Federer Express Derailed

:-(

I was so sad! I wanted him to win! Sigh!

I read that the match between him n Safin was a wonderful one. I should catch it if I get chance.

More on my favorite matches sometime later. Now I'm off to catch my bus!

signing off,

Brothers in Arms

My brother and sister were here in Bangalore this week. We had a good time together. It's been almost 4 months since we last met and had fun. But we did it this time, mainly because as no one had offices to go to. :-)

Usually when I go to Mumbai, they do not get as many days off, so we just end up settling for couple of days of roaming around. But this time we had total 4 days for us. We went to Mysore on Republic Day, wandered on M.G. Road, Brigade Road, went bowling to Amoeba (in which I beat them comprehensively - he ha ha ha ha), played judgement and 5-3-2 for a long time - in fact we were at home for a full day playing cards! And to settle scores, they beat me in cards comprehensively! We also went to Lalbaugh to watch flower show (- that reminded me of our very own flower show we used to have in our college.) We also celebrated my bro's b'day, which was on 24th, on 23rd night. We did not wait till midnight though. We were all feeling very sleepy that day!

Let me hope their stay was enjoyable all the way. At least my 4 days have been very good. Already started missing them!

signing off,

Reclusive?

Am I so? I dunno. For all I know, I might be. Because at times I do feel I just cannot mix with others around me, whoever they might be and however hard they are trying.

It does cause a lot of inconvenience to them, I must add.

signing off,

By the Power of Graystar !?

You know, for ages I used to believe that He-Man says "By the Power of Graystar" and not "Grayskull". I don't know what or who tipped me off for this, but I did. In turn when I lost a bet to my friend, I corrected myself the hard way.

I remembered this because yesterday I got to listen to this. And suddenly all my Sunday mornings when we used to wake up with Rangoli and stay in bed till He-Man got over, came flashing before my eyes.

They don't make Sunday mornings like that anymore! :-(

signing off,

Dude, Where Is My Run?

I have always been fascinated by the computer. But not so by it's rat. Primarily because easy and accurate though they claim the mouse as pointing device is, my experience has been quite the reverse.

For the first thing, the mouse I got with my first computer was not a very sleek one. It was also susceptible to the slightest of dust particle around, when it was impossible to imagine our room without any dust with the kind of environment Mumbai has. So not a day passed without it's endless squeaking and screeching. And many a times it would just do Scabbers, pretending to be dead so that we'd not disturb it anymore. I think because of the sheer fear that someday it would be used in a battle against a manticore, it went literally dead a couple of times, and we had to take it to a vet to cure it. And I was left with good old keyboard to interact with my machine.

It was 'same old wine in a new bottle' kind of story when I joined my first job. The machine I got in my Chennai workplace was nightmare for a programmer-who-is-handicapped-without-his/her-mouse. The mouse would just not respond in the morning when I tried to boot. A couple of restarts and a lot more disconnections/reconnections were some of the things his majesty would require to wake up. Luckily, because of previous experience with a houserat, I had quickly adjusted to work without an officerat too. This earned me a new nick from my team - 'Keyboard Wiz-Kid'.

I almost forgot why I started scribbling this. A couple of days back a support person arrived to my desk and announced that I needed to upgrade my Norton Antivirus as per the policy. Now if policy said so, nothing in the world could have stopped him from taking control over my mouse and start installing. But something did. Clicking on Start, he froze midway. I could not understand why he was staring at the screen for 5 seconds. "He must be recollecting the dump path", I explained to myself. Then he clicked and right clicked all the buttons he could see: All Programs, Control Panel, Accessories, Entertainment, SAP Logon Pad, Microsoft Games (?). After nearly half a minute, he resigned and asked "Where is Run?". "Oh my god!" I exclaimed to myself. In a state of hysteria to clean up my desktop and Start menu that took over me some months back, I had made all unused icons disappear. And now because I use Windows+R to invoke run, even that had to go. I pressed those keys and Run appeared. Cursing something in a Filch-like manner about administrative rights given to programmers, he proceeded to install.

