Beneath The Surface

Slow Internet Connection

2011-09-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

A typical day of my life in Shanghai begins with me waking up(duh!), getting ready for office, dump my laptop into my bag ,work, return home from work,undump the laptop from my bag, sit in front of the laptop till i realize its time to have dinner and then sleep. This routine was perfect for a guy who was least bit bothered about his ever increasing waistline until the dreaded happened. The internet speed started hitting rock bottom !!

Now what do you do, when the only entertainment you have after work becomes a pain in the ass. It takes all the time in the world just to open my inbox,and almost the same amount of time to read a mail. This was like the entire nation waiting for Tendulkar to score his hundredth international hundred with the difference that we can expect him to score anytime but I wasnt sure my inbox would ever open. It was like Anna Hazare fasting to get the Lokpal Bill passed with the difference there was no fasting in my case. It was like Scrat who almost has his acorn but can never quite cling onto it for ever and in this case there was no difference. It was irritating,frustrating and I haven't abused anything else more in a long time.Indians rely highly on google products and facebook for keeping up with friends and for fun.
But , China has other ideas. They have disputes with google and when u r online chatting wid friends using gtalk, it suddenly goes for a walk without any notice. I think they hate facebook, blogging sites etc. They dont even open unless you use a proxy. The time I have my dinner at and the time it takes to load a page are directly related. The longer it takes for a page to load, so much delayed is my dinner time.

I beleive in the adage whatever happens happens for the good. Now,as it so turned out I had to look for other means to entertain myself. I realized I cant depend on machines to keep me occupied. There was a whole world outside. I found the Lost Symbol sitting on my table and time just flew once I opened the book. I had rediscovered my reading habits. Reading had always been one of my ways of spending time from childhood, but I lost it on the way growing up. Now, I have started jogging, working out, blogging, started learning chinese from books, chinese colleagues. I used to strain my eyes before, now its time for those unused muscles of mine to receive some thrashing. Who would have thought so much good would come out of this ? But whatever said and done, I still cannot deny the fact that the Internet connection sucks.!! :)

Super powers

2011-08-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

After watching the movie Unbreakable starring Bruce Willis, in which he realises at the end he has some kind of super power(sorry for the spoiler for those who havent watched the movie yet !), i keep thinking maybe i too have some kind of super power which is going to just show up sooner or later.
Wouldn't it be just great to have some super power ? Like if I was just able to reach office in a wink of the eye instead of travelling through the crazy traffic of chennai for 35 min. Or if I had the power to remember each and every thing i had done till now so that i could just pick up the "important" document I had thrown away somewhere a few weeks back. Or even better, if I could make things happen by just thinking about it, that would be the most awesome super power.
But, come to think of this a bit more, I realize all these super powers are for my selfish reasons and in the end it does not affect anyone but me. I am doing neither good for me or anyone else. Having one of the aforesaid super powers, will just make me lazier than I already am. For a person like me the saying "With greater power comes greater responsibility" doesn't apply.
On second thought,maybe it wont be so bad having a super power. I might actually do something good with it. I might not be as irresponsible as I credit myself with. There is a definitely a part of me which wants to good for the people. Having a super power might just push me to do the right things.
Anyways having said so far, I am pretty much sure the future has different plans for me than bestowing me with a super power. But i will be waiting for my Samuel L jackson to turn up. It might not be a power to defy death, or extra ordinary strength but atleast something which brings out a super hero in me.

A Myriad of thoughts - II

2011-01-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

Recently, I have been thinking all kinds of stuff. For instance, i was wondering what if all the technological advancements we have made so far, it was already achieved by people millions of years ago. Something bad, very bad happened and that everything got covered up and we have not found traces of anything anywhere. Bad , in the sense that the world was about to end and the people then knew about it . So with their advanced technology and stuff they just packed about everything here and left without a trace. They moved to another planet and so we remain ignorant about such a life. The solar system then exploded and the whole big bang and stuff( or whatever caused the universe) repeated itself and here we are again. We are just starting from scratch again and the whole process is going to repeat for how many times god knows !!. I think i just reversed the script of the movie Wall E. Or is this the beginning of craziness. I am not sure what, but these are things I keep thinking.

