Dial - 101

OK...so power cuts in Koramangala is something as mundane as seeing cute girls/guys on MG road... :)

And as usual, when I returned from office one day I found my entire lane in complete darkness. Fumbling my way to my PG I continued the trail to my room and dumped my stuff. It so happened that there were just two other girls in the PG that day (both of them quite obliviously busy on the phone!)

I promptly lit a candle and settled myself in the Hall with some music. Slowly, the rest of them trickled in, each one complaining about the power and I was tempted to ask: "What else is new?"

So...the junta in the hall increased and each one was quite content to sit around until the power would come back. The usual time frame was 1 to 1.5 hours, so what the heck!

One of the last few to join us was my pal CG (name masked for obvious reasons!) she was quite vocal about the "stupid power problems" and took her time to scream her heart out to us on the same topic. After we managed to calm her down she decided to head to her room for a quickie.

Mai (reason for name: ditto), my other good pal and I were just competing on who had donated the higher content of blood to mosquitoes when we heard someone repeatedly scream: "OH HELL! OH HELL! OH HELL!"

We followed the sound and reached CG standing outside her room with a view through the doorway that literally gave all of us a massive heart-attack! What we saw was the corner cupboard with a mane of fire!!!

On impulse, all of us rushed helter-skelter to collect water in any possible container to douse the flames. After around 20 mins of frenzied activity we finally managed to get things under control. We then stood around in a breathless huddle and the discussion on the fire started:

HOW COME? - Candle
BUT HOW? - Left on top of the cupboard
BUT STILL...HOW DID THE FIRE START? - The top of the cupboard also served as a shelf to one roomie who had loaded it with lots plastic bags stuffed with odds-and-ends.
WHO? - Well, remember one of the oblivious phone gals I mentioned? She had left it there assuming that CG would be in the room.
BUT THAT'S STUPID? - Tell me about it!

Slowly the huddle broke up, each one still amazed at how someone could have left a burning candle unattended that way. None of us had an answer for that!

After a while the power was back and we went to inspect the damage properly. That's when I noticed that the bed that was placed beside the cupboard was also burnt on one end. Apparently, stuff had fallen down on the bed and in all the running-about one of them had taken care of that too. To make matters worse, the plastic that had caught fire had actually melted and seeped into the cupboard through the cracks in the door and burnt most of the clothes too. A scrambled inspection of the contents of the cupboard and we soon had 2 piles of clothes: BURNT and ALIVE.

Phew!

For that night we made places for the inmates of the room within our own and in other empty places in the PG. The smoke filled house felt dark and damp. But we did not dwell on anything. Sitting around in a group in Mai's room we joked about the whole thing while still knowing how serious it was. Slowly, we broke up and went our ways.

It was one helluva evening to say the least!

'Appy B'day to ME!!!

No...actually to my blog! :)

It's been ONE YEAR!!!

Gosh! I still can't believe it...technically speaking, its been one year and 3 days...so whatever!

Hmm...I've been kinda away from the blog circuit since Diwali...I think I'm gonna blame my work again. It's been really hectic since I returned and I am so tired on weekends that even my social life has come to a stand still. I haven't gone to the movies, no fine dining adventures, no new lounges to explore....sheesh! In short, I had become a recluse. I literally and shamefully slept away the weekends.

But all bad (and good!) things come to an end and so did this! My dear dear dear friend VJ had come down from Mumbai. And I was meeting up with VJ after 2.5 years. It's such a nice feeling when you meet friends (real good buddies) after such a long span and still feel like nothing has changed.

All in all, it has been a really good "1st anniversary" !

Cheers! :)

To a Rainy Diwali...

So...this has been my second Diwali away from home...but still the first one without new clothes, loads of home-made treats, crackers...and of course Dad's shagun money! :(

But it was still a nice Diwali as I had my mom with me! She flew in all the way from India to be with me on Diwali...and it was awesome! Agreed that I went to office, had the usual meetings, mails...and it din't make it easier that it rained non-stop for the entire day...but still, I had mom waiting for me with a sumptuous dinner when I got back to the apartment!

Hope everyone's Diwali was as special...and different as mine!

Vegetarische???

I don't know why there is a second consecutive post based on my culinary experiences! Maybe because I am the only lone vegetarian in any group of "n" people whom I meet here...wat is this world made of? Are there no vegetarians around?

