Dummies Guide to Get Rid of Facebook Addiction

1. Open a Notepad editor
2. Now close your eyes and key-in random alpha-numeric jabber
3. Keeping your eyes closed or looking at your keyboard only - first hit Ctrl+A (to select the random alpha-numeric jabber text), then Ctrl+C (to copy the random alpha-numeric jabber text) and Win+D (to minimize the windows to hide the random alpha-numeric jabber text from your evil eyes) at the end
4. Log in to your Facebook; Click on Account, Account Settings and then click the Change link against your Password
5. Type-in your existing password in the old password field
6. With the cursor in the New Password field hit Ctrl+V. Repeat this for the Confirm Password field and click on Change password button.
7. Log out of Facebook and close the browser tab/window

Hurray you are one step closer to getting rid of addiction. Now you could succumb to your urge to check the Facebook updates by using the forgot password utility but as I said at the beginning that this technique is for Dummies.

Happy Browsing-sans-Facebooking!!

People are strange ...

.. because they have strange personalities. I was introduced to a a motley of personalities when I stepped into the gates of my undergraduate institution and even more after I walked out of those gates. The good thing about undergrad life is you pick a douche and tell to him/her about their weirdnesses on their face but outside the college walls everything needs to be packed in foils of diplomacy.

Hate those bad self learned guitarists who relentlessly practice on a cheap guitar with a flat learning curve. And if the person is an introvert to the extent that you cannot predict the response to harsh (but true) reviews like these then you are facing an ugly social quandary. First the the rate at which the strings are pulled is so low that between the notes Christopher Nolan could have create some breathtaking action sequences at just 2nd or 3rd levels of inception. Next every piece that is played has only 2 to 3 notes which are put into a seemingly infinite loop. Is he trying to run a Monte Carlo simulation of some lame guitar notes?? There may be more notes from his perspective but trust me they all sound the same - pathetic. Sometimes he mixes these sounds with his terrible vocals, only to add fuel to the unwished fire.

Years of evolution doesn't bring a rational sensibility that is assumed to prevail in human actions. What do we call those people who walk away silently from requests to group formations? It is hard to say a 'no' but silently walking away makes the who scene more awkward for everyone. People tend to unconsciously become over-picky on such small things only to make themselves weirdos.

All the advancements in technology in every breadth of social-life is making people more active on virtual social-networks but leaving them socially-challenged on the real ones.

When boys had fun

Spare me for the use of sloppy creativity to name this post though the events I recount here undeniably conform to it. As a student of an interdisciplinary program at my university I was denied the regular fall-term break as the business and the engineering schools had them on different dates and this was one reason for my overt eagerness to have a blasting time in the Thanksgiving break. Unlike my earlier vacations this did not undergo any bloated planning which might be the magical reason for being lucky enough to have had good fun for three days.

The lump that I had developed in my throat is slowly melting away as I begin to enjoy the aspects this new place, people, its customs and moods. The break also gave an opportunity for Sarath to break the virtual shackles that held him in Penn State and explore new avenues (i.e. Ann Arbor, exaggeration alert!). After the expected arrival and departure of my cousin's family I had three full days to waste. Sarath's suggestions to bring in some old partners in crime (I know not many understand this) to enhance the utility function provided by this break were unabashedly declined by me. The fun, though, was not reduced a bit as we had alcohol in many of its forms pouring in the living rooms, back-home style foods to devour,many under-valued-girls who had surprisingly turned out to be valuable-assets to gossip about (who said engineers don't do cheesy-gossiping?!), propose plausible reasons for such a mutation in girls, envy about friends with hot girlfriends, rue about our decision to/not-to form some past relationships and look into the seemingly-obscure future. After a very long time (actually it had been about 7 months or a little more but seemed like it was in my previous-birth) I had spent my time in things like this with an old-buddy so it bought back the fun side of my personality. It was also the melancholy tone of my daily schedule that made such obvious boy-group-fun seemed lot-of-fun.

Running behind dreams

I was unconsciously aware always that there is dissatisfaction hidden inside me. The daily rush, chores and chaos keep it hidden. But what is inside me cannot go unnoticed. Sometimes I face it and feel very very awkward to have faced it. I eschew the moments like this but as I said I can't avoid them every time. Recently I came across a quote by Emanuel Derman and it read as "Ambition is a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the present". This seems so true but should be taken very positively. It doesn't mean that the path to satisfaction is lack of ambitions. My understanding of it was that dissatisfaction cannot be minimized to zero as humans, in general, cannot be completely non-ambitious. But this dissatisfaction should not be allowed to encompass all the mind which leads to it taking over the peace and harmony of one's life. That said I realize there is a lot of dissatisfaction in me. I can see both the problem and the solution through myself but can't find the path from one to the other. I don't talk about it with people. When I am in such a soup I call many of my friends but never talk it out. Not that I am an extreme introvert but I find it hard to explain it to anyone. In my quest for answers to questions of my life life without questions I come across many solutions every day but most of them show that the previous ones were not right.

This hasn't stopped me from looking for a life like that. On this journey of my life I had moved from India to USA to pursue my graduate studies in Financial Engineering. This was not a small step for me as I had thought it was back in India. May be it is because of little time that had passed since I arrived in USA that the nostalgia of times spent in India hit me hard. May be because I haven't made friends as close as the ones in India that I feel very lonely here. May be because I always dreamed good about life in USA that I don't dream about my future in USA anymore. I never gave so many serious thoughts - so many times a day about my future as I do it here in USA. It makes me uneasy to depend on my family for my expenses and the fact that I am not financially independent even for my basic expenses makes me very uncomfortable. It is hard for me to live with the fact that I don't and will not have my own money for a definite foreseeable future. All this has been very tiring activity which I am unable to control it from affecting me.

