Excuses...

Monday, December 15, 2008

I guess one of my New year resolutions should be to be more regular in blogging. I've been doing only blog reading and no blogging for several weeks now. The excuse is defintiely lot of work and not enough time. But then, that I guess is just that, an excuse.

It is true that I have been doing more work than before. Like most companies, my company also has decided to use the recession as an excuse to remove people, cut salaries, stop increments and promotions, hold recruitment...the works! The result is that there has been no replacement for the 2 people who left last year and there is no one even for the admin job. So the people who are left out are overloaded and playing all kinds of roles. A friend of mine in the US could not believe himself...he was working more after the salary cut!!!

Well...anyway...I guess one has to be thankful for the job one has these days..so I am not cribbing....

And then there were the eid holidays! 5 days at a stretch... what bliss! We took off to Muscat and had a great family gettogether.Time spent going places, talking, laughing, driving and playing Uno!

There was also another small reason that I did not know what to write about. With things like the Mumbai terror attacks happening, writing about anything else seemed so trivial. And writing about it seemed so difficult because anything one says would sound cliched and inadequate.

I have also been thinking.

When people talk about life, they say life is short and that we should live life to the fullest and enjoy every moment. But does that mean that we just do what gives us pleasure at the moment without thinking about the future, without looking at the larger picture? We now know that what seemed life changing and huge while we were younger, say in school or college, was really not as big as it seemed then. Is it not the same now as well?

I don't know...if any of you could make out anything from my rambling, let me know what you think!

The case of the missing weeks...

Monday, September 8, 2008

I am back in the desert city after a month of vacation - after experiencing Cochin rains and roads...Bangalore traffic and Chennai crowds.

Now I have a serious problem! I am unable to account for the first 2 weeks of our vacation. It's a mystery where those two weeks went! The third week, I remember, we spent 3 days in Bangalore and then 3 days in Chennai. The fourth week was spent literally running from one home to another finishing visits.

But the first two weeks? Where are they??? I shall never know!

And what is the outcome of our vacation? Family members feel they did not get any time with us. We wonder what happened to all those planned visits to the dentist and the doctor. And what about those temples we wanted to visit? How come we did not go to ANY temple this time?

I know..I know...I should not crib..at least I get to go on a vacation every year...but guys..but I just cannot help wondering...where DID I lose half my vacation???

But in spite of those missing two weeks, I think we did have a good vacation on the whole. We met lot of friends...some of them (4 in fact!!!) after 16 years! We had some real good outings with cousins...met a lot of relatives...and even managed to watch a movie.

So now back to toil...

Skipped beats...

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Now I know what exactly people mean when they say their heart skipped a beat! Mine is doing that a lot these days.Before you all jump into any hasty conclusions, let me explain that this is not the pleasureable variety caused by handsome hunks. This is absolutely scary and freaked me out totally. You remember the feeling you get before an exam or an interview? Imagine having that feeling the whole day long. Imagine going through the whole day feeling like you are sitting outside the dentist's room waiting for that unsmiling nurse to call out your name!

Anyway, coming from a family of heart patients, I freaked out and rushed to a physician first and then to cardiologist. Well...after a series of tests of all kinds, it turns out that there is no problem with the heart so far. The doctor says these palpitations are harmless and the earlier I learn to ignore them the better. How does one ignore one's heart going beat-beat-gap-THUMP-beat-gap-THUMP-beat-beat-beat-gap-THUMP ???? Well, for now it looks like I've got to live with them.

So that's what I've been doing the last two weeks...getting myself poked on every available nerve for blood tests and getting tubes stuck all over me for ECGs and Echos. But I must say it is a relief knowing things are going on okay inside you... thank God for ultra sound!!! :D

Hopefully, all this will give me that extra motivation required to lose some weight and control my diet. I had just resumed dancing when all this started happening... so hopefully I can lose some weight while doing something I LOVE doing...

Will do another post about the dance classes...

Happy (?) Birthday!

Friday, April 18, 2008

I've been going on long drives for some time now. In the UAE, driving from any one Emirate to another takes a minimum of an hour. I have to go to the different Emirates to give pre sales demos to prospects who are looking at buying my company's enterprise software. I enjoy these drives mainly because I don't need to drive on my own and can do my own stuff - last minute preparations, catching up with sleep, just looking out of the window, daydreaming, calling up friends. But most of the time, it is the FM channels here that keep me company.