Anyway, this particular episode has a prologue...so I will start with that. When we were en route to Paris, we decided to stop at Mannheim for a quick bite (dinner that is!). So we headed to the nearest fast-food store and started placing our orders. Poor me walked upto the counter and tried my best to convey to the girl that I needed a VEGETARISCHE burger...without chicken, meat, beef, pork, fish etc. Thankfully, that particular girl understood me and clearly explained that they do have a VEGETARISCHE burger with a potato and red kidney beans pattie! Yay! So I went ahead and promptly ordered one. When I received my order, I begged my friends to check out whether it was really a vegetarian one. They confirmed it and well, I went on to enjoy a really good meal. So...what went wrong here? Why did I make you read through this last para which has absolutley no twist or turn? Well, I told you! Its just the prologue... :)

So...now what? The main scoop of course!

Fast-forward to one week later...Me and my friend spent a blissful day of shopping and galivanting about the streets of Heidelberg and Mannheim. We returned to Heidelberg to find out that we had missed our bus to the Hotel by just a minute. Cursing and giggling, we staggered inside the Hauptbahnhof and tried to find something to eat. We saw a huge Burger King sign and promptly headed that way. Now, just so you know...this friend of mine is one of those rare vegetarians like myself. So being a good girl, I told her that we do get Veg burgers at Burger King and promptly headed the small party of two towards the entrance. We waited patiently in front of a queue of loud teenagers who looked more like the local urchins and finally reached the counter after a full 20 minutes! Confidently (but falteringly in my german) I told the guy behind the counter that I wanted "2 Vegetarische burgers". He looked at me a little skeptically and broke into a tirade of Deutsche...that was when my friend stopped him and asked if he spoke English. He flashed us a wide grin and this time, broke out in Butler English. So to cut a long story short, we got it through him and had our order processed. The bill came to € 3.70 (in total!) and I had this quick flash-back wherein I remembered chipping in € 3.99 per person for a similar order. I immediately started trying to remember all that we had eaten that day...

"Maybe because we had ordered pommes frites and coke? And maybe because we also took some Flurry-Joghurt..."

Before my mind could actually remember all this and answer them (to myself)...my friend was nudging me to ask if i needed Käse. On reflex, i said NO. But she was indulent with my diet that day and went ahead with an affirmative consoling me that: "giving in once in a while is good..." Oh, well! I went ahead with the wave and completely lost track of the unanswered questions in my head. We were served our burgers and we headed to the nearest table. Prattling non-stop about our shopping, we hardly cast an eye on the burger that we each put to our respective drooling mouths. The next moment, we both were looking at each other with an inexplicable, albeit similar, expression plastered on our faces. No no, no no...It wasn't non-vegetarian...it's just that...that...there was absolutely nothing in it!!!!!!

We set the so-called burgers down and looked between the two breads. Another moment later, we were roaring with laughter and almost out of breath! The so-called "Vegetarische Burger" had as its stuffing: one slice tomato, one slice Käse and a sad looking lettuce leaf...AND NOTHING ELSE!

So...wat did me and my friend learn from this? Never trust your half-baked German knowledge...and never, ever order a "Vegetarische Burger" unless the person at the counter understands and speaks good english!!!

How do I make tea? Let me count the ways…

I am sooo not a morning person. I hate to wake up early, unless and until I have some personal motive or gain behind it. Like, wanting to go to the malls early so that I can lose the crowd and the waiting…or wanting to have a leisurely and hot breakfast in my PG. As you can see, even these personal gain options are limited!

Taking my 7 o clock shuttle to office daily while I was in Bangalore was a Herculean task to me. How did I survive then?

Sitting through meeting that go on for hours and your updates are needed just 10 minutes before it closes…how did I survive that?

TP* during the free hour that we get in a work-day…how do I survive that?

Well…the universal answer to all this is, for me, TEA!!!!

So when I came to Germany and was finding my way around here, the first thing that I did was get a cup of tea at breakfast. There are no words to express my disappointment at the light colored brew that was being passed off served as tea. Being so used to the typical Indian chai** I found it very difficult to make my peace with the herbaly, no-taste tea that most café’s served.

It was slightly better at office. There were at least options and I could try my best with it. On my first day, I had an English Earl Gray tea which was better albeit along the same league as my morning tea. The next day onwards, I started experimenting slowly with each of the flavors available. Just so you know, we don’t get hot milk here and the only milk available is a bottled one or the airplane-sachet-like variety. In the bottled milk, I again found two different types: one with 1.5% fett*** and the other with 4.0% fett***. For the first trial I took the former option and well it was ok I guess. In the next trial I tried the latter one which was pretty good. And the next trial I tried the sachet ones which were by far the worst ever!!!

So each day I tried out a new combination…playing around with the varying the amount of water and milk and also the time until which I removed the tea bag. It has been almost a month here and I can finally say that I have hit-on one correct method in which I do make my tea every day!