After I stepped out of my flight I was not deterred by jet lag but I was wide eyed to capture every aspect of USA though there was this fear of lonely life lurking inside me. It was a huge relief to meet two of my friends in New York airport. My close friend helped me a lot to cushion a huge blow a deserted place can give to a new comer like me. I don't know what I would have done in case he did not pick me up from Detroit. As soon as he left me I descended into a state of loneliness. The awareness about the distance and time gap from people close to me had made it worse. I lived with a lump in my throat that threatened to overwhelm me. Memories of times merrily spent in Chennai and Hyderabad with friends and family gave a heart burn.

I am waiting for things to get back to normal with myself. All this for running behind my dreams.

Never miss a shocker

For the first time in my life I regret for not having a dairy. I know that I am in the age of blogs, micro-blogs but I somehow can't beat the concept of a personal dairy that is etched in my mind. It could be a fixation but I am helpless.
Few things always happen in my life with a definite pattern. The pattern is that whenever I dream of enjoying a good/service/place/whatever in a perceivable near future then ka boom it turns out to be a very big spoiler. Then it turns out that I stand in a position of remotest probability of savouring it.
A 'small' example would desribe it better. While I was planning my trip to US I had this offer of having an iPhone 4 from my chaddi-buddy. Who wouldn't want one especially if it is in the first couple of weeks of its launch? As obvious it is I had placed an order for one. I merrily announced this small wow-moment of life. The first hurdle was that AT&T refused to ship it to an address other than that of the current subscriber. So it happenned to be destined to my friend's place, Urbana IL. Fate had it that my friend moved to Dallas TX in pursuit of a job. When the iPhone arrived at my friend's home in Urbana, an intelligent Indian was asked the favor of shipping it to me. Now comes the street smart guy who sends this packet to me through USPS without a tracking number. A tracking number doesn't cost more than a dollar over the shipping cost. One level is having a service where people can send across boxes without giving out a tracking number in this day-and-age and the next level of insanity is my fate finding the guy who uses this service to mail a fucking $400 phone. What are the odds of finding oneself in such situations??!!
As the pattern dictates the phone hasn't arrived at my address even after 2 weeks of it being shipped. USPS ships them "ususally" in 2-3 days and yeah without a tracking number where the hell would one know where it is lying. Waiting for it without any information feels like shit.

One night ...

Till then it seemed like any other night I had been through after reluctantly getting stoned. I always wanted to say it to her but my inherent fears loomed large over my thoughts.

Fear of losing her as a friend or more worse is the loss of her trust in me as a friend. I always felt uncomfortable to decide my stance in a relationship. Being in some sort of relationship for some time doesn’t generate clues to quantize it into any particular kind so that it would be easier to take this relationship ahead to next level.

I waited impatiently many a moment as such to express myself to her. I had decided that night that I shall not let myself suffer this anguish because of my inability to speak out to her. I picked up my phone and dialed her number from my contacts. I chose then to sit at my favorite slant roof of our balcony to avoid any letdowns by people around me. My heartbeat sounded much clearer as my phone was trying to connect to hers and the rate peaked once her phone began to ring. It rang for more than 10 times without any response meanwhile I was contemplating her lack of interest to speak to me at that moment of time. After the initial expected number of rings each further ring was chipping off a part of my confidence. I had closed my eyes as a wave of such thoughts splashed all over my mind. Suddenly I heard her voice and it broke all those unsubstantial thoughts hanging in my mind. The voice seemed much sweeter to listen to especially after spending an entire day in the vocalizations of men devoid of romance. Surprisingly she sounded more enthusiastic than I expected and I sensed energy in her voice if not impatience. I always found it hard to visualize pretty women in real life getting impatient to talk to me. The conversation started off with either of us picking up the most expected ones from our questionnaires. But I was always in touch with my inner self and was determined to make it happen this night.

I changed gears and asked her one of my most intriguing queries. I could sense that she felt it all of a sudden out of blues but wasn’t surprised to hear it. “I wanted to ask you something that I had been thinking of sometime and you need to be frank with me.” There was this longer than usual gap before she said, “Go ahead, but do you really want to do it now?” I said “Yes. It had been weighing heavy on my mind so I thought I shall get my answers today.” “Fine with me” she said immediately.

Me: What do you think of me?

She: Hmm…what do I think, nice friend. You used to quite naughty in school but you seem more matured now.

Me: Ohkay. Let me tell you something. I had spent a considerable amount of time and thought about you since the time I had first met you. You were more than a friend to me. Your voice or your every message evokes in me a longing for you. You are one of those persons who created this impression very early in my life and had been creating it now. Recollecting you brings back the way you talk, smile, cheer, the way you start and end a conversation, virtually everything I had known and observed about you.

There were a couple of “Hmm”’s from her side as I revealed her all that I had in my mind. As I continued saying to her:

Me: I felt it wasn’t completely right to continue thinking about you and not letting you know all that is happening with me regarding you. I could have kept all this to myself and might forget it with time but in the end it would be unfair for the trust either one of us have in other.It had been quite difficult for me to keep thinking about it all by myself as it was becoming more uneasy for me.