City 101.6 is one of the most popular FM channels here, though I'm not a regular listener. I prefer channels that play old melodies and have less talking and more music. City 101.6 has a programme called 'Birthday Pappu'. What they do in the programme is wish someone on their birthday based on a request from a friend/relative. But the way they wish the person is by making an idiot out of him or her, 'Live on air'. Of course, once they have done that, they sing a birthday song, apologise and shower wonderful gifts on the 'Pappu'! But I wonder if the person is really able to enjoy the rest of his birthday after being made a fool of in the morning.

Well, anyway, yesterday I was listening to an episode of the Birthday Pappu. I was not sure what to think of it at the end of it. The whole thing was immensely funny and the RJ did a great job. But I also felt terribly sorry for the person who was being made a 'Pappu'.

Well, looks like this guy is a nice, serious, decent guy who has never done anything mischievous in his life! His sister wanted him to 'losen up' and conspired with the RJ to make a 'Pappu' out of him. This guy had recently gone to 'see' a girl and there are discussions on in both families regarding the wedding. The RJ poses as this girl and calls up. The families involved are conservative Muslim families. The girl makes the guy admit 'on air' that he liked her and says that she would like to meet and talk to him a couple of times before they take things forward. Since her parents are strict and she cannot leave home during the day, she asks him to come and meet her at night!!! The poor guy is shocked but does not know how to refuse. When he tries, she goes all coy and upset and says 'so you don't like me??' Finally he agrees to meet her and she asks him to come to her flat after the family is asleep and stand outside the door and meow like a cat!!! She even makes him practice a few 'meow's and ends the whole thing with 'main aapki meow ka intezaar karoongi' (I'll be waiting for your meow!!!!)

The whole thing was hilarious for the listeners, all right! But it must have been terrible for the guy. It was obvious throughout the programme that he is the silent, serious kind! Even after he was told it was all a joke, he was not laughing. He was very polite and was saying 'I see' and 'Thank you' . Neither did he laugh nor get angry.

Probably a sister is allowed to play such pranks on her brothers! Whatever be the guy's feelings about what happened, I think he just might have made a few female fans in the process! Girls like nice, decent guys....maybe because they are not so easy to come by!!! ;) Well, I certainly hope he finds a soulmate soon, like 'Sleepless in Seattle' did!!!

Communication

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Well...after starting off with that last post, I found that I had absolutely no idea what I should blog about! Is there something called 'blogger's block' that I can use as an excuse?

I understand that the blog is an electronic version of a diary...but then aren't diaries supposed to be private? But I shall not complain. I am very much a people person. I like people and I like having people around me. I love to talk and also listen. So, in fact, the last one year when I've been working alone and not as part of a team has been quite strange. Some days I am all alone in the office and the peak team size in our office at any point in time is 3 people!!! If I did not have the internet and the option to chat with friends, I'd have probably gone mad!

Today is one of those days! I've been alone in office since morning and now it's almost time to leave. Couple of people from the partner company had come in the morning for a couple of hours of training...so it was not too bad.

Also, today has been a day of phone calls and co ordinations. Sometimes it gets so crazy... I use the landline, the mobile, chat and voice chat all together. I use google chat and voice chat to interact with colleagues in India, I use telephone to talk to customers and colleagues here locally in the UAE. Today at one point in time I had 5 GTalk windows open, out of which one was on a call. The craziest thing is that out of these 5, 4 people are in the same team in India and are sitting next to each other or in neighbouring cubicles. So they chat with me and then tell each other what they told me on chat and then tell me on chat what they talked!!! Isn't it a crazy world today????? I still remember the thrill I felt when I could first open multiple windows in my computer and toggle between them!!! Guess that was Windows 3.0 or 3.1 or something!!!

What would tomorrow bring??? Wouldn't it be interesting to imagine?

Recently, a friend and I were laughing at the fact that we used to actually write letters to each other!!! And not that long ago either...must have been just 10 years back... I know there are people who feel that with all these new technologies, the beauty of communication that used to be there before, is lost. But I somehow don't agree. Even today when I get an unexpected mail or a chat window pops up with a 'Hi' from a special friend, I feel the same thrill! And I'm so glad I don't need to wait a week to know what my friend thinks about something I wrote in the letter.

But I have to admit that I'm old fashioned enough to still love complete sentences without cryptic 'sms' words. I still prefer sentences with correct grammar, spelling and punctuation!