hair had a heart attack the same night and their corpses lie on your pillow. Not to mention that while i was trying to figure out the reason for this, someone decided to shoot your soulmate named confidence with a shotgun and he is trying hard ever since to rise but will have to do with memories of the GLORY days, much like the SENSEX... And all this without me doin anything to trigger it...

So dearest fans of mine... i took the path of voluntary baldness... and payed a barber to take off all that was left of it in hopes of finding out what was wrong with the soil in which the seeds of those erstwhile strands wouldn't hold... and just like the book of revelations that does not reveal anything, i found nothing wrong, just few white spots which are the largest producers of dandruff flakes and a few pimple like projections towards the sky. As i said, nothing new... The only consolations for now till all those oily concoctions, which my mom have in mind, yield results are to found in the first para of this post... Also i dont have to see them fall everyday on my broad and proud shoulders... farewell my dearest, we shall be together, if not in this life then the next...

In loving memory of my hair...

writers block...

Finally i found a phrase for it. Its called "writers block". So i can tell all you two dearest hard core fans of mine that my absence from the bloggosphere is a natural phenomenon. it happens time to time. I can only hope u understand ;)...





Well folks... i'll tell you one thing... you wont regret my absence cuz i've brought with me some amazing theories and incidents to write about.





One is my recent trip to shiridi... Sai baba ki jai ho... cant imagine i was so apprehensive when my mom first told me we're leavin for shiridi.. i think i had my reasons, one and probably the most important was that i'll have to give an excuse to my gym instructor and ask for a leave for 4 days (for a 3 day trip...), yeah i had joined 2 days back and hated to break the routine (an angry face goes here, didn know how to make it)... another is the uncertainty over the train tickets, they were unconfirmed till then but reassurance from my dad that he'll somehow fit in a lalu yadav quota didn help much, and oh.. they were sleeper class, and i was definitely not in a mood to take a journey with temperatures reaching 50 degree c outside... man these guys are gonna regret it was all i was thinking...





so it began... trip to station was fine... and so was the journey, it rained so the thermometer shed off some silver... and though there were 4 seats confirmed for 5 ppl, it was horrible to adjust... all those unresearved walas were sittin and wouldn move their butts... and there were typical house wife mums trying to get hold of their children and catch up on all the household politics. This was a family with some 20 ppl travelling together!!! and their occasional screams that would tell you quite clearly that sitting on their seat for a while, while you were waiting for your 'legal' place on the 3 seater loaded with 5 ppl, was probably the biggest act of judicial disrespect and immorality that you've done and the corresponding punishment by listening to all of those 20 ppl screaming at you at the same time tryin to make you feel all the more sorry for the whole affair...





but once the first few hours went by, it was smooth. i found myself safe on a corner seat with special new year edition outlook featuring 'my India story' with me which i had promised myself to read to increase my pitiful knowledge of MY country on the first week of 2008... And time passed by, i learned about writers block in one of those articles and stopped feeling bad about letting down my fans here, i was sure they'd understand. And probably the biggest inspiration was the feeling "hey... i can write better than that!!.." and the result is this blog entry. i was pretty sure google has deleted my account but... well... god bless Larry n Sergi...





I know this is goin a bit longer than you thought but hey what did u expect... dont you tend to eat more food after a long fast... ok one more thing.. lemme at least tell you y shiridi was good... people... there are times in your life when you would think something is wrong and it turns out its not... and this was one of them times... there was a huge spiritual revelation and my confidence increased several folds... Over there i saw some of the most beautiful ladies i've seen for a long time... i hope they asked for good guys to come into their lives.. only if they were wise enough they'd know their wishes were granted and i was there... with them... but well... their (and my) bad luck wanted to play its part... and i came back without the 'committed' tag...





so folks thats all... i hope you enjoyed my comeback entry... do leave your comments... i'l spare both of my hardcore fans this obligation (me and myself)...





PS: its not really that long




PPS: Shiridi trip was a disaster if you didn get the sarcasm yet




PPPS: the ladies part is true.