If only like Run I could make him disappear!

signing off,

Ohayo Gozaimasu!

Time sure zooms by. Just a couple of days back I realized that it has been already a year since a bug bit me and I had started learning Japanese. It also has been quite a while since I last opened my Japanese book to revise!

In fact I used to like learning Japanese. It was fun and something different that the routine work I had to do 15*5 then. I don't know what caused this waning of enthusiasm. Probably because I did not get company. Because I got more busy in work. Because I got more interested in other things. Or because I got lazy.

I think it is more to do with the last reason. :-) On some serious thoughts, I am planning to start it again. I can take out some time for this. I definitely can.

sayonara,

Spendthrift?

Yesterday I blabbered something about forwards. Here I get one more. It is about what my birth month is supposed to mean. Being in a benign mood today, I scrolled through my charateristics. Most of it, though is usual forward stuff, like I'm intelligent and clever (hear, hear!!), I show anger easily and so on. Suddenly, a point caught attention of my otherwise careless senses. Spendthrift. Who me? Come on da! You must be joking!!

But then, when I look back at those 4 jeans (3 Flying Machines, a Wrangler), 2 formal shirts (Excaliber, Van Heusen), 2 formal trousers (Blackberry), a T-Shirt (Globus), a shoe (Lee Cooper), a formal shoe (Red Tape), a sandal (Bata), some books (I lost count, but some of the new ones are - Calvin and Hobbes - An Authorotative Guide, Sum of All Fears, Best of Busybee - 2 volumes, Best of R K Narayan, Merrian-Webster's dictionary) I have bought in a short timespan - less than last 3 months, I had to agree, for once, with this forward.

signing off,

Send this mail ...

You know what annoys me? The list is quite endless. But the top candidate has to be the forwards which have this kind of message - You have been blessed with this lucky charm. Do not break this chain. Send this mail to 467 more people in next 2.741 sec and you will get some good thing for lunch. If you break it, you will get ****.

I mean, how thick can you get?

Apparently, these kinds of forwards are still famous with techies. I just got one such mail glorifying a white peacock. I sincerely hope the sender would get bitten by that white peacock, if all of them have not died of shame. Also looks like, the shadow of a feather of this godly animal falls of same side of light source.

Err, wait a minute. Say that again?

Also looks like, the shadow of a feather of this godly animal falls of same side of light source.

God help me. My drawing knowledge leaves me here. (Or was it Physics leaving me?)

Ok, for those who still believe it, here I am, having not forwarded a single chain mail in my 6 years of internet and email acquaintance, having broken more than 100 such chains, and having not received a single stroke of heart attack as predicated by quite a few of these mails.

Thought I cannot claim I have not received strokes of utter frustration in the process.

signing off,

Of Lies and ...

Why do people lie? Well, don't ask me! Or I'll have to invent one :-)

Frankly I don't know. Looks like, at times, when truth might effect in pain or unnecessary inquisitiveness, people prefer less demanding lies. I was wondering about the repercussions our lies have on our lives and of those surrounding us. Some times it might turn out to be nothing. You lie or tell the truth, it may just be the same. But some seemingly innocuous lies or indeed even some truths may have more persisting effects than you can ever imagine.

Just for example, when I was a kid, we had gone to visit one of my dad's colleague when he was hospitalized. This probably was my first trip to hospital. Well, second, if you consider the real first one had been when I was born. Ok, bad joke! To get on with story, I asked my dad why uncle was there lying on bed with so many needles piercing his arms. Because I was so young, my dad thought I might not understand what appendices are and it may not be wise to tell me the truth. So he invented that uncle was there because he had eaten a hair by mistake and he is there so that doctors would remove it from his stomach. I believed that story. So much so, that even today after so many years I nearly get hysterical if I swallow hair by mistake.

Worth pondering about?

signing off,