Date @ Barista...

Sunday mornings are a boring lot in bangalore, people prefer not to get up from there beds before noon (or maybe incapacitated to do so by the previous nights hangover). But life is unpredictably funny providing me with stuffs to write about at the most unexpected place and time. Sitting in Barista in kormangala, i am busy sipping my coffee [not the real reason why i was in Barista, i bought a laptop recently and was there solely for the wifi {i am flat broke after i have bought the laptop (i have only a few hundred bucks and a bundle of sodexos to support my food supply) and cannot afford the net connection till next months salary gets credited, but such trivial things definitely does not prevent me from sitting in barista for hrs sipping air from my coffee mug which held the shit expensive coffee maybe 2 hrs back, and surfing net}].

I noticed a guy walking up to the table next to me who looked around first and then sat slowly and then took out a chit and started memorizing it , "must be formulas for an upcoming GRE or GMAT", i thought, impressive!! optimizing time while waiting for GF perhaps... Quite unusual to be done in barista but look who's talking about unusual stuff... an air sipper!!!.
After about 15 mins a hot chic walked in (i have this knack of sensing hot chics around me, its something like two opposite EM waves one from each of us sexy ppl forms a standing wave resulting in a pause in the space-time continuum resulting in instant fatal attraction ...). She was walking straight towards me , my senses were on a high alert, i noticed that the guy dropped his chit (i would have dropped the laptop myself at that moment) but then i realized that he had carefully lowered his hand and rolled the chit away from himself (the same way that a student cheating in exams disposes the chit and expects the teacher hasnt seen him doing it...). The hottie stopped right next to him and then asked for his name and sat down. I believe u cant judge a person from the first impression and mostly my second evaluation of a person is very accurate , on my second evaluation the girl wasn't all that hot , just another average bangalore girl... Not my kind u see!!! they have to have something special to really stir me up (clear indication that the grapes were sour)...

All this build up had made me really curious about it all... was one of them a hired assassin, or was i in midst of a drug deal!!! I noticed that the paper he had rolled away wasnt far from my table, continuing in a covert way i dropped my pen to make my pick legitimate... And then the truth dawned upon me, and i could see everything clearly... There was more here to the situation than that met the eyes... I am pasting the snapshot of the crumbled paper i took back at home below...

I am rearranging the sequence for my convenience to describe the situation however the words are exactly the same as I found

How to court a girl
1. make eye contact
2. be soft spoken
3. make friends with her friends
4. keep the meeting short
5. make occasions to see and meet her
6. make sure she wishes u when u meet her the next time
7. a mail or a call a day keeps ur sweetheart ...(the text here wasn’t decipherable)
8. beat around the bush before saying ILU

What happened next is equivalent to what happens to a CAT candidate who has prepared for 6 months for one D day...

I know how difficult it is to keep looking into a hot girls eyes ( when was the last time u where talking to a girl and ur eyes didn’t wander downwards), I guess he didn’t want to make that mistake, he took the "making eye contact" point too seriously not taking off his eyes from hers even when he was offering her a cup of tea... He spilled it right on her top. She was appalled and shrieked at him for ruining her expensive dress.

He managed the soft spoken part quite skillfully i guess that was his second nature, being yelled at wasn’t new to him, it seemed.

After she had calmed down he moved over to the third point in agenda, "enquiring about friends"... he carried on... "Who is ur best friend??"“Where does she live", "What does she do", what’s her favorite color??"?????
Now all this is really nice being concerned about her friend but I would definitely have preferred to do so after I had known all these facts about the Person about whose friends I am enquiring about... U should know that sequence handling is an important feature while executing an algorithm. Now i am sure the girl didn’t mistake his over enthusiasm into her girlfriend as anything more than trying to know "her better" or maybe "her girlfriend better".

"Keep the meeting short"- he didn’t have to work on this point at all, the above events made sure that this point would go on smooth as a hot knife in butter.

I don’t know how points 5 onwards worked in his favor but let me guess...

"make occasions to see and meet her": i am sure he would have had a difficult time to do this equipped with her best friends schedule which he got out of her.

"make sure she wishes u when u meet her the next time" : This would be really funny to see if he makes a point to make this point happen... Imagine a girl trying to avoid u among a crowd and u bound on getting her to wish u no matter what... ( holding a gun to her head n soft spokenly "Wish me"!!!)

"a mail or a call a day keeps ur sweetheart..": I wonder at this point if she would have changed her phone number or mail id or both...