Yay! :)


P.S: So…any guesses which tea actually worked out for me in the end? ASSAM tea!!!! :P

*TP - Time Pass

**chai – tea
***fett – fat

iShare...

I have loads to share with you. It’s been quite sometime since I found the time to blog…the past 3 months have been a roller-coast ride with so many things changing in my life.

Firstly, I am in Germany on project work and would be here for the next 3 months at least. The experience has been nothing but awesome. And then I have now completed 2 years as an independent girl. 6 months ago I took up a new job that has shown me what the term “loving your job” truly means. The journey has been a revelation in itself. My flight was really cool with a stopover in Dubai. Being used to the sight of the Chennai or Old HAL Airport of Bangalore, the Dubai airport looked more like a shopping mall.

So I landed here last month and I love it so far. The place is awesome and so is my apt and the work too! Some pics below from my first impression of the beautiful neighborhood near my apt building.

Coming to a new place and seeing a new culture around you is something that you need to experience to know how it truly feels. The first sentence that i ask anyone
(from the supermarket cashier to my cab driver) is: "Hallo...do you speak english?" :)

Being a veggie, I was warned by everyone to carry some food with me. But experimenting with the various, albeit limited options available for veggies here is a task in itself. The brezels, Döner Kebab, Falafel, Pizza, Pasta etc...are mouth watering if we just learn to train our taste buds to give a chance to other cuisines.

Oh yeah! One more thing that i have got a hang of since the past month is the German twang while saying "SO" and "JA" :D

So...Tschüs !!!

Guhantara Trip

'Allo !!!

I am back after a long hiatus!!!

Since I am a new-joinee in my new company, I was given the "task" of arranging for a team outing for one day. I immediately pictured a full day spent snow-bowling or go-karting rounded off with a sumptuous dinner someplace nice. When i asked around i got the "been-there...done-that" look! So i put my grey cells to real good use and found out about this awesome resort called Guhantara Caves Resort.

So on the 5th of July, 2008 we all set out at around 8:30 AM in the morning. The drive was long but truly enjoyable. We had taken my manager's car and another team-mates' friends car. We divided opurselves into two groups and piled into the cars. Loud music...lots of leg-pulling...this was how the day started and we reached the resort around 10:30 AM and immediately headed for breakfast.

They asked us to wait while they warmed up stuff and we set about exploring the place. There was a wide-arena kinda place where we were informed the Rain Disco would be held. Shortly, we were invited for breakfast and we trooped to the small bay where the buffet tables were set. We dug-in with pleasure and satisfied our tummy-groans before we headed into the indoor games area. There was a billiards table, chess boards, TT tables and also a carrom board. We amused ourselves as I tried to learn how to play billiards. Most of my colleagues had their hearts in their mouth when they saw me nearly drive the cue-stick into the soft velvety table. I guess they were real relieved when i moved on to a game of carrom (doubles) with my manager and other buddies. I never thought that i would be able to get even a single strike, but i managed to pull 4 coins for my team! Yay! But my manager's team won and i headed out to the outside lawns to play some shuttle.

It was sooooo damn windy that we could hardly play. We ditched that too and decided to play some throw-ball. That went on for awhile and i was too tired by then to even lift a finger. That was when i spotted the swing near the children's play area. I first tested it to make sure that it wouldnt give away under my ample build and proceeded to have a wonderful time swinging about. One of my other colleagues joined me and we clicked loads of snaps sitting on the swing! We then decided to be much more bolder and even tried out the slide. It was awesommmmmmmmmmme!!!! I had truly forgotten the wonderful feeling of sitting in a swing or going at full speed down a slide. It bought back some real feel-good memories of my childhood days.

After that we sat about in the lawn and talked for quite sometime. By then lunch was served and we decided to tuck-in to a good meal. The food was OK but i had expected more. The desert table was pathetically disappointing! :( Nevertheless, we polished off a good amount of the buffet and waited around for the rain disco to start. We then spotted a pottery wheel nearby and went there to try our hands at pottery. I had 3 trials...and made a cup kinda thing which broke everytime i tried to take it off the wheel. In the end i gave up, not because i couldn't do it...but because my other colleagues were waiting in line to try out...so stepped down gracefully :(

By the time we had all finished, the rain disco started and it was an awesome 30 mins that we all spent dancing. The music was pathetic but we managed to have fun by pulling everyone and splashing around some water. We then freshened up and we were served tea/coffe with hot pakoras. We polished off many plates of pakoras and finally headed out, tired but it was totally worth it. We had a truly wonderful time relaxing and spending time in the resort. It's really a paisa vasool trip that many corporates can go for and also good if you are a huge gang of friends.