And for about two weeks i totally believed that Dec 21,2012 is the last day for all us. Those were the two weeks of incessant rains in chennai. The mood the rains created as I sat at home and heard it beating against the walls and roofs of houses just terrified me . Those were also the times i read a lot of theories of how the world would end. I did a bit of a googling on the topic and the comments in many of the forums gave an impression that the 2012 theory was correct and could not be just ignored. But after the rains, I have been feeling pretty good and and i realized that there was nothing one could do about that.

But then i put my two thoughts together . If the world was really going to end by 2012, we really havent advanced enough to just pack up our stuff and go somewhere else like our foreforeforeforefore fathers and mothers did.. So i guess history wouldnt be repeated and my two thoughts are just loads of crap or an indication to seriously hope that the world wouldnt end by 2012.
Or maybe its time to see a doctor.. :)

Anyways, i am done with this . Share your crazy thoughts if any.

S4 57,58,60 CNF

2010-02-28T09:24:00.000-08:00

I am going to write about an incident that happened many years ago. Yes,it does involve a train journey.
We had gone to kerala to attend my grandmom's 80th bday celebs.After the celebrations , we got ready(my father,mother and me) for the journey back home. My mother, tensed as she is everytime before a journey made us reach the railway station an hour early before the actual arrival of the train. We sat at the station just talking about the day and having some quality family time.Now, we were waiting for the 9.00 PM Alleppey train to arrive. And we were there by 8 itself. So we had a lot of time to chit chat. Though we had around 1 hour with us, we didn't give the ticket a second look.
By 8.45 , Chennai Mail came and left. With its departure, we got up and walked to the coach of the train before it arrived. The coach was S4 and the seats were 57,58,60 CNF. When the train arrived, we got in and located our seats. In our seats were an elderly couple. We dedided to let them know of the ownership of the seats they were sitting in after we finshed our dinner. We slowly had our dinner and we let them know of our intention to sleep where they were sitting. That's when they told us that the seats belonged to them. My father quickly took out the ticket and verified again. It was the same number as them. We both had identical tickets. Then we checked the dates. The date too was correct.Since. their ticket was already verified by the TTE, my father went searching for him.
My father found him and told him the problem. The TTE looked at our ticket and then looked at my father and said "You can pay a fine and then travel". My father was taken aback. He asked why should we pay the fine.It is the mistake of the railway reservation system.The TTE pointed to the train name to my father. He then realised that we had taken the wromg train!!!! We were supposed to board the 8.45 Chennai MAil and not the 9.00 PM Allppey Express. Not knowing what to do, my father asked for our next step. We weren't ready to go to the general compartent.So we ended up doing a favour to the TTE and he aranged three berths for us ovrenight. We apologised to the elderly couple and slept thnking what a fool we had made of ourselves.
You might be thinking that this might have been one of our first journeys by train, We had been travelling on the train for 25 years before this incident and this had never happened to any one of us. And this didn happen many years ago. It happened just two weeks back. I didn want u guys thinking how careless we were until the end of this post...
I don't understand how on earth we boarded the wrong train. Anyways we learnt our lesson that day.

Impatient

2009-09-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

I have become so impatient with myself and my life that i don't have the patience to finish off something that i started. I don't even have the patience to finish off this...

What next?

2009-04-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

I was wondering how the basic necessities needed by man has changed over centuries. I can't guess what's next.
Here's a table that I have made and believe is almost accurate to a certain degree.

When I said my table is accurate I didn't mentions I would not exaggerate just to make a joke out of it.Maybe some of the facts aren't true but most of them are.You are welcome to fill in the gaps.
If ever an ancient man was to visit the 21st century he would be thinking "hey it wasn't like this when i left this place."
So what's next???

