Happy New Years...thats wat they say..hmmppphhhh!!

I had decided to abhor all worldly and materials sources of joy n pleasure….but then again …..screw the world… The new year has welcomed me in a totally shitty way. Its mainly gotta do with work yaar…sucks…the next line will sum it all up for u guys…I DON’T COME AND LEAVE OFFICE ON THE SAME DAY !!!!!! but I do leave and come to office the same day. L LMan…this new proj is suckin my life da…but then again I guess a guy has to do wat a guy has to do…I do eat drink sleep (not in that order) but then again the time of day I do all these is totally mistimed…by the way some interesting things happened so far…like a streak of joy in my sulky-loaded-with-work-life.Went for a couple of neat dates ;) again the timings were rather bizarre…early morning 3:00 am. Hehe…but still had fun. Slept in my BMW itself ;)Then was my journey back home to Thrissur to attend a school buddies wedding. Boy was that a trip…here goes…The friend in question is Manikandan. he was my school mate all thru 4th grade to +2. and he is another member of the royal mechs n he is in infy too and that too recently he moved to pune with me…neways we(our grp of 5 school mates) had decided that we wud meet up for this dudes wedding in Bangalore. The girl is from Bangalore and so the wedding was at Bangalore and the reception in Thrissur. All this was happening on the long weekend of 26th jan. also all our companies had declared the weekend long and we worked for a couple of Saturdays foreseeing this opportunity.Me n 2 other buddies from pune booked tickes in a Volvo to Bangalore. I had already booked return tickets via flight form Bangalore to Mumbai for the Saturday. We (another grp of buddies in Mumbai) had plans of partying that nite in Mumbai and I return in all my senses the Sunday after that.Well the Tuesday comes (26th is the Thursday the same week !!! ) and client comes with a change request…screw him…(forgive the xpletives…I mite be using them more often as we go … J ) PM says we all have to work the weekend so as to meet the ‘challenging’ work. Initially all said screw him. Then all gave up and I was like the only villain in the grp. After all I dint have to apply for leaves even. This was kinda my first really raw handshake with the technology too…Now the my evil twin convinced me to stay back for Thursday n Friday. I called up this guy n my buddies..they anweshikkafied dad, mom , grandmom and a few other relatives in a very ‘diplomatic’ manner and that improved my hindi n mallu vocabulary JNeways I made up my mind to go to the wedding reception on Sunday in Thrissur. So cancelled the Volvo tickets…immediately checked out the flight schedules to kerala and then dialed buddies in Mumbai. Got tickets for mum-kochi( n kochi –mumbai . the timings again were really weird but suited my ‘challenging’ work. Screw all.The flight to kochi was at midnite(Saturday 0035 hrs) Air India. So I kinda finished myh work by Friday evening and just left for Mumbai putting all tensions n ‘challenges’ back in pune. Reached Mumbai at around 10:00. still over 2 hrs…so me n a buddy went for window shopping/boozing/city sight seeing/boozing/boozing etc…again boozing…and finally reached the airport at around 11:45. still an hour to go. We were at the international airport and so spend some time there birdwatchin. Finally with the ticket I reached the nice looking air India counter to get my boarding passat around 12:00The next statement that nice looking lady told me just made me feel as if the flight just ran over me. “Sorry Sir, U cannot board this flight !!!! fuck her…screw her…wat the hell…I took over all the ‘challenges’ n cleared all the speedbreakers so that I cud reach kochi…keeping my cool(as always) I politely asked that nice lady wat the reason was like a small baby boy holdin his dick n askin his mom wat it was….She replied the gates for my flight closed at 11:40 (an hour b4 the departure) reason being this is air India and that its an international flight from DXB to kochi via Mumbai. I completely missed that point so did my buddy. Screw us.So still composed, I asked that lady wat alternatives I had. I was starting to open my bookof sorrow trying to make her get a feel of the situation. No way. That lady only looked nice. BITCH !!!!she directed me to another lady – the flight officer for that shift.Another not so nice lookin lady and she too was not so nice. Neways I went to her n told her the point directly…on her face…”mam, im on my way to my grandad’s funeral ceremony to be held in kochi at 4:00 in the morning that day. I had an interview in pune which I cudnt miss and that was y I was there at that time.” That lady(who turned out to be an evil bitch later) took a cell n dialed some number…talked some shit in marathi and finally told me that the gates of the flight have closed. And that if anybody cud open the gates it wud be the duty manager at the airport.Immediately I thanked that bitch n left to meet the airport duty manager. This time I landed up in a cube , well maintained with the window overlooking the runway. I cud c my air India flight standin down there. The guy was fat n short. Needless to say a DOG just made for the bitches I met before….i told him the whole thing again…he first gave me some chips…kerala banana chips…imagine…asshole of the finest kind…and then just said “sorry boss- nothing can be done.” I tried to xplaing the seriousness of the situation. He then took a writing pad with some sheets of paper on it. It had some numbers on it…these were as they turned out to be, the later flights that were supposed to land n take off after my air india leaves the track.his point was if he delayed one flight he wud ve to delay all the flights in the list...yeah right...i had to be an einstein to know that...but then again i tried to push my point. then finally he asked me if i thought these were BEST buses(BEST in mumbai ~ KSRTC in kerala). i bad mouthed him real bad just that the decibel levels were <20Hz. I just left tha cube gracefully and in a very composed manner.called the friend back n then immediately left to the domestic airport and got another ticket for jet air to kochi that leaves at 3:00. so again i left with my friend...we still had a couple of hours...boozed,city sight seeing and boozing again. but i made it a point to reach the airport at 2:00 :)boarded the flight. the jet hostess' were a sight for sore eyes...i swear....neat chicks. reached kerala and lived happily ever after...had no issues on the return flight though...just that the whole 36 hr fiasco left me with a set of super memories...im celebrating life.....the week after that i was in mumbai again for the bryan adams concert. he rocks man... a genuine crowd puller....no superfluous stage antics...just the old formula - good old songs. we had classy tickets and so we could actually =make out which of those guys was bryan adams. it felt good. After the concert we went clubbin at this place called polyesthers in south mumbai. another sexy place...the crowd rocks.and now its 12:05 am friday. i have just proved my above statement true.i came to office yesterday and im leaving today :) life is great...