So...after all this I am looking forward to my next trip... :)

Coming Soon !

No...I haven't given up blogging...

I'm just so busy with my new job...

Yup! It has been three months...I've settled-in quite comfortably...

But it's been really hectic and the same trend would continue for another two weeks till everything moves into validation...

So, I'll leave you now with the promise that I'll be back with a new post...very soon!

'Ome Sweet 'Ome!

Hmmm… :D

Wat a lovely feeling to come back home after six looooong weeks!!! This was more like a home-coming of sorts for me. I came back home to so many things. I will now list them sequentially.

Home-sick:
I felt home-sick after being home. The last time that I felt so badly home-sick that I actually had enough courage to acknowledge it to my parents was Christmas 2006. Man…how the years have gone-by! Seeing your father tuck the sheet around you before you sleep can really bring on the waterfalls. Parents should seriously stop doing that if they don’t want couch-potatoes for children.

Train Journeys:
I’ve mostly ONLY traveled by bus since I was a kid. Living in a place that is so near to the city (and where all your relatives stay in the same area!) kinda ruins any prospect of a train journey. And so I had this eternal longing to always want to travel in a train. The child-like excitement any such planned journey brings forth surely stumps me to this day! I experienced that very same breathless-and-wide-eyed-expression-demanding feeling as I waited on the platform for my train that was to take me to my native place for my brother’s engagement. It was just awesommmmme!

Watching ‘Chotta Bheem’* on POGO with your 3 yr old cousin:
I have this cute cousin of mine who is recently going to go to jail (read as: school). He turns 3 this May 4th. Poor dear! Anyways, there are 7 siblings on my mom’s side and he is the last grandchild in my generation. He can’t pronounce any syllable of any word with the “r” sound though he can phonetically pronounce the alphabet. In Tamil, we call it ‘mazhalai’. Its kinda like a child dialect. He’ll outgrow it very soon. So, like I was saying; he is sooooo cute. He came into my hotel room as soon as I had landed and asked me sweetly:

“Ithu than unga loom** a?” (Is this your loom?)

Awww! I just cudn’t help cuddling him. After the engagement was over, I settled in front of the TV to catch up on some IPL updates and he promptly deposited his cute-self next to me and said he wanted to watch POGO. As I tried to surf to find the channel, he frustratingly took control of the remote and punched in some numbers. Voila! POGO was playing. Kids these days sure are sharper! There was this show running called ‘Chotta Bheem’ and I spent 30 blissful mins watching this cartoon wherein Chotta Bheem reduced a bull, the size of an elephant; which was terrorizing the people of his village; to pulp. The entire 30 mins were punctuated with screams of “Ammadi…Appadi...Achacho”. I just sat there next to that little bundle and enjoyed watching a mindless (BUT on the cute side!) cartoon.

Plain Dosa***:
You know, there’s no joy in eating a dosa EXCEPT in Tamil Nadu (TN). I dunno what it is! I have eaten dosa in many places outside and somehow those made in TN just have this flavour in them that no one else can even THINK of aspiring to acquire. I guess, like my mom says, its something in the air!. : ) Digging into a plate of sada dosai (plain pancakes) with some lip smacking sambhar (lentils curry), thengai chutney (coconut curry) and vengaya chutney (onion curry) does make you feel divine! The proverb, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” is just sooooo false. I say “The way to any human being’s heart is through their stomach” :P

Washing Machine:
Heh...heh...heh... :) This one is just for the sake of the lazy-manifestation of myself. According to me, the greatest invention for eons to come is the washing machine. It's amazing how you can come home with two bags full of unwashed clothes and go back just two days later with clean, fresh, crip washed bundles. There's an almost euphoric feeling to watch the washing machine dish out clean clothes. Ooooooh! When I go to heaven, I sure will remember to thank Alva J. Fisher.

I wanna add more things here, but right now I can only rememebr the top-priority ones. I'll keep updating this as and when I remember. :)


*It’s a mythological character from Indian mythology.
**Room.
***Indian rice pancakes.

May I ask why you opened up this blog?

"okk
may i ask why you opened up this blog? i mean why do u blog!! "

Now, this was the question I got when I told my friend to stop by my blog and let me know his thoughts. This is the prose form of the chat (in first person) which followed this significant question.

Being a S/W engineer, I have these phases wherein I am so loaded with work that I hardly get a breather and then there are these phases wherein I have no work at all! So (as my first post truthfully proclaims) I got so bored in office one day that I started blogging. Plus, its nice to write about things I do/did and most importantly I get to exercise my creative writing skills.

But a blog?

Well, in that way I can get feedback on what I write and improve myself.

