Misery all over

I started the day on positive note. I was excited that I was going to watch Jodha Akbar (even if it was with my mom!!). The movie was extremely long, 3 hours and 45 minutes to be precise and it was cruciatingly slow and boring. God only knows how it got 4 stars.

After that, I don't know why, all of a sudden I started feeling like shit.

Frankly, there is no reason whatsoever to be cheerful about. There are things going wrong in my personal life which I can do nothing about. I really start looking forward to something as a positive change. Then I start speculating about things falling back into its place. But again, everything goes wrong one after the other as it used to and its the darkness all over again. You have to begin from ground zero.

I see the misery, I feel really sad about it, but I am helpless! I should have had the supernatural powers. Its really hard to keep yourself motivated all the time. I feel that no one at home is even tying to understand me. I have been working for average 12 hours over last week. I have almost forgotten what it feels like reading a book. And whenever I ask myself what am I going to do about this, I have no answer!

G just told me about an Arsenal player Eduardo breaking his leg. I saw the images. It looks pretty bad. I am even more depressed now. I doubt if any soul on the planet is happy today.

Global Slowdown

There have been lot of sacking done citing the aforementioned reason. Yes... we are amongst those too. There has been firing globally... consultants, service industry everyone has fallen prey to this. You know you are good, but you also know that if time comes, you wont be spared. There is this sword hanging on top of your head which can slit your throat any time.

You see people around you who are really good performance wise and personality wise losing their jobs. Its the times like these when you lose confidence, start doubting yourself and the attitude "Oh... I am special, nothing bad is going to happen to me" doesn't work anymore.

After this was written, Nikhil called me and I went to Morokko (which is a sheesha place near my house btw, don't mistake it for a country). The thought process has been broken and I have no views on this anymore. Feeling just plane numb.

News at their best

The awesome news channels that we have in India, the little we talk about them, more it is!
Here are the glimpses of hilariousness of the news.

This is when it had got really cold in mumbai around last week.

Then there are random news like
The ones that I have personally seen go with the caption Tharra pita bandar, chudail se aakhmicholi aadhi raat mein and some equally crazy shit.
I will keep adding to this list. Its damn funny.

Mercury Dipping

I never thought I will get to experience this in Mumbai. Temperature of 8.5 C. No, I am not talking about some hill station here. This is our very own so called "hot" Mumbai. After a warm Christmas, I had started thinking that we are baring the brunt of global warming. The end of Jan though, gave different connotations. As Feb approached, the winter started buzzing and out came the pull overs locked in the cupboard.

People have always said that buying woolens for Mumbai winter is not worth it. Mumbaikars actually get embarrassed when caught in sweaters. But what I saw yesterday, was totally contradicting the popular belief. When I left from office, the security guards were dressed like Eskimos on a mission. Is it global cooling that we are facing???

Whatever it is, I am thoroughly enjoying the chill. Dressing up like a bunny rabbit and snuggling up in bed on a weekend, nothing like it! While the breaking news on Aaj Tak saying "Amitabh Bacchan ko thand lagi" is creating roars of laughter.

Dreamz Unlimited

I love dreaming. I love to speculate things, wonder about the what ifs and make or break my day.

Yesterday I spend a very nice day (half a day rather. Lets be specific here) just talking, thinking about future, speculating how will it be, making jokes out of it. The fake anger, the fake rudeness and the fake whining. Then I get the extra affection and he will ask me if I am alright and why I am so pissed now, when I am not. I just want more attention from him and I know I deserve it. I absolutely loved every minute of it.

You know, when you are together, you don't have to do anything special, not even hold hands. Just the fact that you are together matters. Its amazing how a few simple words, just a small gesture that will take no extraordinary efforts can change everything. The crazy things like he sitting on the drivers seat show me how flying plane is like, we checking out the so called "chicks" and then end up arguing about what we are going to buy and why we are going to buy that... these give you lasting happiness.

I know that the things that are making me so happy today are pretty much going to bring tears into my eyes tomorrow. But it doesn't matter. The time spent together talking about all this was great. There is a saying in hindi. 'Umeed pe duniya kayam hai'. We just have to hold on to the hope that everything will take care of itself.

GM to Microsoft

Now this is really amusing....