Get together - Part II - God's own wine n wineyard ! ! !

so there we were...all 4 of us now in God's own backyard...we were welcomed by a warm family...authentic god-fearing kerala christian family.
i''l come to the interesting part. we woke up to a cup of tea in the morning. there was the head of that family, offering us or rather asking us whether ewe would like to taste some 'kallu'. for the unintiated, kallu is a malayalam term for kerala's own intoxicant...actually a soft n tender one at that but once mentored appropriately, it could turn to a killer....literally :)
so we 4 simple, not exposed to the evil of the world souls agreed to try this out of the world drink. that was it. consumed 6 litres in an hour. the last few being our own creations - we prefer to call is kallardi thats 3 parts of kallu and 4 parts of bacardi ! the end result- an awesome cocktail.

after we came back to our senses, which we did in a couple of hours during which we had our breakfasts and completed our daily chores, we left for the next trip - to kumarakom.
Do a google search for this place and u can c wat im about to tell u on this place. kumarakom alone is just another place in kerala beside the backwaters. but add to it its unparallelled scenic sensuality, its awesome fishing industry, its sumptuous food(read sea food) and ofcourse God's own wine - kallu. all this adds to a place that could equal any pattaya or bali and give it a run for its money. we hired a boat n lots of the above mentioned wine n dined on the exotic sea food they had to offer.

we were xperiencing heaven for a while. it started drizzling as well. the monsoons, the buddies, the kallu, the food...the whole atmosphere was just awesome...in a nutshell ...we had a great time. we returned back to his place and saw england go down to portugal and brazil go down to france. well i wasnt a supporter of any of these teams and so it was kinda ok. but the defeat of argentina still hurts my mind :(

then the next day we left for this place called kothamangalam where we were supposed to meet n greet a friend at his bro's wedding. we did that...again had the luxury of good food n wine and then left back for bangalore. me bid adieu to my buddies at bangalore and flew back to pune where life was to be relived as usual.... the celebrating mode :) :) :)


and just for the record, megha...an airhostess in the flight back to pune was really cute...actually sexy !