But do I really get the kind of feedback on which I need to improve?

Well, right now I just want the right kind of people to start reading my blog. But for that to happen I have to write as much as I can about almost everything under the sun so that some people will appreciate it or fight over it and that will increase readership and then I will write about the things that really matter. Things that will make a difference in the lives of others or make them feel kindred towards me.

When someone asks me something I can be so darn politically correct that no one will NOT not like me. But that's too much responsibility! Especially a brat like me. And a lazy one at that.

So, what follows now is the TRUE reason why I started blogging. And I can vouch for its authenticity with my very dear life.

One day my roomie asked me the meaning of the Malayalam lyrics in the song Jiya Jale from Dil Se. She just loves that song but being a Punjabi she can't (obviously) make head or tail of what the guy keeps trilling about in the chorus. She asked me and of course I didn't know. It was difficult to explain that I am a tamilian and that doesn't necessarily mean that I understand malayalam. And no, madrasi does not encompass all south Indian people. So then, there dawns this amazingly boring day in office and I just Googled for the meaning of those lyrics. I stumbled upon this blog. I felt very kindred towards certain things that she had blogged about and I was really impressed with her writing style (still am) and the best part was that it came across as being truthful. Nothing fakeish. At least, that's what I felt (still do). She is a typical S/W engineer like me and so I thought to myself that the day I get bored, maybe I will start one too. Alas, I was sadly new to blogosphere and realized much later that half the Indian bloggers out there are S/W engineers. Or worse still desi grad students in the US of A. So, on that fateful day (Ref: my first post) I started writing or rather blogging.

I was quite late to be initiated into the world of reading according to my family standards. Whereas my sister started as early as 7 or 8...I started at 12. But I fell in love with books easily enough. It was the one solace I had to escape from school, homework, studying and not be reprimanded. Even on the eve of a test or exam, amma would turn a blind eye if we had a non-school book in hand. We justified it as "a break from studying" and amma believed us readily enough. Because she wanted to. And there began my life long relationship with books and reading and this obsession for languages. And somewhere along this relationship I wanted to give back in a small way by writing myself. I get a warm, nice feeling inside of me when I read a good book. I feel kindred if the subject and character are easy to relate to my current predicament in life. When I am in one of my zombie-phases struggling for answers, I think up nice pieces in my head. The kind that only comes to you in those moments of profound realization. And the minute I reach out for a pen...POOF!...I go blank. So I've come to identify a blog as a medium to try in my very best way to come close to expressing those elusive pieces.

You may ask...why not a diary?

Well, a diary that ONLY I can read? Nah...I do a sloppy job then. I tried that once.

Now, a blog is a different story. I know people are going to read it. So it keeps me on my toes. I know I must deliver to a particular level of acceptance that should satisfy OR at least match with a good cross-section of the blog-reading/writing junta. So that makes me want to do better. Why? Because I was bought up in a society and studied in a school and college where external validation was the only means to measure my self-worth. And I carry this with me unfortunately in everything I do.

But to be fair, I am the kind of person who when/if left alone can get so darn lazy that I wouldn't even lift my little finger. And of course I am as clueless as the next person in this world. That's why everyone relates to The Sunscreen Song. If I had my way, I would while away time doing absolutely NOTHING. But if I do that, then I cannot do the other things that I occasionally also want to do and enjoy. I want to travel the entire world...I want to earn money, lots of it...then spend it like hell...I want to cook exotic dishes and make people submissive to my whims by just hypnotising them with my culinary expertise...I want to own at least ten different type of cars and drive them around crazily...also, I want houses in different styles in various decor themed interiors...I want to have a wardrobe the size of a Macy's store all to myself...and some such similar fantasies that most people nurture in their minds.

Ans I need a motivation that will make me want the above stated fantasies so much so that I actually do something that will take me 1/100,000 of an inch closer to achieving at least 1/100,000 of 1 of those 100,000 fantasies. This motivation comes in various forms, shapes and sizes. Initially, as a kid it was my rod-wielding amma. And to this day I am thankful I had her in my life. I refuse to think of alternate scenarios of my life without her presence through those struggling years. I did everything reluctantly...constantly shouting myself hoarse that I was a victim of tyranny.

Work is the panacea for the illness of laziness in me. Plus, money is a nice luxury. However meagre it may be. And the hope that things will get better one day. How? When? Where? What? are all questions that are yet unanswered. Right now, hope is the only thing that seems sensible to hold on to.

But I do need to be myself (confused, lost and seeking external validation) occasionally.

And so I blog.

P.S. : This post is dedicated to Sarad who was the brave-soul who ventured to ask me the question in the first place. :P