The Euro '04 was the first soccer tournament i followed completely. And to the surprise of the world Greece became the champions. So i reflected that, if an underdog Greek could win a championship maybe it is time i give it a shot. Well, yesterday i played football again after two years. Before that i have played it thrice in my life.
There is this tiny ground in our campus we use for any prupose. Football is no exception. Four bricks (goal posts) and viola!
Three minutes into the game, the ball came to me twice. I tried my best to dribble and pass it to my teammates. I can now confirm that round things are tricky to control. The captain of my team came to me and said "follow me" and started walking. I followed. After sometime he stopped and said "dont follow me". We were in inside our D. A subtle way of saying "you are not good enough to play forward... please defend". I took the hint and never crossed the D after that.
Soccer is a very demanding game. Five minutes later, i was running out of air and my lungs became dry. I politely asked some players that if by any chance i would fall and die they should tell my parents that the Greeks were responsible.
After the game, the captain came to me and thanked me personally for the two assists which got converted. After that my team captain came to me and told me in the very subtle way of his "will u be coming tomorrow?" (The answer he honestly expected was NO. So i gave him the pleasure. He was very happy)
Read "The Inscrutable American" sometime back. There is this time Gopal comments about the way american named the game `Football` when it has nothing to do with foot and a ball whose shape is anything but a ball. How true! Americans!
Today morning i got up and felt immediately this is not my day. Reason being, my roomate was dressing and he was not expecting me to open my eyes. What a spectacle that early in the morning. The lengths(no double meaning intended) these roomates go to improve intimacy.
So got ready and kicked my bike alive for the 20 minutes drive to office. No sooner than i reached the main road the heavens opened. Rain. Did i mention, it is official: my raincoat was stolen last week. Oh God! Why me?
Do u remember this. It was a day-time repeat of that. I reached office after 45 minutes later. If Akshay Kumar had a competition in the song "Thippu thippu barsaa paani.." with Raveena, it was me. That wet. I was shivering the whole day like i was recovering from a nervous breakdown.
At 6:30, a colleague called out "Im going to play TT in the recreation room. Want to join?"
I humbly replied, "Its raining."
He gave me the sternest of looks and moved away.

Labels: Indulgent me

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Well, I made a promise and couldnt keep it. Forgive me thy Father for i have sinned. But no more. Here goes nothing..
The year is 1998, i dont remember the month or date (typical me). Context is me going to the college for the admission. The place is Trichy Central Bus Stand(CBS is its better known form). What i can not describle or rather find words to describe is the expression on my Moms face. Let me try another way.. picture this.. in the parable Prodigal Son assume that the prodigal son returns as the President of USA. Can u imagine the proud-filled face of his father. Well Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V over my mom's face. She was more excited than anyone about me making into REC-Trichy, Computer Science (no less). I thought my virtues paid. She knew how lucky I was. Mother knew better! (Yes REC stand for Regional Engineering college and yes yes it is NIT-Trichy now.)
I lived in trichy during my higher secondary years, even before my family could move there (on Feb'98). But not once i had been to the campus which would host the next four fabulous years of my life. So as i was saying we(me & mom) were all set(admission card + certificates) with great expectations and got into the first Thanjur bus that was available. Only latter i would learn how lucky we were that day..not every bus stops at RECT(more on this latter).
Very little Chit-chat and 40 minutes latter, we set foot on a hot plate of tar. My first impression we got down at the wrong stop. I almost cried out "Salior Marooned!!" or something to that effect behind the retreating bus. All my expectations went down the tubes.
RECT was exactly in the middle of nowhere, a hot desert with no trees or anything remotely green around! Hello.. this is Trichy for crying out loud. A few miles the other way river Cauvery flows (or used to flow, courtesy Karnataka)! Them my mother told me this is not in the delta belt of Cauvery. i thought, yeah! quite far off indeed. We walked a few meters and i could see some huge rocks peeping out from the earth. They looked like rocks formed due to valconic eruption. What a pity, RECT do not have any Geology graduate program in the offerring.
After a hundred meters walk we are in the administrative block and a professor(i persumed) directed us to the where the admission procedure was on, the BARN he called it(interesting, i thought, bcos my first knowledge of the word 'barn' comes from a certain Penthouse book). Enter the most proud mother and me. I forgot there were so many of them, i mean the students + the parents + the relatives + the distant relatives. Hoping to eye some cheese/maal i would be sharing my college years with we ambled and sat among the crowd. Luck was always my foe.

RECT trivia: How are the RECT girls better known as?
Answer: Non-males.