Get together - Part I - the doctor, the volvo and the cinema's

its been a while since i have blogged and the last weekend gave me just that panacea(dint find another word to fit here...any reference tothis word in any other blogs is purely coincidental !) to throw up a few words here.

well...like the IBM ad says, it was all a result of 'sudden change of plans'. there we were...a few kind hearted drunkards, all from various backgrounds n lineages but sharing the same passion or shud i say passions. the event that triggered off this sudden change of plans was the decision of one of our like-minded-like-passioned friends brotehr deciding to end his joyous life as a bachelor. so we thought this would be an auspicious venue for us to just get together and ignite a few old habits n memories. it had also been a while since we did get together.

the plan was to travel to bangalore where we would have a short 'coffee break' and then travel to a buddies place in kerala and attend the wedding.

me decided to travel to bangalore on a thursday nite, but instead of the usual route via air, i decided to stick to the grpund...took a volvo. the journey was smooth and the volvo too was spacious. it had just 3 seats in a row instead of the usual 4. so me n my buddy who came to drop me off(thnx to that sweetheart !!! ) had a few couple of ml's of pure unadultereated foreign liquor that like itself to be called Romanov and RoyalStag respectively. that kinda set the mood for the bus trip as i was to (unfotunately) travel alone till bangalore. so all charged up(or shud i say discharged...) i boarded the volvo. got the single seat after striking off some intelligent deals with some nice man. as soon as we were about to leave....did i mention that it was raining cats n watever....so as i was tellin u ...as soon as we were leaving, they put on the movies...man...thank God i was in a mood to crash...4 sick movies back to back...i'm sure i wud've thrown up if i did watch them...
the first being 36 china town. the saddest part of this movie was that i had seen it earlier...so me thought of using one of mankinds most useful inventions - the cell phone and wile away some time talking to some friends of mine. but the 36 china town dint allow that and u dont have too many options in a volvo. so 36 china town it was. but me had an iPod which my brother gifted to me after a year of persuasion n threatening .... so put it in high volume to beat the china town n went off to sleep.

after sometime, i was awake, reason being one of my fellow travellers had a tough time sleeping thnx to the rock music from my earphone...imagine...that old (looked old) man had no issues with the movie crap goin on but he had to listen to my rock music...neways i stopped it. and lo...the second movie was goin on...15th Park Street. anotehr helluva movie as per some higher mortals. i had the honour of having watched this movie earlier. dint understand much and so gave it some credit...thinking that it was something that appealed to higher thinking....watever...

i slept on...woke up in the morning...the bus had just stopped for breakfast. the place was a nice one. good south indian food and coffee. Got to chat with a gentleman who was a doctor with the indian airforce and actualy, he looked pretty impresed with wat i have 'achieved' in life in such a tender age...i know..i know...these are not my words...these are his words and i kinda agreed...humbly :)

we parted ways as he was in a different bus to bangalore. the trip continued and so did the 3rd movie...malaamaal weekly lottery. Gawd...crap after crap after crap !!! had to c this as i wasnt sleepy anymore nor did i have anything better to do as the charge in the iPod too drained away.
and then came Gangster...felt like shooting myself. thats all i have to tell about these movies.

reached bangalore after around 18 hrs of unparallelled entertainment...reached our home at koramangala. man that place rocks. but try goin somewhere to the city from there on ground and the city sucks...big time. again it was time to travel and this time i had the company of a few above mentioned like-minded-like-passionate gentlemen...actually 3 of us. that trip was fun. we chatted all the way about wat each other missed out on being at different places. it was very enjoyable and we also indulged in some 'quality gossip' .....

....to be continued...

a walk in the PARK !

this time we took to the waters...being amphibious does have its advantages.The destination was a place called Vile. I dint know such a place existed…let alone heard about this place, and that too in my own backyard – Pune. We were of us this time. all colleagues from infy. The mode of transport was by ground until we hit the waters. The carriers included a BMW(urs truly !) and a distant relative, an Alto.We started off from this place called sus road. Was happy as germany had won the battle for third place. But then again was sad that argentina had to go out early in the quarters L still hoping that italy would win the world cup, we all went ahead with positive mindsets…The first pic has our group xcept for me n a guy called sunil.
Well I was takin the snap n sunil…no idea wat he was doin. So we got up early in the morning like 4:00am (hope me wont go to hell !!!) and did out stuff(brushed our teeth) by 6:00. as usual we were pretty punctual to reach the meeting point at 6:30. actually there were 4 groups(4 vehicles…the rest two cars werent worth mentioning in the same mail where the BMW was being mentioned…neways for the record it was a Innova and an Indica). We all reached there n we were given a map to the final destination. It was pretty damn complex. There were lotsa dots …each dot was some significant place enroute…and thee toughest part was that all the dots were in a straight line…u call that a map. Shit yaar…we could’ve just had a straight line with pune in one end and Vile at the other. J JNeways we 4(me sunil, himanshu n hrishi) hopped aboard the BMW n set off for this unique n adventurous trip. Well we were all prepared for all obstacles . had all the documents ready. Including a Rs. 500 backup in case cops wanted some out-of-this- earth document. sufficient fuel n air…the BMW serviced recently. The only thing that cud’ve stopped us was a direct hit by some off-course meteorite RZS-230T but we had out seat belts on tooo. So that too would just scratch us !!!the best or one of the best parts of the trip was the trip itself…that’s a statement I have read in several travellogues. But in our case the best or one of the best parts of the trip was the trip itself…mite sound similar but it wasn’t similar at all. The road was really smooth for a major part…like 87%. Also for most part of the journey, the roads were flanked by thick greenery – be it in the form of forests, trees or village lasses dressed in green. It was very beautiful. Another good thing that happened was that we had intermittent rains – very heavy at times during the trip. Also for about 30km’s we couldn’t see wat was in front of us due to thick fog/mist/meteorite dust caused to a meteorite fall just before we reached there. But the effect was just awesome.