"beat around the bush before saying ILU": I saw him beating around the bush whole of that "first date", even the bush could not take any more beating it seemed. Hope he got a second chance for "ILU" part.

P.S. (For the guy who is the subject here)
Now I am not sure how good i am at summarizing situations, this is completely my viewpoint of the situation that might have been after the "first date" and i have no supporting facts for the same so forgive me...

P.S (For the same guy who is the subject here)
You should have been more careful while disposing the evidences, after all Thank Dear God that it landed in the hands of a blogger and not a reporter of Aaj Tak otherwise this story would be running on News Channel for 2 days, at least with me u can be sure only geeky people like urself would come to know about it and will not feel offended because they can very well relate to ur situation

P.S. (For all the hot girls who went to Barista on a Sunday for a "first date" with a geeky guy and ended up with coffee spilled on to u)
If u haven’t found someone yet u can drop ur phone numbers in my mailbox. My list is a lot better than this guy's and I have back up plans also!!!.

Superman Anna !!!

People who have enjoyed my previous 2 writeup's have some how or other been in a position where they could relate with the context of the whole thing, this one however i am not sure if any of you (unless u have been dragged by me into it) have found urself in.
Well to set up the premise let me tell u one thing that i did my Btech from VIT Vellore which meant that I had to stay in vellore, Tamil Nadu for 4 years(minimum) to graduate.[Detailed posts of VIT will be put up when permissions of copyright is brought from my various friends (i am quite afraid of being dragged to court for defamation cases)]
So there I was with my dad at the university gates, he thanking god that i had gotten admission into an engineering institute (happy that the college (and not him) would have to bear with me for the next 4 yrs ) and I praying to god that there be theatre's in this god forsaken town (ya thats right I was more concerned about the theatres than ragging, hostel life and the Engineering Course itself ). Already on my way to the college from the railway station I had caught a glimpse of a theatre [a glimpse because the poster was one of those kinds which u would stare at with friends making detailed analysis comprehending the inner meanings (none whatsoever the director intended in putting on the poster {two girls and a guy in compromising positions!!!(i wonder what inner meaning the director could put in between them ...)}) and when with your parents u would act as if it never existed even if it were as big as the theatre screen itself and u were standing a foot away from it ]. India is a hypocritical nation, love is one subject where we have only theory classes and no practicals (nor are we allowed to watch other people practice).
[Now there is only one thing that makes my knees wobble and mouth drool(no its not porn , if i wanted to watch that i would prefer quality NA flicks than some tamil sleazefest). I am crazy about english movies in general, crazy here may be an understatement because sometimes i just cant wait for the movies to be released. If a hyped movie is supposed to release on friday, i start getting goosebumps from thursday itself and if they are based on comic superheroes that would be the thursday of the earlier week.]
The next day as soon as dad left, we a group of 4-5 ppl went out to explore the town, came to know that Bruce Almighty was playing in vishnu theatre and went for the movie. The movie was a shitty one (nowhere close to Jim Carrey's earlier works) but I was ecstatic (for 18 yrs i had lived in Bokaro, Jharkhand. People there where hardly intrested in watching movies in theatre when they could watch the same in the comfort of their homes which explained the pathetic conditions of the theatres there. They never used to play english movies there). One reason i was excited about shifting south was that there were more possibilities of watching english movies on bigger screens. The movie buff in me didnt know that Bruce Almighty was the last english movie that i was gonna watch in vellore. No i didnt die the next day neither did Vishnu Theatre close down. The truth was to dawn upon me next week...

Terminator 3 posters were all over town , somehow i couldnt find terminator written anywhere on the posters instead i could only see scribblings in a scripture unknown to me ( i convinced myself that it must be publicity gimmick and the language of the future robots). Ya right !!(language of future robots)! i was that dumb those days[i dont know how much improvement/damage the IT virus has done to this pentium -1]. There is nothing in this world (maybe something alien can one day come close) that can match Arnold, who has just launched a rocket missile on Kristanna Loken and in wooden expression smirks and says "Enna Rascala !! Mind it...". Ya i sat through a whole english movie and didnt hear any english word except maybe "robot" and "machine". Instead i was bombarded with tamil slangs whenever Arnie was angry.

