Random Thoughts

A popular saying goes "Half the problems in this world are solved if people do half the things that they want to do but never do". Someone must have kept me in mind before writing that. This is what I guess they call control, control of your mind your body and your soul. Accomplishing your tasks no matter how small they are or how menial they are just adds that much confidence in you. I have decided to name them as Mental blocks. Not long ago I had to work on a task that demanded extensive focus but my mind just wasn't into it. In order to punish myself and also for self-motivation I decided I wouldn't jog, nor blog nor mail etc i.e. other mental blocks in my mind. This instead has boomeranged very badly. Not only have I become lazy in not doing things, I have just let things move on in a slow pace.

Jogging. One of the best things that happened to my life. It really was. Last year for almost 9 -10 months I was full into it and it was so darn refreshing. I had lost hellava weight and was feeling very upbeat. Just checked my weight recently and I see that I have now touched 81 kg, 4 Kg increase in 4 months time. Not bad by usual standard but really that's worse. I have been trying to revive it on and off. Here is what I have decided now. I am gonna eat junkiest and fattiest foods on the day I don't do jogging, starting from today.

Distractions. New found discovery - Serials takes your mood off on anything. Over the last few weeks I had been watching Dexter and Breaking Bad. With them in place I hadn't been able to do anything else at all. First I wanted to put one mail to Jash, second was to look at the videos that Niks had sent, third was to speak with Ranjit regarding his beautiful daughters and to get in touch in general. None of it has happened. God knows why.

Blog, well what can I say about the Blog. It just hasn't kicked off the way I wanted it to be. There seems to be no time at all. Even this very thing that this post mentions has taken me 3 weeks to write. Don't wonder too much if it lacks any coherence from start to finish.

New Beginnings..

Deal is done. All set for a year and a half wait to get into our first ever house. 

Back to Circle One

After almost three and a half months (a month of which I was in Canada) I have started jogging again and it was the hardest jog ever. The pain in my legs with each round was intense and I am pretty much sure this wasn't the case when I first started my 10 rounds with even bulkier body. I wonder what changed.

I am very much tempted to revive my Kar Chronicle series but I know the end result of continuation in the series wouldn't cheer me up. So let me just note today's jog. The weather was perfect neither too cold, nor too hot. The park has changed quite a bit. Lot of herbs, grass has been cut down and almost half of the garden was left barren.

Among the people around there weren't familiar faces except one uncle with the same purple T-Shirt jogging around. The actual jog as noted above was very painful and a perfect indicator that I should stick to my routine.

My reason for stopping my routine was first due to monsoon, then winter and sheer laziness. I was reading somewhere in the paper about motivations to jog. The article notes that people jog either for reducing weight or being fit. It stresses the point that it is important to stick to the reason of staying fit.
For me every jog is really about the adrenaline rush, the excessive sweat and the joy of panting. This is what I strive to achieve.

Of course, not everything starts without any reason. It was my recent Kerala trip that prompted me to jog. There are two things in the world that shows a person's true picture - photos or buying a new dress. Sadly in this case of my discovery of my new body shape it accounts to both.

Indicating the indicator

Upon my recent trip back from Canada where you hardly find anyone honking and absolute silent roads,  I felt this is something we also should be able to implement. Given the density of vehicles on the roads and the vast number of narrow by lanes that we have, this wouldn't be possible as most of the people do not have traffic sense. It left me to think at least why not we avoid sound pollution by removing the indicator sound get to hear the for two wheeler. What purpose does it serve? I used to have argument with Sammu that it IS essential for two wheeler as during day time people wouldn't be able to notice the lights. Shouldn't the same be applied to four wheeler as well? Apart from the honk, indicators are the most annoying sounds.

Basic google search hasn't been helpful as the only results returned were of Bajaj 2 wheeler buzzers. I will be checking more on that. Fellow readers do post in the comments why you think it is necessary to have.

Re-visting the past

Coming back from Canada yesterday, I slept undisturbed the whole day yesterday from morning 11 to evening 6:30 which is what is resulting in this blog. I couldn't sleep beyond 2 in the night and from then on have been doing a catch up of old habits. Opened my ever favorite blog of Jai Arjun and spent almost 3 hours through various posts. It then hit me to write one as I see that there is almost an hour and a half to go before my mom or Sammu wake up.

Over the past month at my stay in Toronto all by myself in the hotel room alone and sometimes during the days, I have these strange thoughts going through my head. I feel random lines pouring out of my mind of the thoughts going through, constructing and deconstructing themselves and begging to be heard. Its like calling a helpline and stuck to listening a voice operated machine doling out automatic responses. Only in this case both the caller and the receiver are the same and every time I hang up the call I do so with some sadness awaiting the next call. All I am trying to say is the urge to blog has gone overboard.

Of so many things that are pending to be blogged about, the one I want to focus are my visits to Chandan's place over the weekends. With not so great companions this time around on my trip, I looked forward to going to Chandan's place over the weekends to spend my time. The place is not actually Chandan's but is shared by two others Joe and Hari, both of whom I easily get along with especially Joe (link). The only reason I refer it to by Chandan's name is that I have worked with him for over two years now and recently he has shifted to Ops team and operating from Toronto office. My purpose of going there were two reasons - one for access to really great internet speeds and most importantly to spend time with them talking about nonsensical things or idle bantering about colleagues, project life etc.

