Simply Me

Thursday, October 18, 2007

My pet hate...

Poonam, my colleague, had forwarded this mail once. What scares software engineers... Is it ghosts? Heck No... Devils.. Something scarier than that for sure... MONDAYS!!! Thats what freaks out Software engineers... After the two day weekend, mondays spell the impending grueling week ahead...

Now I have been in KPIT since may... and excluding the training period, lets say 4 months... And in all of this time I never have been afraid of mondays. I get slightly bored when mondays creeps in. But by the time I reach office, I am happy to face a new week... Tuesdays.. there's still that hangover from the weekend that takes me through the day... Fridays of course end of the week... Thursdays just one day left for the weekend... And that ofcourse leaves WEDNESDAYSSSSSSS!!!!

Now to put it plainly... I hate wednesdays... two days since the weekend... two days for the weekend... Wednesdays are a complete drag... I keep glancing at the watch from about half the day and keep glancing at it wishing it would be great if I could move the hands of time and I could be back on my way home...

Today was another such wednesday... Sheeba, wanna take a break? 'Sure,' she said and off we went to the cafeteria... Still at the end of it was waiting for the day to get over....

And well now its almost over... Here I am at home, blogging, chatting with Nishanth, eating a pear... listening to Dil mein Baji Guitar and thinking.... HEYYYY... Its almost 1 a.m. ITS THURSDAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!! :)

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posted by Tejaswini Shenoy at 12:25 AM 2 comments

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Atlas Shrugged

Atlas, it is said, bore the weight of the sky on his shoulder. There are variations in this myth... Some say he held up earth... Well either ways, it seems a Herculean task... I never thought that reading Atlas Shrugged would be quite so difficult a task... I am talking difficult of mammoth proportions here... and not because the book is uninteresting...

I knew I wanted to read this book... I had loved 'The Fountainhead'... Couldn't see any reason why I wouldn't want to read this... and complete it... and love it.... My first look at the book though and I got an idea of the impediments ahead... THE SIZE OF THE BOOK!!!! 1000 ODD PAGES!!! Now if I owned the book, I couldn't care less. I'd take an year if I wanted and still read it... The book, however, was brought from Vishwas library... OK given that Vishwas kaka has known me ever since they started the library in Rambaug colony... that I was the youngest member to join the library... that he is one of the only 2 people in the world who is allowed to call me Teju... But come on he definitely wasn't gonna allow me to keep the book for atleast... well I don't know how long this book is gonna take me to read... OK let it be. I had decided to borrow the book, I was gonna start reading it.

So I start the book. From the beginning I couldn't relate to the characters... I couldn't relate to the sort of helplessness people felt... the lack of competition in their hearts... they didn't want to do anything because they felt pleasure in doing it... What is the point of doing something if you feel pleasure in doing it? As Lillian Rearden says... well I am not quoting her but the gist of it was, what is the point of admiring a woman if she is already beautiful, the real compliment is when you tell a woman who is not beautiful that she is beautiful. That is being human. (???!!!!) WHATEVER!!! But that is about how the people in this book think.

The book starts with the words 'Who is John Galt?' I am not sure why these words made me so uncomfortable when I read them, but they did make me uncomfortable... All the more because I couldn't understand what these words meant... Somehow though I couldn't not continue... I wanted to read. If for no other reason than to find who John Galt was and what the words meant. I saw some hope when Dagny was introduced... I could definitely recognise the woman who wanted to find her place in a 'Man's World' of railways... She wanted, all her life, to run the Taggert Transcontinental that her ancestor Nat Taggert had built. She is not afraid of challenges... she thrives on competition.

Her biggest challenge, however, is her brother, James Taggert, who would rather run the railroads to the ground than buy steel from anyone other than Orren Boyle who seems utterly incompetent and lazy, more ready to try and get publicity than really work for producing steel n his factory... Jim is the kind of louse who would rather lose all his money just to find happiness in the fact that his sister is wrong... that she can be anything but right...

Dagny, though, has other plans. She decides to cancel Boyle's order... it has been pending for more than 9 months or so with promises of soon... very soon. She orders the new rails made of Rearden Metal... the metal which is supposed to be lighter and stronger than steel... what Henry Rearden believes would be to steel what steel was to iron. Against all kinds of hardships and public outrage, Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggert fulfil their dream of making the Rio-Norte line made of Rearden Metal a reality... But it isn't called the Rio-Norte line... Jim wouldn't want his precious Taggert Rio-Norte name be allowed to be associated to the infamous line that is being built.. that the public is sure would collapse... The metal.. the line that everyone shuns... Dagny calls it the John Galt line... why not? The name is associated with helplessness... she wants to prove everyone wrong... So that's what it would be named... The first train plied runs at the speed of 100 miles per hour an impossible task till then...