At COMDEX recently, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again, because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. Oh yeah, and last but not least . . . you'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off!

VB6 Deco

As the month of April is approaching, we are getting ready to get rid of VB6. Microsoft has announced that on 8th of April, they will be decommissioning VB6. That means no more microsoft certified support groups, no more hotfixes. Finally they are officially getting rid of something archaic.

We, in office are totally geared up in decommissioning the VB6 based apps. We started the whole getting rid of TFA a while back. That had nothing to do with VB6 deco. OMS deco in Asia was the main reason for doing that. It being a VB6 app is just going to fasten the process now. Anyways, we are almost there now. And we have taken PFA in the umbrella too. So more so, a reason to celebrate.

Actually, I am not very well verse with VB6/macros. I have never really done it. People say with macros you can do more than timepass programming. But I never got such a use case to apply my knowledge of macros, until today. Today there was a randomly color coded list of users in excel and I wanted to sort it colorwise. Now excel does not support sort by format menu. So I was supposed to write a macro to do that. But my limited VB scripting knowledge was a hindrance to that. I was actually contemplating about sorting the list of 150 odd users manually, which actually wouldn't have been such a big deal. A little donkey work..yea... but better than spending a lot of time figuring out 'M' of macro. Finally my manager wrote it to make it easier for me. I have to say he is a really good manager.

The Worst Nightmare

Ross: So…
Ross: Morning.
Rachel: You too. Last night was just wonderful.
Ross: It really was.
Rachel: I woke up today with the biggest smile on my face.
Ross: I know, me too. It was… You know, it was like one of those things you think is never gonna happen, and then it does, and it’s everything you want it to be.
Rachel: Uh-huh. I know. It was just, it was just the perfect way to say goodbye.

Tech Expo '08

Well... lot of hard work, and we are finally through. This was the second year in succession when I was handling a booth of our project at the annual Tech Expo. Here we present the technologies that we use in office to the BU as well as to the grads who have been recruited to join next year. So a real good variety of target audience. Its tiring, talking for so long when you are not actually a talker types. I was assisted by Sneha who was not even part of my project. She is really enthusiastic girl. But I was somehow showing signs of fatigue at the end of it. And as I am really bad at faking, it was visible on my face. That might have driven some of the people away from our booth. Nevertheless it was overall a good effort.

After that we had a party at The Grand Hyatt. It was a good break because we were really sick and tired of Marriott pool side party. And food there was getting more and more insipid. I, along with the grads, started our commute in a bus which was actually meant for the visitors. Kind of grabbed empty seats in there. I finally found someone on the floor who has similar taste in sitcoms as me. Before this, I was kind of having hard time getting along with him because of his sarcasm. More so because he was really being derogatory remarks towards Sneha, and as she is a good girl, she was just smiling and ignoring it instead of getting back at him. I actually suspected if there was something going on between them because I haven't really seen a girl taking such poignant remarks nicely unless and until she is smitten. So I was feeling a little uncomfortable being my rude self with him, with the fear of hurting someone. But once I made sure that there was nothing like that, we kind of hit off well as sarcasm really turns me on.

At Hyatt, we had a open air place booked which is generally used for corporate parties. It had small fountains in the middle. It was covered by really tall walls on the two side. In the front, there was water flowing along the wall to give a waterfall sort of feeling. And the side opposite to that was the entrance, but just behind that was the actual hotel building. So the place was kind of giving me Jallianwala Bagh feeling. Certainly not meant for a claustrophobic person.

Finally they had spotted a non-dry day for Tech Expo. The only VJTI soul recruited this year was looking completely lost, understandably so. He was in a kind of dilemma with Microsoft offer in his hand. But I think I did quite a good job in promoting my company. Will soon come to know if he actually joins us or not. All in all, the event was pretty good. As usual, I feasted on soups, salads and desserts keeping the main course aside.

After this, coming home was a sort of Herculean task, thanks to the traffic at 12 o'clock in the night. We were stuck at domestic airport signal for about 45 minutes and the rickshaw guy kind of gave an intimation that he won't have enough gas to make it all the way. So changed the rick on the highway and finally made it home in a couple of hours after starting the journey.

P.S: Today is my couple of friends birthday. I am trying to call them, but none of them are picking up the phone. I am so mad at them!