(no subject)

2009-04-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

The last i posted something on this blog was around one month back. Then I had a lot of topics in my mind that i wanted to write about.Those were the days I wasn't subjected to much work at office.But then as things turn out since then I haven't reached home before ten.The moment i come home I have dinner and i am off to bed for around 8 hrs before i force myself out of bed for another day of 10 grueling hours.I don't seem to be working much but I always end up reaching home late. Anyways what I was coming to say was all those topics I had in my mind seem to have gone for a long walk.think as hard I may can I can't seem to remember. Since I am without a topic I again turn the wheel around.I started with my first ever post not knowing what to write about.I have reached my starting point again. Maybe this post too I shall write about what I should write about.
Anyways the latest thing to happen in my life is revisiting college for convocation. But the best part about me going to convocation is that I didn't go for convocation. I never attended the function and I didn't receive my certificate.this may bring satisfaction to some people who wanted to come but were unable to do so. I got only a day's leave for the convocation.Only the monday the programme was conducted. the function started at 5 and my train was at 5.30 in the evening. There was no way I could stay for the programme. But it was worth a visit. I met people knowing that this might be the last time our life crossed paths. Bidding farewell to people on that day was as overwhelming as on the last day of college.But then thre was a consolation on the last day of college.We all knew there would be a convocation and that we would be able to meet up back again. But now with the convocation over another chance of reliving college memories seems bleak. Maybe we should have a get together soon.Say 2 - 3 yrs from now. We will all be settled and we can make it grand. It's a nice feeling already thnking about it. Let's wait and watch what happens.
I started this post not knowing what to write but it looks I did have a topic in mind. Anyways let the topic be as it is.

A myriad of thoughts

2009-03-01T10:44:00.000-08:00

During my stay in gurgaon where I underwent training for aricent we kept aside a saturday to tour Delhi which is just 45 min away from Gurgaon. There were too many places to cover in just one day so we decided to go the prominent places alone which again were too many but we managed to cover those we planned in time. I am not going to describe the places I visited in Delhi but a thought I had when I visited some of the places.

Delhi , the capital of the Pandavas , the Mughal Kings and finally of free Republic Independent India is worth a visit with it’s vibrant atmosphere and all the architectural majesty of the golden eras of Ancient, Medieval and Modern India. We visited Qutb Minar, Humayun’s tomb, Red Fort, Lotus Temple, Akshar Dham, India Gate, Birla Temple and a few other places which I don’t remember. When I was in these places I wondered how it would have been to be ruled by a king. How different it would have been to live during the times of Akbar or ChandraGupta Maurya., both , eras of prosperity and historical importance. I would love to live in the past. I don’t know why but the very thought excites me. It would have been wonderful to live amidst all drum beating, people gathering around trees to hold discussions, to scream “Our king his majesty Akbar is visiting our town” , to breathe in oxygen from a pollution free atmosphere, to be present when the history of our glorious nation was being made , to sleep peacefully knowing we are being ruled by a good leader in Akbar or ChandraGupta Maurya or Ashoka.. To live in a time when there was prosperity, peace and satisfaction, law and order in the kingdom. To jump over crowds to have that one little look at the lovely little princess(I don’t think there were any dearth of “bird” watchers anytime in our history). To stay away from all complexities of the present world. It would have been simpler, easier to live then. To know that there were people who valued human life and who didn’t harass or kill people in the name of god or religion.

I suggested my thought to a friend who was with me at that time. He didn’t share my opinion. He didn’t want to be ruled by a king. There was nothing people could do if the king turned out to be the devil’s incarnation. He said atleast in a democracy people could oust the leader if he wasn’t a good one, I didn’t tell him anything then. But it got me thinking. So how different would it have been to be ruled by a bad king. Not much different from now. The government plunders from the people, leaves them in distress, doesn’t care about the people .I don’t see prosperity everywhere I go. We haven’t had a good leader since we declared ourselves a republic and a democracy. To be ruled by a bad king would be like living in the present. So my fantasy to go back in time and be ruled by a leader worth his position doesn’t look all that unreasonable.

However incorrect I might have been incorrect historically in this blog I know one thing for sure, if the world hadn’t had a rich history as it has now the world would have been a bland place to live in. I can’t share tables with people who say there is no use looking into the past. There is so much to be learnt from our history. History teaches us never to commit the mistakes our forefathers had done . It’s a teacher I would have missed a lot had it vanished one fine day. I love dwelling in the past. Maybe I should have done B.A History instead of B,Tech EEE and become an archaeologist. But I believe everything that has happened has happened for the good. Long live my belief. He is my king now.