Pic(2) shows me destressing in between the fog !!! we drove bravely thru this sexed out weather n reached the destination in 2 hrs. took several snaps in between too. There were a lot of waterfalls too all thru out.Finally we reached the base camp. It was a small hut where the organisers had an office kinda setup. We got ourselves draped in all adventure gear – a swimming trunk and a life jacket ! man was I lookin svell in it ! we were taken to this evil looking river(the calmer face can be seen in pic(3) ). We could hear the roaring rapids from far. But the thought of us rafting thru these rapids took us forward. We were given separate instructions for rafting, rescues, swimming..where to swim n where not to swim n where its useless to even try to swim J we were tought the commands that would be given n stuff like that. For me , since I had the xperience of rafting before from mysore itself…all this was a walk in the park.So there we were …7 of us in a raft…1 being the instructor who was the only person in the raft who knew wat he was doin !!! 7 brave souls started rafting. 7 brave souls ended the rafting as we successfully anchored at the take out point 15km’s away. There were around 10 rapids in between. Some as cute as the rosy cheeks of a baby girl and some as wild as a drunk bull. But we 7 brave souls bravely manuovered thru these. The instructor looked real tired at the end though Jwe trekked for like a aouple of miles afterwards and reached civilization where a sumptuos meal was awaiting us. Lotsa wada-pavs n poha n onion pakodas. They tasted real nice !We started back from vile to pune at around 6:00. on reaching home I was so satisfied with this adventure. Like its not every day that one gets to sail with a group who dint know wat they were doin n live to tell about it J just joking. I was happy n knew wat Fabio Cannavaro would ve felt on lifting the World Cup. To sum it all up, damn…..i had a gr8 time

Reclaim ur life !

Just the other day this safari ad kinda tingled something in me. Just thought I'd share it with u. just that one statement – Reclaim ur life triggered something in me. I swear….
Like me wasn't complaining or anything before that. Just that after seeing that ad, my roomie started a discussion on that one line. Wat it means and how relevant it is in that ad. "Screw the relevance to the ad"..said I. I started discussing the relevance of that line in our lives. I mean just think about it people…how many times have we compromised some event or incident in our daily lives coz of 'work', no matter how small or big that even/incident is. I can at the least speak for myself here. Owing to project related pressures here I have at times stopped goin to play soccer, badminton etc. another simple thing wud be like I plan to call any of u guys and suddenly my boss comes and gives some work and then I put it for laters. Laters just goes form one thing to another and then another and finally I end up tired n sleepy in bed. It starts off with not goin one day and then it sorta becomes a habit. Finally after a significant duration of time of getting used to the new lifestyle, u regret it . damn…screw work.
Over here I am called a rebel, just coz I go to play badminton or go for dance sessions daily. As I said, I was getting into the software geek lifestyle where it was just a screen that was the source of all enjoyment in life. But thankfully this discussion just triggered off something positive in my life and I thought I wud just mention it to u guys. So now I make it a point that I do just chill out daily, atleast for a couple of hours dancing or swimming or playing. It has also done wonders to my public relations :p

Therefore ladies n gentlemen, I hope I have triggered some dormant grey cells in all of u. live life…work will always be there whether u are there or not. Just be sure that we r al making our lives worth the time.

Having said that I also have to mention that a compromise is indeed required when it comes to work life balance. It's a skill that has to be mastered. Can take time but hell… it has to be learnt.