She: Hey ravi … you sound quite heavy and serious.

Me: Yeah. Hehe. I hate making it so heavy for both of us. So I will straight away ask you, do you have any similar thoughts regarding me? Have you experienced any feeling as I had just said to you?

As I was feeling this pinch on my toes, I think it was due to the rough surface underneath me.

She:[in a rough voice]…arey ee domalu enti ehhe. (Why the hell are these mosquitoes here?)

It was Rapi who was moaning after an army of mosquitoes attacked his open back.

The intensity of the pinch increased and it was a mosquito bite that woke me up.

I opened my eyes with a haze to find the open back of Rapi lying next to me. He was squatting mosquitoes as the fan and the repellent got turned off due to power cut. I immediately closed by eyes in a fit of anger towards the stark reality I was in and adjusted my bed sheet to cover my feet from mosquitoes. When I opened my eyes after a couple of seconds to find what time it was I found my phone navigated to the position of her name in the contacts page.

I hit the call button and after a few incessant rings she answered sleepily: Hey ravi… what made you call in this middle of the night? What happened…are you fine?

She asked me these with her yawns terminating each of those questions. I reluctantly said, “If you are in a deep sleep continue, I will call you tomorrow evening.”

She cut the call and I too went to sleep after some initial uneasiness.

PS: Though the above story has a few real mappings to my real life this is the author's first take at a fictional story with a catchy-realistic-could-be-found-on-the-street type romance as the underlying theme. My inspiration for building this are my conversations with a co-IITian, ask her about how many lines I spoke to her had been used in the conversations written in the above post.

Events and Tags

• Trauma
  
  • Working, read it as being forced to work, till late Saturday and Sunday and being ashamed to say what I had been doing at work.
  • Not being able to garner memories of seemingly good work despite starting off with expectations of opportunity of commendable work and starting off nearly 8 months earlier.
  • Incapable of making any kind of constructive development either personally or professionally in spite of investing heavily in terms of time, money and thought.
    
  • Falling back on promises, plans and savings though showing off as meticulous in my journey to higher aspirations in life.
  • Superficially desperate but subconsciously not happy enough to try making new friends, read it as checking out anonymous girls.
    
  • Digging newer depths as more questions on my accomplishments keep hitting me, but only when I sleep and wake up sober.
• Cheer
  
  • Found a new reason to hate my work and move around carelessly ignoring the tasks.
  • Hope that I shall be moved out of my current role.
  • Hope that I will be less frustrating to myself and more charming to others.
  • I can't just live on hope but without hope it would not be possible to live.
  • I am more successful in building up a conversation with a fairer sex after getting stoned. Things are changing, though late, and the chemistry in my mind is spanking me up to not talk to boys at some moments.
  • Zen Estilo, oh I don't even remember its registration number. I am surprised that I haven't bothered to even look at its registration number though I praised its jazzy number plate and though I often look for patterns in others numbers.
  • Got back in touch with some old friends. Recently starting talking back to my way back school friend Divya after maintaining silence for over two years. Ego problems(?), whatever it may be, but they are all based on flimsy opinions.
    
  • Growing to be more rational with people. People recently have been quite open in commenting on my way of dealing with people. I unconsciously trivialize others opinions and many weaker hearts find it painful. I am not a baddie by intentions but I keep getting pulled off the ground and thus I do and talk weird.
    

These are the only two tags I could remember in life. Yeah I agree that most of it is black and white though it can't be. It's just that the gray just does not stick in my mind, it's just very volatile.

Deconstructing myself

I had decided that this shall be a long and ever continuing post, differentiated only by the names but not the underlying philosophy. But why should I be doing this here? Bluntly speaking I had seen many doing so out in the open spaces of the web, but I also have this gut feeling of this being therapeutic. Well I had grown up to not become embarrassed for citing such assumed, non-empirical and non-quantitative reasons for doing things in life.

And other important thing is I am writing this using Windows Live Writer. I was pleased to be swept off my its clean and easy to use interface, its WYSIWYG structure and the crispness it offers to the entire blogging process. I highly recommend this desktop tool for all those blog enthusiasts.

Lately I had experienced some major (I mean it literally) in my attitude towards various things in life. Not that this is something very unique happening with only my life, but the disturbing factor had been my inability to pin down the causes as bullet points. From being a lover of freelancing with my time for constructive things in life to being a restless clichéd employer, I see it all turning upside down for me. Hardly an year back I was quietly aspiring to take up a PhD, at least a master’s degree in my earlier love Electrical Engineering. After some brain washing, probably brain flushing, discussions with my mentor at Avaya, friends from insti, seniors and the world on the whole, it resulted in convincing me to being more monetarily oriented in the fast pace or short term while concurrently warning me that down-the-line these decision boundaries shall be blurred. Then I was riding high on bagging a job that pays lot, is finance related, where I could apply all the Math I had planned to learn for my elec courses and importantly that which doesn’t let me think which way I am heading in life. The few parameters I could tinker with in the last few months were only the courses that were offered and the BTP (the B.Tech Project). I was largely successful in bagging everything I wished for and from a birds eye view things were quite smooth and seemed to be on the right track. I was also hoping on the truth of a statement I read in a book that says if we ever wanted something wholeheartedly the whole world conspires to make it happen. The very fact that I am writing this tells that none of what I had planned had turned out to be concrete.