They dont release English movies in English in Tamil Nadu except Chennai ... This is meant to be a reward to the tamilians for being such movie fanatics that the Govt feels they should listen to Arnie n Sly converse in their own native language. A win win situation for all since movies dubbed in tamil attract the local crowds and increase ticket sales. Only that no one gives a shit about guys like us. Thank god they dont dub tamil movie in english in Tamil Nadu itself for global crowd otherwise we would be torchered to death with dialogues like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2U8YR5VdUs

Adaptation is the cumulative effect, while each mutation is random... I soon started adapting to the new environment variables, I took XYZ a namesake tamilian from chennai who has been in UAE his entire life as my translator to the movies, a guy who couldnt differentiate between a thambi (younger brother) and a thendi(rascal,loafer)...
and then a string of movies followed...
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid in which Morris Chestnut breaks into a jingle of "Apdi pode pode pode" on his boat. The hunters will become the hunted , was suppossed to be the tagline ...
The Day After Tomorrow : An epic tamil venture about global warming..
And the biggest of all ...
I watched 'The Matrix Revolutions' which was the much-anticipated conclusion to the Wachowski Brothers' cultic sci-fi trilogy, whose previous entries were 'The Matrix' and 'The Matrix Reloaded. The matrix trilogy was a mindgame, completely mental. It was an examination of reality, both real reality (if there is such a distinction) and percieved reality, and all that happens in your head. Now to emphasize the situation i found myself in trying to make sense of the movie when i couldn't even remotely make sense of the dialogues itself, i am including 2 links here where the various fans have tried to interpret the movie and the ending.
http://www.thematrix101.com/contrib/rev_theories.php
http://www.thematrix101.com/revolutions/meaning.php

There have been times in vellore when i have been in a theatre watching Kangaroo Jack [this was in english , guess they realized no one (not even tamilians) would watch it even if they dubbed in tamil ] with only one other guy in the balcony along with me, where we both helped the guy load the projector with the reel [he insisted that we put in the advertisement reels before the movie reel even though we tried convincing him that no matter what, we will never end up buying the saries from the ads] and then help the old guy to the balcony seat and make it to the centre of the theatre hall before intermission, when its again time to change the projector reel.

Superman Returns was probably the last time i saw an english movie dubbed in tamil. Somehow the whole movie going experience is elevated to an unmatched level when common man looks at the sky and shouts "Superman Anna vanthuttaanya vanthuttaan ".(superman bro has returned). Makes u feel that much more closer to superman as if he is ur own elder brother. The only thing i dont approve of is changing character names, no matter however minor the role is, Lex Luthor's dog was called subramanian (i am not trying to create controversies here if there are any superstars in south with the same name, and before i start getting hate mails from his fans I would tell them to go grab a copy of Superman Returns dubbed in tamil and validate the aforementioned fact) [by the way if u think that the dog was not so important, the dog had lines in the movie (he barked!!!) unlike Kal Penn who didnt speak a word through out the movie]
Well whatever might be the case, 4 yrs in vellore has certainly helped me add to my skill set, which now includes watching silent movies or movies in languages i cant make head and tail of (without sub titles off course). It also has made me appreciate the virtue called patience.
Writing this post on the eve of the release of "The Incredible Hulk", I thank god that i will be hearing Edward Nortan yell "HULK SMASH" and not "HULK udaichuruvaen" in a rage while tearing apart the New York City.

Ripped Off ...

The most pathetic thing about a software guy in bangalore is that he has lots of cash to dispense but no time for the same, so he lives life king size whenever he can. An ideal IT bachelor nerd slogs his ass off for 12 hrs a day and lives off McD's and pizza huts junk food. On weekends starts off with a home delivery of Dominos giving a whole new meaning to bed n breakfast, culminating into a greasy sweaty mess. Here in this case it doesnt even help if u have a girlfriend or not, because that would mean if not in bed (hoping that the landlords do not allow entry to GF's) then its the outlet in forum. Instead i think it gets worse with the couples hanging around all food joints [have u ever wondered why couples do not hang out at a joggers park, running together spending some quality time sweating n staying in shape,Off course not !!! my god if thats ur idea of a date and not hanging out in McD or PVR with burgers and popcorns then that certainly explains why u r single!!!]-(i know the brackets n detours r getting on ur nerve but what the heck i am the one who is in control so just read on) puttin the weight together (poking each other about weight problems is the sweetest game couples indulge in, they wouldnt want to be in shape just because if they do that then they are hardly left with anythin to do!!! ).
Ya so i will come back to the bachelor IT guy/gal[let me ensure u that i am not an MCP and here onwards when i say guy it means a human being in general] nerdo who doesnt have a GF/BF, [when u start looking for sales offers like one i came across sometime back, it was Wrangler or Lee (not sure which one) they offerred discounts depending on waist size, "if u have a waist of 44 u get a 44% discount and so forth". Imagine ur obsession with discounts, thinking in mind damn it would have been a steal if i could have made that extra 2%].