P.S: I know some of the lines don’t have any relation. But there were too many thoughts pouring in at the same time into my head and I couldn’t help resist put it on paper ,oops blog.

If I ever die young..

2009-01-29T06:45:00.001-08:00

Although the title seems a bit poetic or a line from a tragic or romantic drama I am not going to write down a poem or the dialogues of a drama. Infact this title seemed apt for what I am about to write which is if I ever die young it will be due to the following reasons:

a) The relentless,inconsiderate traffic of chennai

Maybe I haven't seen it all. But definitely chennai traffic is as dangerous as the others. Everytime I ride my two wheeler for work or back from work I am either constantly abusing road users(in my mind of course!!) or thanking god for keeping me alive. People got no sense of direction. They just come in from all directions. People blame the others even if the mistake was theirs. Maybe this happens all around the world. But one should learn to own one's own mistakes(something the corporate world always tells you to keep in mind when there is an issue with the customer and i am intentionally or unintentionally part of it. )

When I am on the road riding I always think my death would be either due to a mad bus driver or due to the various potholes which become visible to the naked eye once the vehicle(four wheeler) ahead of you passes over it . Maybe one of the reasons why I am writing on this topic is that I have thought about death a lot many times after I started riding.

Anyways there are two things I would have liked to say if I ever die in this manner

i) F*** all those asses on the road

ii)Thank you god for letting me live this long.

b) By a fan

I mean the fan which rotates above our heads.

I have had this fear after a fan actually fell on my head when I was in my 12th std. I was sitting late into the night doing something which I can't remember when suddenly something hard falls on my head. I was in a daze and then I realized the fan above my head had fallen onto my head. Lucky for me it was the leaf which hit me not the body of the fan which would have cracked open my head. My house owner who stayed above my house told me they heard a loud noise but never assumed it would have been a fan and that I had a near escape. And the best part was I had to wake my parents up who were in the next room to tell them I got hit on my head by the fan.They hadn' t even heard the noise. Since then I have had a fear of the fan. I always try not sleeping below the fan. I have a phobia of fans or in general things that rotate above my head. I googled to find a word for this but I didn't. But i found many others. Just chck them out. here is the link..http://phobialist.com/...I hope they are true not just made up..Some of the phobias are really funny.

Think i will just coin one for this - rotato-thudphobia which means fear of rotating devices above one's head..

c) Crushed by the building i live in

I started to feel more strongly about this after the Delhi accident. The building i stay in too , is quite old and it leaks in places when it rains. Am not sure how much longer the building will stay up. Everytime i look at the ceiling of my room, i wonder how is it still up. I am just thankful it is. But i cant help wondering.
Hopefully it never falls down ever till Dec 21, 2012.

I have just found out three reasons for now. I will keep adding to the list as I unravel more about living in this world.

back for good??

2009-01-01T22:29:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I said goodbye to blogging. When i was at college there were so many things to do which made me feel blogging as utterly unimportant and not the correct medium to express feelings and opinions. As i sit at home, far away from away college and friends ,caught in the tentacles of the corporate world ignorant of whether i will still be part of it after a month or so, I have come to believe blogging is one way to beat boredom.
So maybe until I find another way to keep myself occupied i have decided to resume blogging. It feels good to blog down thoughts even though i feel i don't have to.But man does always things which he doesn't have to.And I am a man.
So until next time.