Yes guys non-males, believe me. After careful survey over the lot, it hit me that i choose the wrong college. Not a good sign to start with. "Hey! Dont lose hope. This is only the TN crowd. The other states admission is still to come." my ever so shrewd inner voice assured me. How wring it was again as i found out some days latter.

RECT trivia: How are the RECT northie-girls better known as?
Answer: Non-males with a fair complexion.

Seriously, whoever said "Beauty and brain dont go together" is a genius. I still havent met anyone who can prove this otherwise(for the single girls who want to prove me wrong, im available anytime).
Mildly put, the entire admission process was extremely boring and all i got out of it was a single sheet.The only information the sheet provided that i dont know already was my to be Roll number: 1980057.They even confiscated my certificates for this sheet. How rude!
I stared at the single sheet for quite some time and then it dawned on me, I just exchanged all my efforts in life for the last 16 years to this sheet. I told my mother what i discovered. She gave me a wry-smile(tough audience, i thought) and confiscated it from me. She cannot trust me with it, she explained. How rude!
The journey back home, i dont remember at all. But i distinctly remember i had a feeling "It is going to be interesting!".
bfn.

Labels: Indulgent me

0 owls

Well, last night was rainy and dark (somebody call Bulwer or Lytton). Its June here in Pune as in many other parts of the world. But the point is that it starts raining here in June. That's right people, it starts. Stopping is a different matter altogether which occurs somewhere down the line. Don't get any ideas yet, it rains or rather drizzles like a baby pee. You better be a rain-lover or you'll have to lock urself up during these monsoon months here. (That is not a very accurate description of pune but im also not Robert Zemeckis nor do i possess the skill of Forrest Gump to describe rain.)
As i was saying last night after-a-really-pissed-day-of-work-on-non-work-and-tasteless-conferences, i was driving home(8:30 PM) in my bike (F2, pretty thing that female model who comes in the ad, yeah the same 'palat mare jaan' girl). Without announcement the rain gods decided that i was dry and i should go home wet. So they must have asked the babies who were peeing then to step aside and they must have stepped in "hand-in-that", because it started pouring CatsAndDogs(somebody tell me what is the origin of this phrase). As a natural rain-lover i welcomed it with a 'Shit!'. As it turned out i compiled a vocab of the collective noun for a pile of most animal's shit by the time i reached home.
I had my low-price helmet on. Let me assure you, its better that wearing nothing. It punishes you for not being attentive during the refraction and reflection physics class in your 7th grade. After all the reflection and refraction in the helmet's shutter flap, the twin head lights of a M-800 gets magically transformed into a bright display of a well-lighted-spaceship straight out of a Speilberg movie. I could only tell whether the vehicle is coming towards me or along me by the color shade of the lights. Yellowish means headlights, so towards me. Red shades means tail light, a vehicle along me in the vicinity. Thank God! i was not color-blind as my brother. I tried leaving the shutter open for a moment, believe me do NOT do that, it reminded me of another Physics topic, "Terminal velocity". Now i tell meself, at least my hair was kept dry by the helmet , on the bright side (on the bright side huh? comeon my first irony ever!).
I also had my expensive winter wear on. Do i have to say more. The only thing that wasn't wet on the coat was the zipper. It was all rust the next day. Now i tell meself, on the bright side, at least it got a wash after an year and i finally got rid of the sambar smell it had near the sleeves.
But the worst was still to come. What with the pinching effect on the hands, seriously? The rain pellets hits you real hard on the only directly exposed part of the body, ur hand. Whoever sung "Soft rain", come and meet me bloke! It hit on my nerve, both literally and metaphorically. On the bright side, there is NO bright side for this.
Last but not the least (probably the most often used phrase), the small puddle that gets formed between the legs and the seat. Now i know the etymology of the phrase "Wet to the balls". Every two minutes u have to do the stand up and sit down drill to let the puddle drain. I wonder what female driver do!? (please excuse the perv in me)
Rest assured, a bit while later after the initial rage has subsided and the softer-nicer clone of u takes over things take a different prespective. Although it hits u hard, after some time u tend to forget and enjoy the beauty of it, that is rain.
When you look into the beam created by your bikes headlights you would know how Microsoft got the idea for Starfield simulation screensaver. It is the closest you can get to StarWars space cruise for real. The mist like stuff that gets formed around the tyres of a fast moving vehicle. The ET special effect explained in detail above. The really small droplets of water that get past the helmet and sit on ur nose. Not to mention the adrenalin, because of the 80km+ velocity i do on the highway. Give me a slow motion camera and i give John woo a run for his money.
As much as i hated the 20 minutes drive back home, i learned to like it. Nature's way of saying "Evolve dude!", me thinks.