So the person is left with 2 options

1. To renounce junk food and beer[I am sure the first option hasnt even crossed minds of the guy who is naive enough not to realize that this would be the cheaper and painless option]
2. VLCC [Ya this was the most intelligent way out n maybe painless too but then u think common who needs whatever they offer there at 20,000 for 10 kgs loss, "mard ban yaar" calls out the inner voice, u can burn it out the natural way so u opt for option 3]
3. Join gym [U r further motivated at the thought of sexy girls sweating it out in tight gymwear, maybe u end up with a hot instructor(easiest way to come in contact with a hot girl, if u r one of those loser kinds): The Real reason u went with option 3]

So the guy goes to the expert friend who is hitting the gym day in n day out with a vengeance, goes to a total rip fitness with him and enrolls himself for a "Personnel workout session Package" which comes with an instructor free of cost [ya thats actually a discount offer (i can see some gleaming eyes there)].
The first day in GYM (oops u r corrected by the instructer u r in a "total rip fitness institute"), at first sight u see huge muscular guys with amazing physique, admiring them (blurred pics of urs with ur head n their bodies pop up in ur mind) and think that all the hot girls must be hiding behind them. Suddenly the truth dawns upon u , the muscular guys r the instructors , when the greek god like instructors moved out of ur line of sight, there were the mere mortals in all their human forms how should i delicately put the description of those gym beauties "They were FAT" , they were anything but normal women in trendy outfits, designer wears (doesnt matter if those waist sizes where manufactured clearly on demand) with make up. U r dissapointed and but still u manage a smile thinking after all they have joined the "total rip fitness institute" to get back in shape and being an account holder of ShareKhan, u know market investments do pay dividends in the long run [so invest in those to be hotties in gym n when the "to be" becomes "become" , reap the dividends]. Dazed from the initial shock u look for ur instructor (ya the free one), he turns out to be the god of greek gods and u blurt out "What do u ?? How do u ?? Where do u ?? " a little gayish for the first words to ur instructor, dont u think?.
He makes out that u r new to the gym n tells u to warm up [no the instructor wasnt gay , he meant 10 mins of jogging to loosen the body muscles ] , u finish off the jogging enthusiastically and as soon as u finish instead of catching a breath or two u run to the instructor (remember in kindergarten when u solved a question n ran to ur teacher). He feels a threat that u r in a mood to stay in gym, so gives u the royal treatment!!. The instructor makes u do 100 sit ups gives u credit for 60, while doing crunches he says common man one more set , u sum up all ur strength and make it happen and he says "one more", u ask "is this the last one" and he says "yes it is" and then he says "one more" , makes u cry with only their words thats their real super power. The really low moment comes when when a women nearby does 20 bench press and u manage(with great difficulty) to do 5. Finally the day comes to an end thats when u notice that ther r a few hot girls around, instructors r busy stretching them out sexual tension lingering between them[makes u wanna be an instructor deep inside].
U convince urself that first week is the hardest, if i can scrap through it i will get along. Next day morning when u get up the pain makes u finally conclude that the whole idea to pay someone to make them make u lift weights is pretty stupid.
After a day u can lift the spoon to ur mouth(only 24 hrs u were spoon fed by ur roomie, not bad for the IRONMAN)
After 2 days u can move ur legs and lift ur arms till shoulder height.
After a week u realize that Yes "first week is the hardest", because it takes at least a week to fully recuperate from the intial days onslaught, then the life just gets back to normal, being the mere mortal that we are we surely should not aspire to be a demigod.
And now for the title of the blog even though they couldnt rip off the fat from my body, i still got ripped off my hard earned IT cash.