The day the run is successful... suddenly Rearden metal is the most sought after metal... and Hank would definitely run his factory at full capacity to fulfil all those orders if it were not for the 'Equalization of Opportunity' Bill, which doesn't allow him to produce any more metal than any other factory can. Everyone should get an equal right to survive... if he can't produce the metal needed, then others who produce steel would get the opportunity to sell their wares... No matter that the steel produced by Orren Boyle, if it is ever produced that is, couldn't be as good and strong as Rearden metal...

Helplessness reaches new heights or should I say depths of misery when Ellis Wyatt sets fire to his own Oil wells when the Bill makes Dagny reduce the length and speed of her train to those at which other trains can pull and run...

All the great people philosophers, entrepreneurs suddenly disappear... their fortunes gone with them... no one knows where they went... whether they are alive or dead... nobody can or tries trace them...

I have read one third of the book till now. Tomorrow amma will return that book. I just can't find the time to read it on weekdays. I have told her to return it and get it back next weekend. Inspite of the miserable nature of most of the characters... the spirit of Dagny and Hank makes me want to still read the book. I hate leaving a book half read and I won't start with this one... I still have to find 'Who is John Galt.'

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posted by Tejaswini Shenoy at 10:44 PM 2 comments

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Bass Do minute...

I have never really grasped the concept of "Mummy bohot bhookh lagi hai..." .. "Bas Do minute?"... I mean when you chop vegetables long and thin (there is a word for that right? Julienne? Whatever...) then shallow fry onions and steam the vegetables and boil the water and THEN when you add the noodles, the two minutes start from there 8-| I mean like.. WHATEVER... that definitely takes longer than those stipulated 2 minutes...

The real concept of instant noodles came with those yummy Cup-O-Noodles... Boil water... Add to noodles... close lid... wait for two minutes and Voila... noodles ready WITH vegetables... How cool is that? And perfect for a midnight snack... which brings me to why I am writing this post right now...

I normally get home at around 11 and since I can't stand the food at my office I have dinner when I get back. So I am usually famished when I get back... Wash hands and ATTACKKKK... Today we surprisingly had a holiday (surprising because our office is so stingy with holidays, I have signed a Holiday register at least twice before entering and I have been there for just 3 months) So I had dinner at regular holiday time i.e. 8.30 pm and about 40-45 minutes ago, got ravenously hungry. I wondered why... then I looked at the clock... Well amma there is the reason, its the normal time have dinner... OK now the big question... WHAT DO I EAT??? Nope... don't want to eat fruits... no way am I gonna eat biscuits(that I had bought on saturday... in case I get hungry at office... Amma is awfully worried about my seriously missing appetite...) My ever faithful companion, Cup-Noodles (Nah no spelling mistakes... they changed the name) was out of stock at home (Why God.. Why???) So finally amma unearths a packet of Maggi Rice Mania we had bought in a moment of sheer mania on my part since I never am home during the week... (Thank God for small mercies)... No point worrying about those little details like vegetables, I am gonna just make noodles as they are.. no frills... Good night amma, I say... I'll make it. So 5 minutes later, noodles ready.

Now I sit in front of the computer enjoying the noodles... they are quite good actually... And surprisingly, this is the first time I have made maggi since I developed a complete nausea for that and had pretty much sworn off it*... And well I think it is high time I got reacquainted with my old old friend maggi... Naye dost aate jaate hain... lekin jo musibat mein saath nibhaye woh asli dost kehlaate hain...


* This actually goes back to the time Shraddha and I had gone to stay at Purnima's. We got hungry in the middle of the night or early in the morning, as you would prefer to consider it. Purnima and I decided to make noodles... Aahhha Maggi chicken or egg or whatever it was. Perrrrrfect. Vegetables I say. Purnima brings out onions.. chop chop... ready to fry. Any other vegetables I ask? Carrots? Wonderful... We slice them... In they go into the micro... Beep... Boil water add onions and carrots and noodles and the water we had boiled the noodles in and what do we have? Noodle soup!!! Great... Increase the flame to high... get lost in conversation and the maggi becomes well summwat normal looking... we dish it into dishes for the three of us... Shraddha eats it up quietly. We are still busy talking by the window... a cool feb night... the maggi gets colder.. it gets drier... it gets sticker... and feels icckier... I swallow the mess... Purnima can't bother... The end... Purnima and I decide... last time we eat maggi... And until today, I hadn't eaten maggi (well I ate Cup-O-Noodles and Top Ramen ;) Purnima stopped eating Top Ramen too)
posted by Tejaswini Shenoy at 11:24 PM 5 comments

Whats love got to do with it?

On my way home, was just wondering... whats with people in love?