As with the courses and the BTP, I slowly learned it the hard way that it was all what I wanted to be rather than what I wanted to do. Not that I know what I wanted to do but I love thinking that this was what I wanted to do. What is it with this what that follows the other wants? The thing is courses and the project seemed dull, dry and did not showing me how to connect the dots to my future plans. Slowly the events I went through transformed me from an ace player to someone who struggled till the last minute to avoid getting flunked. In this struggle for survival in one of the courses I had to spend a sleepless night during the placements which had, I believe strongly, repercussions lasting till now. I had attended this interview where my dislike for its industry and location of the company was blurred by the money that was offered and the mental laxity caused by sleeplessness. Uneventfully it then took me to a place where all my silent fears came true blazing into my life.

The other kindred effects that seeped through my personality were being a bit too cautious regarding future monetary related activities, like earning to pay for my college, over-cautious about my life in general, like driving too slow, observing too deep into things around me and this compulsive desire to be as diversely talented as possible. All this in an attempt to find what really went wrong with me that made me feel like failing since a long time.

With the flow of things I had started working in a place where I have no one whom I could look up as an ideal in my interests. This place is too localized to even honor itself as international on paper, the things conducive for a satisfying work never seem to be in or out of my control and I am cribbing too much in life. There are many things that I hate about what I do daily but I don’t want to make it a hate blog against my workplace. I also have yet another silent fear that such seemingly normal causes and effects in life could transform me into something very unusual, say like the life of the protagonist in the movie Taxi Driver. I also think a lot about events shown in movies of such kind probably happening with me and my life, especially Scorsese, Tarantino style. To counter this effect I consciously spend a lot of energy to let positive energy flow ( energy is a potential and does potential flow?) into my life through my patient ear towards yoga, philosophy, my family and other such generally accepted peaceful activities.

Everyday I wake up to with a hope that things change miraculously overnight but find the same old stuff churning my mind. When will I like me, my life, stay in peace with what I am am and minimize the deviation from I want to be? Am I thinking about it too much? Am I asking for too much? Did this whole session of writing have any therapeutic effect on me? Yes, I can at least answer this precisely. But did it show me how to connect the dots to my future? No and I didn’t expected it do solve this mystery so easily.

Good for me, so should be good for all

I never expected myself taking in intravenous fluids like salines, electrolytes, iv antibiotics and stuff like that. As a child I assured myself that I shall not be lying there on that hospital bed gazing at the drops of these fluids like some helpless sick head, nothing insulting towards all those patients I had visited but I consider lying on a hospital bed quite insulting to myself. To some extent I am glad that I was still under the effect of anesthesia when this 2 inch long piped needle, that was a bit jazzy with blue and red stripes over a white backdrop, was pierced into one of my nerves. I dreaded it more consciously when it was removed from me.

Though I consider myself fearless for many adventures in life, people who know me certify so mind it I am not flaunting any wrong picture here, but injections and hospitals still send chilling signals down my spine. Even here in the hospital yesterday I was largely on my own once the formalities were finished. I managed myself after the surgery with cleaning my mouth that was embarrassingly oozing with blood, saliva and phlegm. I handled it to the extent of paying off the bills and discharging myself when most were asking if my parents were around. Well here comes the actual issue that I kept the details of the surgery under wraps as my parents would unreasonably feel too concerned about me and come down to my place where they could hardly contribute for my recovery. Yeah I understand that they can add a lot to uplift my morale but they would be straining themselves more in a city like Chennai and moreover I was physically fit as you would have had understood by now from the above mentioned chronicle of events.

It was also the effort by Krishna who had his unique part to add comfort to this entire procedure.

After the surgery I had to orally remain dry for about 10 hours and I had to plead the nurses to allow me get some water into my mouth and despite being laid off by the unnecessarily powerful anesthesia I was undergoing torture unconsciously. It was then that I imagined the plight of men in the conditions of war, remember the movies like Behind The Enemy Lines, Saving Private Ryan and you could add to this list now. Living on a liquid diet is also equally painful and this being the second time I am able to grapple it with more ease. I am anxiously waiting for a couple of my roomies b'days, that are gonna hit next couple of weeks, to thulp myself with the solid foods.

Yet another thing that was frigging me was the cold and this common cold had haunted me for a large part of my life. It was to an extent that I was never complete without a handkerchief. I could have been a little more calculative by not skipping the gym over the last week and avoiding things that were chilled but anyway it helped me learn how to prepare for a surgery. If the surgery I went through, which could easily be written off as a minor one, had to be planned to some level then imagine the planning that goes into undergoing a bypass heart surgery, liver transplants, the brain surgeries. I feel dreaded as I think about them and imagining someone close to me having to undergo such a thing shoots up my blood pressure.

Spending a day or two in any hospital clearly makes one understand how difficult would it be for family members if one among them had to undergo anything medically major , though one could write it off completely as just care, concern and probably their responsibility towards you. We cannot be completely irresponsible with our lives as our lives has a part that is our family, so it would be morally incorrect to consciously inflict them pain by us being careless.

So for all the folks out there be careful with your health, be it by driving carefully, eating healthy, maintaining a healthy lifestyle or whatever it takes. I could be going a little over the board here but realize that our lives revolve around doing things that ultimately makes the lives of our family and friends happy. We cannot stop the unforeseeable events but can definitely be cautious about things under our control.

Happy New Year and have a great life.