12 Hrs or 180 degrees

Life of a Software Professional (devloper, bachelor, living in bangalore, India)
8:30 am - Alarm Rings
8:31 am - Alarm clock flys across the room to the other end
8:35 am - Drags himself out of the bed
8:40 am - Bathroom details would be vulgar at such respected blogspot
9:00 am - drive to office(most probably on a second hand bike remember he is a devloper and a bachelor), shouts a few obscenities at his fellow drivers in the heavy traffic whn he hits or bumps another vehicle.
9:30 am - Enter cafeteria (off course this is the first place u visit in office) [oily puri or iddli dosa and tea]
10:00 am - Start with reading mails (official, unofficial(fwds, love mails frm distant girlfriends) , scraps(orkut facebook n ten othr social sites)[dissapointment - only 5 scraps from the last time u logged out at midnight]
10:30 am - US Boss pings u , tells u to join a call (u wonder about his capacity to work, always in awe of his dedication to work)
11:30 am - still on call with boss, discussion shifts to the various agendas for the day
12:00 noon - the call comes to an end. A bug has been reported by QA (boss says high priority).
12:30 pm - u r frantically searching for the QA guy (off course he wont be online, off to lunch probably). since u decide u cant proceed (as the steps to reproduce the bug is written in some sort of cryptic QA shorthand u cant decipher), u open ur orkut account n timepass.
1:00 pm - still no sign of the QA guy, u decide its time for ur lunch
2:00 pm - At last both the QA and devloper are online, together they sync up and try to reproduce the bug.
3:00 pm - bug not reproducible. Closed as "Not Reproducible".
3:30 pm - bug reopened by another QA guy.
4:00 pm - another frantic search for the QA guy (not online), after lingering around for some time u move to the TT room. Lucky ! u find the guy there, since u r frustrated u challenge him for a game ( the bet being u win he closes the bug and reopens it after 2 days). U loose ! u argue it was best of 3, U loose all 3.[the QA guy has been practising 3 hrs daily while u hardly get an hr ]
5:00 pm - The same bug is somehow now reproducible.
6 pm - 10 pm -U work ur ass off trying to apply all the software knowledge frm the memory bank of ur brain. [meanwhile since u have stayed late ordered for extra large pizza with double cheese layers, make sure u got the bill and submit it for reimbursement benifits].
10:30-11:00pm - Ur US boss joins u, both try to debug together.
11:30 pm - US boss decides too much to handle, if it can be somehow reproduced in older versions of product lets close as the base bug (not part of our enhancement so does not come in our queue) [Close as Not Applicable ]
12:00 midnight - a silent drive back home unlike the one in morning since the roads are deserted.
12:30 am - hit the sack.


Life of a US Software Professional ( technical manager, married, lives in CA,US)
[lets start the schedule from his night to be in sync with the guy in India, lets assume an exact 12 hrs difference]
10:30 pm - fought with wife , on the couch (thrown out from bedroom), no sleeping pills decides to talk to his team in india.
11:30 pm - tell the team in india how important deadlines are and how important it is for his career that the team meets those deadlines ( small talk here n there about an appraisal to kep the team motivated)
12:00 midnight - finds a bug that was in queue for a week , assigns it to the indian guy with high priority. pops in 2 sleeping pills
12:30 am - hits the sack (slang for bed , here means the couch)
8:30 am - wife knocks him off the couch
9:00 am - has a breakfast of cereals and freshly cut vegetables
9:30 am - drops wife to her office
10:00 am -reads mails
10:30 am - joins the indian guy to debug the issue
11:30 am - frustrated , decides too much to handle, if it can be somehow reproduced in older versions of product lets close as the base bug (not part of our enhancement so does not come in our queue) [Close as Not Applicable ]
12:00 noon - lunch
2:00 pm - counter strike on his 4 GB RAM laptop
4:00 pm - hits the gym
5:00 pm - hits the swimming pool
6:00 pm - play pool or cards with colleagues
7:00 pm - hits the stripclub with colleagues
8:30 pm - arrives at home with flowers , lies about an extended meeting with clients and how much inexperienced his team in india is and tht he has to handle all the work.
9:00 pm - while making love calls his wife by the strippers name by mistake
9:30 pm - still arguing about the name being of a business client ( imagine "oh sarah i love screwing u again and again")
10:00 pm - decides he has lost the argument , reconciles to the couch
10:30 pm - decides since he has nothin to do to talk to the team in india.

Results Comparison
1.Guy in India - No appraisals (Reason given: US slowdown , Actual Reason : US guy takes all the credit )
Guy in US - Heavy Appraisal ( Since a certain fixed amont is allotted to a team n the lack of appraisal has to be balanced somewher u see!!)
2.Guy in India - Obesity due to constant junk food in office daily and no time for gym workout , suffers a massive coronary in a decade or two (exception being he gets married and wife stops the supply chain for food)
Guy in US - Fit at the age of 60 also due to regular swimming and gyming.
3. Guy in India - Sex only once if lucky on the first night of marriage.(remember after u slog ur ass off for 12 hrs daily u sure as hell cant hunt for GF's and off course there are no strip clubs in india. the closest alternative being self independent
Guy in US - Sex ( 3 times a week or more for sure from wife if he is so drunk not to remember the strippers name and blurt it out at home , else u always have the option of extending the business meeting before returning home.

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