Labels: Indulgent me

0 owls

I dont remember the last time i did some quality work(read coding). Nowadays all im doing is to write some datafixes for database. Dont exactly need a degree of Nuclear Physics to do. Needs more like the IQ of a toad. Imagine this, u wake up at 8AM with a wonderfully feeling of going to code today which ur GL has promised the day before. U take bath, scent and even take time to brush ur teeth thinking u got to look best today. U arrive at office keeping that sense of euphoria alive (which is a feat in itself, considering the traffic and the rain), open ur mailbox: one mail from Development manager(DM) -not a good sign- asking u to go over the 600 odd stored procedures(SP) and add NOLOCK to the JOINs wherever missing. Let me do the Maths for you, 600 files * 50 lines each = 30000 lines, 600 Sps * 20 JOINs per SP = 12000 Control-Vs. The last part of the mail is really tricky, "u can complete it today". I cant fail him now can i. By the time i complete it, my left-pinky was acutly bent bcos of the neccessasity to press the Control key for a day long. I mail back to my DM at 6PM saying it is done and the files are checked-in. Five minutes later i get a reply saying still some files are missing the required changes. I run to his place and ask how could go over 30000 lines in 5 minutes. Apparently there is a tool available for that. Why not use the same tool to insert the missing clauses?????????????????????? And save my day, not to mention my favourite finger. I was never more aggravated than i was that day. Had to sleep with my hand under the pillow that night, to stop the fingers from twitching(pinky was vibrating like a tuning fork).
What was more disheartening was, during the last appraisal my DM cited that i took me two days and several mails to complete that task and that he can only give me only a satisfying rate. But he promised that there are more such oppurtunities to prove meself in the next cycle. That put in layman's words means, more of Ctrl-C and ctrl-V work ahead for me. My pinky started twitching!

Read on papers today, Clinton in his book `My Life` gave Pakistan a tough time. Give pak the finger i say. He writes he was that close to declaring pak a terrorist state and i happen to agree with him. Going by numbers(im an engineer), even if 1% of the blame that India is assigning on pak for cross-border terrorism is true, pak is a terrorist state. "There are other citations in the book that leads the reader to conclude that pak supports terrorism" the paper said. Pity that Clinton had a row with Monica Lewinsky to dishonour himself. Otherwise armed with his words....it would have been a different ball game altogether.

Okay people, i better signoff before my DM gives me a load. Moreover, Wimbledon also is on (apart from Euro). The title is French for "Better late than never".

No jokes. I dont feel funny today.

Labels: Indulgent me

0 owls

Indeed it was a poor performance by the limeys. Not only in the penalty shoot-outs but throughout the match. England's defence and their mid-field passes were as sloppy as Sean Connery's english, to say the least. It was only because of the protugese forward's incompetence to finish a goal that they could lead for the first 80 minutes. That said, u gotto give the portugese some credit. They came back strongly and suddenly after 82 minutes of zilth on their account. I would've liked to see England play the French in the final. It was not supposed to be. I felt low after the match, didnt talk to anyone(bcos there was noone to talk to, roommates were asleep). I still have the bad feeling (maybe bcos i did not have egg the whole of today).

Woke up at around 10AM and had to set a record time to get ready and drive to work. U see, there was a status meeting at 10:30. At 11:30 after the meeting was over (finally!), went to the canteen to grab some breakfast: was so starving that even the usual sandwich tasted different. That reminded me, i forgot to spit the toothpaste in the hurry. Damn.

Did some more of the usual quality work today. naaaaa...Who am i kidding? More copy-paste. That reminds me a nice T-Shirt message i saw sometime back.
"i write code.
i write code.
i write code.
i write code.
i write code.
i write code.
i am a programmer."

Couldnt read the newpaper today. So i refuse to accept whatever that happened y'day. But that reminds me a nice quote about newspaper.
"Its amazing that everyday, all that happened in the world could be fitted into 12 papers."

Its friday today. One more week is gone now. The corporate culture teaches u that Life is now measured in scales of week. Gone are the days when u felt like pushing time. No, not anymore. Time flies by in big chucks of weeks and months. Gotto start a social life soon. Any single woman in pune looking for a date, my name is Mathi and i only need a week's notice if dancing is involved.

WHAT!!!! Its 10:30 PM in the night. Didnt realise. 12 hours of work a day for this company is enough i say.

Over and Out.

Joke Time:
Q: Do u know why blind people do not sky dive?
A: Because it scares the shit out of their dog.

Labels: Indulgent me

0 owls