Right time, Wrong decision

There wasn't a time when a real time sound judgment was required and I end up botching up the scene, only to regret later about the better ways in which things could have been executed. The culprit in the most cases was my impatience and its derivatives like fickleness, short-sightedness and largely stupidity. The irritating phrase 'common sense is not so common' hits me to add more fuel to my burning ego.
I get conned by a clever beggar pretending to have lost the baggage on his pilgrimage bound tour to southern India and joining him are his hungry looking kids and females, together forming a family ready to con any gullible willing to lend his/her ear to their woes. I forgot to mention an uncontrollable factor called Fate, which I believe drives me head-on into these situations only to pull my feet down when life seems to be raising me with praises. I can't say what stopped me from helping them by taking them to the respective authorities or buying them the general tickets rather than paying them money. It is a feeling with huge guilt when I fail on things as simple as these as my career ambitions unsympathetically punish such faulty decisions.
Today when Ashwin drove into a bike which was parked at a wrong place, I pushed for paying entirely for the biker's repair charges. The point of contention is not monetary rather about paying for the faults. As we had paid entirely for the repair, which was not huge, it gives a picture where the fault is entirely ours while it was not. I could have fined the biker some amount for him to realize his share of mistake in the accident. This could have been the ethical conclusion but my impatience driven by the feeling that the amount was not as huge as expected, led me to yet another faulty decision.
The more I dissect these incidents various things pop to warn me. Respect my hardwork, only then I can respect the money I earned and spend it consciously. Patience - my mistake till now is that I tried impatiently various means to gain this. I first have to take the right path with a deep breath. Finally remember to knock the doors of my reasoning at such times.

Time flies by .. End of the final vacation

It has been amazing when I look back at my life as an engineering student and how the four years flew so fast. There were times which I hated and even more times which I cherished. Its the last semester that I remember the most about that life and it always had a negative effect on the vulnerable section of the student community, I belonged to this section. The only thing I did along with my friends is to pass time doing nothing. Watching the sitcoms, convincing the wing junta about a particular date for the job treats, paining Bomma, unsuccessfully trying out constructive activities like playing tennis, gym, swimming and skateboarding to convince myself that I am not wasting any time and smoking pot to relax after a hectic-jobless-holiday-like week. As a junior the only thing that I saw about the seniors was the way they were chilling out 24x7, and this made the unconscious-me to squeeze in every opportunity so that I could spend all my four years like that. It obviously fired back leaving the conscious-me a little short academically though the unconscious-me refuses to feel conscious about this fact. Well finally the time arrived in my last semester which facilitated the harmony between my conscious and unconscious self by allotting a way lot of time required for the B.Tech project. This probably was the reason that I remember most of my last semester vividly.
When my 'vacation' began after my B.Tech I planned once again to spend it satisfactorily, just as I planned for my final semester. Final semester is the last time before my healthy retirement when I would have a full four-month vacation-like-time and the time after the B.Tech is the longest final vacation of my professional life. I don't want to look back but it flew by leaving me with very few memories about it. For the most part I moved around Hyderabad with Santosh, Anil, Aswin and that is one activity I recollect first. One good decision by me was to travel to Vizag and it has been worth the kind of bad impression I had gathered to make that trip happen. The stay at Krishna's home, his niece AshiniSrithi, the locations we had been to and the amazing journey, all added up to make my final vacation memorable. The trio starring in this trip were me, Santosh and Anil. It has been accidental that I had met lots of people in this vacation time, meeting some of these people wouldn't have been possible otherwise. I had understood some of the dynamics in my family during the short trip I had to my grandparent's place. It was encouraging to learn how a few people in my family are so professionally successful and it is a cue many youngsters in my family fail to notice.
Lots more things happened but looks like many got buried by the time. All of the good times can't be as strong Santosh's b'day where everything except girls happened. I remember pot, booze, swimming pool and lots of like minded junta - that's all I need to say. Activities like shopping and hanging around are almost about to sink though those items can bring back the memories. After all the indigestible thing had been it is not going to be the same ever after. The fact that things at home would be same despite my highs-and-lows at the IIT had been a great comforting fact for me. But the facts changed with time as friends got spread out in the world. I am dreading the problem of spending time during my future days at Hyd as friends get busier and farther to reach while you grow to not being able to spend more than a couple of minutes with the family.
I was a little stunned/shocked when Anil came by to say goodbye and mention it to me that he wouldn't be back in India may be for another 2 years. As I reached out to shake hands with Santosh and Anil wishing me good luck for my job, I was speculating in space when would we all be meeting again like this.
It is time that had changed things around me and and I only hope that time brings in its own dynamics to enable everyone stay in peace.

A Midsummer Night's Vagrant Thoughts

To begin with something nice, though it is not my creation, I quote from one of my favorite blogger - "How good a place can be measured by how sad you felt when you left the place.". These were the lines I was thinking last night on a solitary smoke. I was consciously asking my heart not to race, shitting is better than a racing heart, though its awful to write down like that .