I have seen people talking for ages on the phone.. literally glued to it... why is it so? What do they talk about EACH AND EVERYDAY???

In fact I have heard people get all gooey on the phone while talking to someone and I have heard people reduced to tears asking 'Why can't you understand?'... 'Why do you do this?'

Whats with love?

What is it that turns love in a need to posess people to own them? Why do some people feel the need to make the people they 'love' break relations with their friends and family? What is love if you can't give them space... if you can't trust them? Do they think the bond of love can't survive the person's relations with others?

Whats with love?

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posted by Tejaswini Shenoy at 1:23 AM 8 comments

Tagged!!!

So Mademoiselle Purnima has tagged me... Lets see what we can do about it...

1. Starting with something easy (n not intellectual, hoping you can answer something as !!!! as this) What did you have for breakfast?
- Today ya yesterday? Today... first gotta sleep. Will wake up and then will have breakfast..in other words, still tohave breakfast. Yesterday... Adhai Dosa... Come to think of it, shaayad aaj bhi wohi hoga

2. As a kid you were scared of?
- Nothing really... There is nothing to fear but fear itself ;)
OK change in reply... As a kid I was definitely scared of those horror serials on TV... in fact I used to run in my room at the starting score of the 'Zee Horror Show'... Another thing... those surgeries they show on TV... in fact even today can't sit through that. I mean I don't mind watching CSI wherein they have scenes like taking out human body parts... putting them in a mixer... turning them into... well you get the picture... but the scenes where they show medical personnel performing surery... freaks me outttt

3. Define the following in one word - (max. 2 words)

Karma -> (Not possible in 2 words) Will come back to bite you

Dictionary -> Word book

Kids -> Adorable devils

Your PC/ Laptop -> Chat relax


4. Something that you crave to eat RIGHT NOW!
- Nothing..... my teeth are acccccccccching today. Probably gotta visit dentit :'(

5. The last person you sent an sms to?
- Priyanka

6. Memorable Rakshabandhan gift received (gals!)/ gifted (guys!)?
- A teddy bear Sohan anna had given me... no wait the money he had given for Rakshabandhan that he had earned during from his band show... wait... the drawing Gautam and Gaurav had given me... no wait the letter Aniruddha had written in reply to my letter (Actually it was Usha Pacchi who wrote it, Aniruddha was a baby then)

7. What colour is your life? n why? (1 colour only, plz)
- White... Includes all the colours of the rainbow... VIBGYOR... Sometimes it keeps life bright... sometimes sad... soetimes sunny... sometimes bad... but thats life, all the colours together make the joys in life more precious

8. You see Dhoni buying a Tennis ball @ a Sports shop near your place... you....
- Ask for his autograph... who cares what he is buying.. maybe he wants to switch sports...

9. Greatest feeling in the world?
- Hmmm... not sure

10. Most disgusting thing that you came across..
- Anyone who has read my entire blog ought to know... a dead lizard in my house >:P

11. Your fav serial/ match/ film going on ... when BANG! goes the cable.. you
- Nothing... we have backup... if TV won't switch on, will read a book... agar totally andhera ho, will sing.. Na koi umang hai... na koi tarang hai...

Oh we have choices??? Fine lets see

a. switch off TV, Switch on PC n log in to Orkut/ Yahoo etc.
- Arre yaar batti gull to Computer kya khaak chalaoongi (Rolling my eyes)

b. Call the cablewala and "@#%$#@"
- Ohh.. ok.. cable waale ke yahaan se transmission kaput? In that case ... no use... the cablewaala's line is busy or out on any given fine sunny day... Cable udd gaya to thode na woh sabke aashirwad lene phone uthayega... Kya baat karti hai re...

c. Call up friends and meet at the nearest CCD
- Not really a CCD person, but best of these choices

12. English is a very funny language because..........?
- Actually MHINGLISH or KONGLISH is funnier :D ;)

13. Current weather reminds you of...............
- The song... Suhana safar aur ye mausam haseen.. Don't know why, first thing that came to my mind... After a hot almost may-heat like day, the nights are getting cooler these days. So feels great

14. Have you ever had a crush on your teacher?
- Nope...

15. 2 lines about this girl called 'Purnima' .... (plz no, ever gigglin, bit crazy, blogs regularly n all...that she already knows.... something that will make her go 'wow! is that true??'... No flattery, negative remarks accepted, just don't be rude :P, honest answers please!)
- How conceited can u be gal???? Asking about yourself? Wellllllll mez gonna write all sorts of good stuff... after all you and I are very very alike... ;) Honestly... a very sweet girl, one of my best friends

Fine... thats done... whom do I tag?

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posted by Tejaswini Shenoy at 12:46 AM 3 comments