THE FINAL ONE

2008-04-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

There is something about penning down your feelings on the blog. It's like the whole world can read what you think and still they can't find who it is. It's like having a double life.It's complete uninterrupted freedom. It's like being famous.You can just simply bullshit your way through and nobody can really do anthing about it unless of course you blog about your boss and he ,of all the things he has to do, decides to sit and read through some blogs and stumbles upon yours.
Then your life could get more interesting the next day at work .
It's just too tempting to share what you feel on the net knowing that people will read it and will comment on it and we all wait for those comments to pop up. Some don't care about the comments while others eagelrly wait for one to come up. Some just blog because they are bored, or simply because they just want to. Some do it to let others know what they feel. A blog is like an online diary.Everyone has access to it. Everyone sees itreads it and leaves their comments.So everyone knows what you are thinking and start judging you. Sometime they judge you right sometimes they don't.Not that i have some experience in this. But this is how just humans are aren't we?
I used to maintain a diary back in school. I used to write in it everyday. But then i felt things were better in my head than the diary. I used to write in it only when something really disturbing came along when i felt it was better of my head than in it. I still have that diary. I still write in it when somethingcomes up which keeps me disturbed. And it has come to my rescue a lot many times since i started writing in it. I prefer to keep everything i feel tomyself and when i want to speak to someone about some pressing issue the diary has always been there. It's like talking to a friend and at the same timeit doesn't go anywhere beyond where i want it to go. I like it when i start thinking about something -disturbing or not disturbing. It just keeps playing aroundin my mind and if what i think all came true we would be on another planet far away from this one wondering what a fool human are or heaving a sigh of relief for we just managed to escape from the sun before it exploded. I don't know why but i can't pen down original feelings on the blog. I haven't writteneverything i wanted to in this one, i know it but i don't want to. My diary is what i prefer to this. Since i started to blog by wondering what to write it is only
correct i end it neatly. That's why i thought i should blog one last time. And this is it. MY LAST ONE.
But i will always enjoy commenting.So others keep blogging.

Clearing it out

2008-04-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

I realised just some time back that i wasn't sure what i believed in.My views about various things were all not clear. When people asked me what i thought about that particular topic i wasn't sure i knew though i acted like i did.
One of the views about which my mind was in conflict was about destiny. I thought i believed in destiny all time along when poeple asked me about it. Actually all the way long i didn't believe in it.I just agreed that i believed in it because most of the time people around me believed in it and i didn't want to be the odd one out. It's time i stand up for myself.
The dictionary says destiny means fate which means a supposed power predetermining events. I believe in god so he has already predetermined things that will happen. So whatever you finally end up doing is what would have happened even if you had something to do about it.If one was supposed to sit quiet and do nothing that's his destiny and if someone was to do something that's his destiny.There's nothing like changing one's destiny.whatever is supposed to happen will happen no matter what.If one says he had a part in saving somebody's life or he made in change in the other person's destiny he only did what was supposed to happen. He had no role in the course of events. He was just instrumental in helping realise an event already predetermined by the ultimate power.
After writing this much i realised more than i not believing in destiny i don't believe in the idea of changing one's destiny.
Correct me if my views contradict..

FIRST ONE

2008-02-13T05:40:00.000-08:00

The first one always the difficult one.So what does one write about in his first blog?? Hmmmm. There are just too many things to write about in this endless limiltless abode of ours.So do i begin by writing my views about the "Fabulous" run our indian cricketers are enjoyin, or what i think about dark matter or what enginnering is all about to me or the world as i see it or mohanlal vs mammootty or indian cinema,indian music,or don the role of a critic, or democracy or ...I guess i can just go on.Not that i am an authority in most of the topics but i still think i can blog down a few paragraphs.
So how does someone decide what their first topic should be??One wants people to revisit one's blog so the saying 'the first impression is the best impression' is valid here. I have always wondered how do film makers decide what their first scene should be. They can start off in as many ways as they want while remaining faithful to the script and storyline and keeping the audience glued to the screens. Of course every scene after that is as difficult but once one has got the push he just has to go with the flow. So what does one as indecisive as me start off with. Should they just begin with writing from the heart or make the blog particularly for a reason or try to make the blog informative?? What do they do?? Before we start with any topic every other topic would seem more important than this.
As far as i am concerned i guess not knowing where to start with is itself a topic as this might have proven. Every first step i take is the most interesting one and then it suddenly or gradually loses flavour. So Heaven knows when my next blog would be. This one is just for the heck of having a blog. And as far as impressions go those are for the inknown and as long as one doesn't care for the unknown they don't matter.
Time is precious and you just wasted some and so did I.