I was quietly enjoying my solitary smoke when this natural cool wind, out-of-blues, was blowing in the middle of a typical Chennai summer. Just before I had started out I made myself heavy with a touching movie Khuda ke liye. Great times like these are always packaged with stuff like a senseless conversation and I had gracefully lied myself away to enjoy the tranquility. I relished the smoke watching the quadrangle cricket through long rows of coconut trees at one side and the green foliage under the dark sky on the other side. I realized it is fun to smoke on a mirror because you see your image clearing up through the haze that you created. Just as I reached the middle of this cigarette a myriad of thoughts flashed over my mind. I always dreamed of disentanglement from any kind of relationship with places but no one can escape falling in love with ones own Alma mater. I am afraid of missing it more as I get closer to leaving it. The corridors, the mess-top, the wing-mates, all the eventful images flashed randomly in a fraction of time. I then begin to hate the taste of fag and resolved to quit it. Quite naturally my resolutions in the direction of my development had always been weak.

As I rush my selves towards my computer to write down all my thoughts I realize more important duties to accomplish. To actually love this place for the rest of my life I need to full-fill a few responsibilities, disobeying which the authorities may have to push themselves in to make me relish such moments for a little longer than the usual time quota allotted for a B.Tech student.

A few observations - Vol 2

Status message is one the coolest and revolutionary concepts introduced by the IM clients, I am more drawn to this concept by the Google Talk. I doubt if the creator of this feature had actually envisioned about it to this extent. Apart from conveying our status at work, availability to talk and mood, it gives a little more insight into the current lifestyle philosophy of the user - especially if he quotes something that he recently came across. All this introduction is to reinforce my finding of a status message which reads as: The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

The important things to remember about the above quote are the words 'wisely' and 'earnestly'. I had been hitting on such stuff from childhood and always read through it superficially. So I never ingrained such things. It sounds clichéd when you just say someone to forget the past, don't worry about the future and live in the present. It adds more sense when it is said to live in the present wisely and earnestly. Very rarely I follow something good earnestly and I always skim over such concepts in life. To live the present moment is to feel the finer details of life and learn to flow with reality. It also means to truly cherish, if not all events, the great moments experienced. These events are to be cherished because all these happened with us are real and thus should be very clear about their irrevocability.

[ This thought process was also partly inspired by the movies 'The Notebook', 'Reign Over Me' and 'Once'. This post could be because of this movie overdose all of which either convey or showcase the relations from a heavier angle. I doubt if such a thought process in me is actually in sync with generally accepted normality of humans. I would hate it being interpreted in any other way. ]

We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.

A few observations

I have a set of thoughts which continue to reappear and these are spread over the large set of my activities. 'Thoughts' could be broadly classified as the ones that cause the fear in me and those which trickle my fantasies to the extent of making them appear real.

I consider myself still an amateur and also lazily stay away from that little straining of my mind to aptly articulate my thoughts. Without spoiling the intent of this initiation I could list some of them immediately like ...

• afraid to talk to a girl who would be saying - 'I should go', in a conceivable future.
  
• afraid that I lose my dreams and would later have to convince my selves that it couldn't have been done the other way.
  
• concerned that I would be a victim of circumstances rather than able to control them.
  

And then I pondered over the above list only to find that the last two conveyed a superficial meaning and the first one definitely shows off how amateur I am. Strictly speaking I am not flowing with the reality and I don't want to be unfortunate because of this. I am, could be carried away by all these sweet movies which seem to exaggerate the emotions flying in a human mind or could be drowned in an illusory bubble created by myself. Reality is much more simple and its me who is making the journey difficult by entangling myself with this huge number of ideas/dreams whatever.

From the bottom of my heart I hate pondering on such issues and my old friends would feel weird to see me blogging on topics of this dimension. From the same bottom I couldn't help getting hit again and again by these things and to stay composed despite feeling this way would be against my newly updated principles.

These observations shall keep coming up. Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.

Calming the Chaos

22. I am trying to be fascinated by this simple looking number.

During the course of these 22 years I had pondered over various issues related to my psyche, personality and life as a whole. I had been constantly reinventing and discovering a lot of unsettled issues in the vast chaos of my mind. Every one wants to calm down this chaos and I guess its the zenith of the peace that can be achieved in our mind.

During this period I had rarely penned down my chaos thoughts and I fall prey to some unknown phenomenon that stops me from overcoming the pain of chaos. Lazily I can name this tendency as inertia.

A lot of chaos is in my mind and I could feel the pain inside me. All these years I felt the pain subconsciously and sometimes consciously. There is a very thin line between our conscious and unconscious thoughts in our mind. Fortunately since the recent past I had been able to listen to it in all consciousness. My heart constantly urges me to settle this chaos sooner as I could feel the slowly creeping inability of my heart to sustain this chaos any longer.

So coming back to the topic - What should I had done that would have calmed down this chaos ? Some of the solutions I had in my mind while I was growing up are:

- Would getting a 90% + solved it ?
- Would a 100 below rank in JEE solved it ?
- Would a CG of 8+ solved it ?
- Would at least a GP of 9+ solved it ?
- Would a job in the field I want solved it ?
- Would an attitude like - No regrets in life, Act on my instincts, I am what I am and I don't give a fuck, unbridled confidence, oozing enthusiasm and other such idealistic qualities added - solved this ?
- Would a girlfriend solve this ?
- Would understanding and applying wisely the Ayn Rand's philosophy in my life solved it ?

The worst part is when I had expected some of these things to solve my problem I ended up not achieving those things.

One of my profs said we can hardly be successful for 25% of the time in our lives but I find my selves at the bottom zero.

I finally look forward to read Gita and complete my project work successfully. Hope I don't fail in this endeavor.

Freestyler

I had been feeling sporty, adventurous and thus wanted to name this post as 'Freestyler'.

