p.c. diwali

the guilt of the non-celebrator... i was looking at abdul's candle-creativity-thing and i got thinking as to how i (and my roomies, i am not the kind of guy who would hog all the guilt ;-) ) didn't really take the effort to do the "deep jalaao" thing in diwali. i mean we did light a couple of those diya-candle-thingummies that a shopkeeper had given us for free but that wouldn't count especially if we take into consideration the spirit of the thing. but to put a positive spin on it, its that much less pollution we caused and the environment sure needs all the help it can get. i would also like to point out that we didn't do any floral decorations or rangoli either thus avoiding a lot of flora mutilation and preventing allergies. so all in all we had a pretty politically correct diwali. as for the fireworks, we substituted a show of naach for it and that certainly was an eyeful.

the comeback

blogging after a loooong time. it feels refreshing coming to the office after a five day weekend. though i doubt if it can really be called a weekend if its five days long. and it isn't too much fun getting all these days off if u aren't traveling or something. after the first couple of days, you feel so bored that you start breaking some of the rules you have set from past debacles like not watching a shah rukh khan movie. am still recovering from the three hour mush fest and the return to office is a welcome change. i have nothing against romance per se but when the guy dishes out stuff like the tripe he does in this movie and gets away with it, one starts wondering about the mental prowess of the heroine. i mean the guy might be trying desperately to score but what the hell was she thinking!!!

that apart diwali was pretty nice. though i didnt get around to doing much in the way of celebration it was pretty nice. first diwali i have celebrated eating haleem! diwali being the celebration of ram having beaten the stuffing out of ravana, brings back the question i used to have of what if ravana had withdrawn and returned sita. i guess he was afraid of impeachment or something. after all it was almost like the us in vietnam. a no-hope army kicking ass in a pointless battle.

cyber whores

i had planned to post this on friday... but blogger was down with a cold.

there is a phrase in malayalam - "jeevitham naaya nakki". loosely translated this means that your life ain't worth the effort taken in breathing to keep it going. this probably fits mine to a nicety right now. now don't get me wrong and assume that its a vast vacant timespace of not knowing what to do and cogitating upon how meaningless this whole existence is. its just so damned cramped right now that i can arrive at that conclusion without all that cogitation. its a good thing that guns aren't that common in india...

oh i am not just going on and on because its perhaps the best thing to do right now, i just needed a release (i hate the word! its the 11.5.10 release thats giving me all this trouble). i am not sure if it is some sort of survival technique, but our product is so full of bugs that it would ensure a safe career solving them till the end of days. as if such safeguards aren't enough they go and make releases from time to time on the unsuspecting public thereby reproducing the whole collection of bugs on a separate codeline. sometimes i feel humbled by the sheer genius of the whole scheme. and then they come up with words like "front-port" and "back-port" and there you are busting your ass on the gawd-awful problem of comparing 2 file versions and merging the code changes. its amazing what people do for a living. i guess in intellectual terms, we are the closest to prostitutes.

the ron supremacy

i had the narrowest of escapes today, well not so narrow as i had it all planned beforehand, still it never hurts being a bit melodramatic. one of the bigshots here had come down to grace us with whatever. here's what happened. in an attempt to pull the "object oriented junta" to attend the chap's speech the company went ahead and arranged a breakfast followed by his speech to sleep it off. as plans go, this was a pretty good effort on the co's part i would say. but even the best-laid plans have chinks in them - the chink here being an unguarded gate in the premises which in addition to being the prime point of entrance also showed its caliber by doubling up as a medium of unobtrusive exit. and yeah, i couldn't resist the carrot ;-) a better man would probably have left the whole thing alone but then these better people miss a lot of stuff.

the joy one experiences when one, through adroit manoeuvres, manages to wiggle out of a situation which others who were equally aware of the imminent danger were unable to avoid, is pretty sublime. the only blemish in this case is a few perverts who actually enjoyed the whole thingummy. ah... well as my mom says, "it takes all sorts to make the world". however there were others whose misery was enough to bring the roses back to my cheeks. am i some kind of sadist or something!!!