The consequences of such freestyle thoughts are that I had started to play tennis, I am on a course to build a six pack abs and had recently started skateboarding. Tennis and six-pack ventures were due to my long exposure to the happenings in the media and these two caught my interest majarly. Skating suddenly seemed very cool, and when topped with the thoughts of the possible impossibility of pursuing interests like skateboarding after my college pushed me into this sport.

It is skateboarding and not the regular skating because the idea of guys in twenties learning to skate is a little weirder (in fact it feels awkward when tiny tots zoom past me as I try to barely balance myself on the skates) than learning to skateboard. Also skateboard looks cooler. The recollections of movies like 'Steal', x games and other such funky stuff glorified this sport in our minds. I say 'our' because all the above ideas sprang up due to the mutual instigation between me and Bandi, apart from the self and external instigations.

One of the bomma-ism that came up when we went to buy the skateboard was the person in Sportus defined skateboarding as the next level to the regular skating. We mildly believed him in the beginning but later tagged it as a bomma-ism though we could be falsely accusing him of such charges. Also our initial experiences were in line with our judgment.

I end this post on the note of coming back as a skateboarding pro :p.

So far...So good

Long time since I wrote anything on this blog. Basically I was waiting for my bemused thoughts to catch something clear so that it would be easy to put them in words. Once I get something stable in my mind the circumstances shape up in such a way that I wouldn't be able to put them down. Well past-is-was-would-be-past lets get on ahead.

For nearly past three months I had been out from 'home' locations - Hyderabad and the Chennai .. I mean insti. I was on intern with Avaya Pune. It was a relief change in a way from a hectic schedule back in college in the previous semester. As the things kept shaping up I had started to experience the perils of working life. Though it wasn't a dog-eat-dog environment at the office but still it was a very major change from the life back at insti.

The intern started out with few inspiring set of discussions between us and our mentor. The intern experience would have been very much empty if its not for my mentor Venky ... though it may sound like a cliche but its a fact. He had been in the industry for nearly 20 years and still going strong with great energy levels. Other cool fact is that he is an alumni of my insti. After going through various technical possibilities available for us we zeroed in on making a tool for designing sip based call flows. I restrain my self for not going into details as a>I in all consciousness remember all the details of the work we had done and b> I don't want to turn this post too technical.

As the intern progressed I missed a lot of luxuries. Its the huge collection of movies of all kinds of ratings, free times spent with my gumbal, the luxury of my room, taramani and literally everything thats insti. At few moments I felt as if I had lost these to the circumstances. The one most comforting thought during my intern was the fact that I would go back to my college and have one full year of life there ... and after 3 months I am yearning to get back to everything I had at the college.

I had also gathered a good collection of memories from Avaya too . We had a few amazing treks here in Pune and not to forget the 3rd quarter party with unlimited booze and get-together dances. There was quite a good content of party along with the work. We burned the cash on many instances . Let it be for movies or booze or some hangout we had great time doing all these.

When we stay and work at some place for three months we tend to build attachment with the place and people. The consequence is the memories of time we spent there hitting us ... come on man I can't bear such thoughts as they make me dull. U need to enjoy the change for the fact that we never get to control it.

Going through all these happy moments there was a silent fear for my career . I know I have lot to slog for my GRE. I have to zero in on my final year project and other related fears of losing my dreams to circumstances.

We finally put a decent show for our presentation. Got couple of comforting reviews and I am pleased that a few were inquisitive about the work we had done.

At the end we had Venky coming to Pune to meet us. He barely spoke to us for just over an hour. It was much less time than I had expected. But its understandable as he was along with his family then.

After all these I am back to square one with a new start for my search for- 'what is my passion for ?'. I have to refuel my energies in this seemingly never ending search, overcoming the schedule at insti and the insuperable laziness.

My "Perfect" Reader

My "perfect" reader is not a scholar but neither is he an ignoramus ; he does not read because he has to, nor as a pastime, nor to make a splash in society, but because he is curious about many things, wishes to choose among them and does not wish to delegate this choice to anyone; he knows the limits of his competence and education, and directs his choices accordingly

Munnar .. 650 km .. Never again

I spent quite some time pondering over the title to be given to this post and I came up with the above one .. looks like some Telugu movie title with also a tag line attached to it.Well I would surely welcome some glorious titles from my esteemed friends who have made this all a reality for me.
This was yet another journey which cannot be erased from my memory unless something extraordinary happens to screw up my brain cells.
There was a beginning which was rather shaky, then there was this awesome middle-section and the end was a adventurous note.
I always get to try the worst on menu equipment and this was no exception this time.The machine I drove had been suffering from a few extrinsic[..no kick rod dood :(.. pheww] and many intrinsic problems.We had to run around to patch them up and Chennai gave us a depressing adieu with a rain and a jam.Well we crossed it all early using all our fundaes of getting past a choking traffic and then we were on road to Kodaikanal.Though a 6 lane express highway welcomed us we were still new kiddos and couldn't touch hundreds and there's this rain detracting our concentrations continuously.Managed to get across 120km in some 4 hrs with forced pit stops that sustained for couple of hrs.It was still raining and we took a hotel and the most obvious thing to follow is the aqua vitae and as expected it followed the proceedings.
It was Thursday morning and we had to cover it all till Kodaikanal by that evening , as we previously planned.Though hard to travel all over 400 km in a single day we managed to put up the show.My machine never let us travel in high spirits and it was pursuing excellence in bringing down my level of enthusiasm.I got really pissed-off of it at Trichy,I dumped it.I burned my ass for 325 km on it and later I took a bus to the hill along with Vamsi.It was quite boring on the bus and we reached there too early than rest of our friends.They followed us after some 2-3 hrs.
Though very cold at night the day at Kodai was bright and warm. The valleys were beautiful and awesome,but I dinn get the feel of 'real ' nature underneath the places except at one place where the it was a direct 90 degree 'slope' to the bottom and the depth was in km's and more importantly it had this ruggedness .
My perspective of nature is it should be raw and be fiercely beautiful.Munnar would truly satisfy it.
I came down from Kodai on a bike[..we rotated the chance for a boring bus journey to all those who dinn have their bikes].It was very quick .. we came down at an average speed of 40-50 kmph and then drove till he foot of Munnar in less than 2 hrs.It was 120km drive from the base of Kodai to the base of Munnar.We stopped at the foot of the ghat road and it was a refreshing break. We had the guns to smoke and plans made out to conquer.Not knowing the difficulties laid ahead us we spent laughing at the mundane lives of some of our friends back home.We started off and it was night 11 o'clock then.
The ghat road was real frightening .. with steep rocky slopes and no boundary walls for the roads that were being laid only then.The roads deceptively took us to huge heights in no time and we were expecting an early finish to the journey. The wind was blowing so hard against us that we were forced to stop and wait till it calmed down.The wind was so powerful that it managed to bring down the parked bikes off their stands.Fcuk man &*#$@ ! can we go ahead ?!.. we gotto move ahead ! We started to move and we reached a check-post after traveling for an hour.It was chilling then and we killed some time fagging there.The roads from there were really breath taking . There was a mixed feelings of anxiety,fear,thrill that were continuously tickling us from inside our stomach.
The very recollection of the events there brings a new lease of life into my routine.I bet none of my friends[..back home] ever had such an experience and in-fact I am proud of myself having one.No one would have traveled in the jungles[ at a ht of around 1km from msl] en route to a hill-station at times like midnight 1 o'clock..The dark and obscure nature around us really kicks the fears sleeping deep inside anyone.It was goddamn thick vegetation around us and the noise of a distant waterfalls is really a moment for the lifetime.The real fix was there was literally no human life in our surrounding for a radius of 10km at every point in the forests and valleys all the way up to the destination.
At one location we saw this waterfall which virtually looked like flowing down from the sky.The milky color of water flowing at night was real breath taking moment.And within a few minutes we were at such a height that the clouds were beneath us and there was nothing above us.[...My personal feeling was it was one of the most romantic spot I had ever been to.The timing was immaculate and it was around 2 30 in the night when we parked there.Any girl would fall for you if u were able to simulate that moment for her.U would get a feeling of disentanglement from the world you were living in.You would suddenly feel that you and your partner are the only two lives on this mighty place.. but unfortunately I was with Gigs rather than my dream woman]
Suddenly we were surrounded by mist and we couldn't travel as it was not giving us anyway for us to see the road.From there a long ride through the jungles and tea-estates we reached Munnar.
The return from Munnar was quite fast and except for a break at the waterfalls we hadn't stopped anywhere till we reached the highway to Chennai.Surprisingly we came down at an avg speed of around 50kmph when we drove up hill at an avg of around 15kmph.The daylight did all the help of course.
The place was a real beauty and nature was at its best in this place.No wonder they call this state as Gods own country.I am very much glad and feel contentment for having had this experience but deep down I am pretty much sure that I would never ever get another chance for such a wonderful journey.I feel very much excited mentioning it as journey of lifetime.
A little Trivia:
The men who were part of this were Me, Vamsi a.k.a Oral, Uday a.k.a F2, Harish a.k.a Tanker, Krishna a.k.a Kittu, Ramprasad a.k.a Rapi, Sanjay a.k.a Gigs and Saia.k.a Macho.
Tanker and Vamsi were the poor guys to be sick dicks in the tour.
Rapi was the cleanest one inside out.
I jumped off the bike of sanjay when I felt he would ultimately fall into the rocky valleys and in pursuit of saving my life had to do that selfish act.
Krishna and Sanjay fought for the max poses for the photos .
Sai tried to put up maximum fight to be adventurous when femmes were around and leaving apart a few exceptions he was successful.
Uday and Tanker went missing in Munnar , though we dinn give a serious search for them but wanted them back as it would be more fun only then.Finally it was co-incidence that we were re-united.

Been there , Seen that

Name any place which is acceptably weird enough I bet that we would have had been there and seen that.But you ask us to recognise us it with the pictures shot in light and we may give up.
We travel only during nights. We know how the place looks loke at night and no idea of its life in light. The most interesting thing here to be after the beloved Taramani ( ...our very own Tarams) is the beaches on ECR roads.
When most of the fellow students pass their time orkutting or trying to frag others down and a whole lot of people around us deep in their dreams we set ourselves on the roads to a unknown location.Seen the beaches mostly at times around 12 in the night.The pathway to the beaches brings in many vague thoughts which I cannot express.The dark streets with huge bunglows,empty always,on either side and the waves roaring at a distance.Had been to the backwaters and there was no one else except our gumbal.
Travelling on the highway in the nights with a lot of cool wind blowing across your face is surely an exciting thing but somehow its also brings in many obscure thoughts to me.It could be because of the mysterious feeling of unravelling the enigma of the night-life.