There was a pattern I have observed being there that forced me to revisit my past. Let me just describe the place. It is a one bedroom flat with a accompanying storehouse. There is hall with open kitchen as you enter and bedroom adjoining the second half of the hall. Hall is where Joe sleeps and the other two have their own separate beds in the bedroom. Once I go to their place and settle down finishing saying hi to all, the first thing I do is to remove the laptop and earphones from my backpack and settle down in one of the beds. I plug in my charger and log on to my netflix account to resume my movie watching. (Oh! The joy of netflix-needs whole new blog for it). All the other 3 in the same setting, each to their own Netflix until dinner time when either Chandan/Joe do the cooking. The same continues post-Dinner. This scene reminded me of Matrix movies where people are just plugged in to go to the 'real' world. It felt scary and isolated completely devoid of human interactions. The scarier part being this is pattern is repeating pattern with no end.

Thinking bit more on it, the realization hit me that this was how my bachelor life too had been post Nikmo-era either with Murali/Hari. Coming back from office, logging on to computer and playing the latest film/series that's been downloaded. I was in the same state. I look upon this as the effect of not having other pursuits such as reading books or not pushing hard enough to mingle with crowd to have fun outdoors. That's the difference I see being in Banglore and Hyderabad. At Bangalore, with six people in the room the life was more outward going. Going to movies, dining out at restaurants, playing cricket, these things made me have the best of both - the love of watching movies or reading books (I did a LOT during that time) and at the same time having the much needed social fabric of mingling with people and having fun. That's not to say more the merrier all the time as being Nikmo was equally enjoyable with likes of Nikhil, Raja Vardhan, Sindu , Divz for company.

Coming to back to the stay, I realized at some point these people would definitely need to move on. I did find out that this hasn't been this way initially. During their initial months, they had a carom board and played on it for days together finally getting over it and the current state is what they have come to after that. Maybe they are moving on through different periods of pre-occupations or may be not, but they are a happy lot. I for one realize this part of my life has moved on and I strongly feel, as an outsider now, that it is important to have certain pre-occupation/hobby or whatever it is called be it books or going out to movies, dining out occasionally, get together of all friends is a very essential part of life.

My movie-watching or book reading have reduced considerably and so has my zeal to look for the latest ones to download. I don't have any complaints though. Coming back home from office, I look forward to spending some nice time with my wife and mom discussing about day's activities or plans. It makes me happy to find such nice companionship and one of the sweet joys of marriage. The life of being hooked to end of the cable for endless days is for all purposes over.

Just to finish of this isn't to say what is good / what is bad and I am happy with the maturity of understanding that keeping balance in life with what you love, your passions and the society around is the best way of living and am glad to be with it.

Pushing the Rebel in Me

Being a rebel gives you an adrenaline kick isn't it? Hearing people say or ask you to do things that doesn't make sense or not meaningful and not having a say in it is a really irritating feeling. There is an urge to shout at top of my voice and make the other person understand the worthlessness of the task but I control myself. I am feeling all pumped up and want to fight till the end, till I get my justice. A rebel in the making of sorts.

Ever since the team has changed, I am still trying to get to know the new team. Its in the understanding phase where I am trying to guage others frequecies. I had two such incidents today.

From 11th to 13th of this month, there is an audit taking place in our project. Each of us have to follow certain things to make sure we are aligned with the Accenture norms such as no external mails to unofficial addresses such as gmail/yahoo etc, removal of unauthorized softwares, removal of non-official multimedia files such as songs, personal photos etc. One point that I was not in agreemeent was clean whiteboard policy. First off in this new office that we have moved into almost a year back, the workstations are eerily similar to setup at call centers. As soon as one enters a bay one can see parallel rows of workstations spaced equidistant from one end to other having a gap in the middle. At each workstation we have one small notice board at the back of our monitor and a white board beside it.

This white board is the point in question now. One of the TL's came today and starting giving instructions to everybody to wipe off everything on the whiteboard and to keep it clean. Pointing to one workstation, he started shouting "You see this, this should not be like this. This will effect the rating of our project and consequently our company for breaking one of the rules". It cheesed me off. That whiteboard he had pointed had some defect numbers, some squiggly notes, some reminder, all written in not so legible format. What the hell is wrong with it I don't understand? Are we supposed to learn how to write neatly taking some lessons? Why the hell should it be clean and neat? I don't get it. What's the purpose of having a whiteboard if not for writing?

After he left, my lead came to my desk and asked me to clean up my whiteboard. Very recently I had moved to this workstation, so what was on it was written by someone else. I wanted to leave it that way and voiced my protest. I was expecting a non sensical reply but he was bit rational. He told me anything non-project related should not be there. What bugged me though is what he said next, there shouldn't be any drawings on it.

I know 3 people in our project who are just splendid at drawing and many a times I just snoop in to their bays just to look at the drawing on the whiteboard. Is a creative expression of one's capability and it must have given them immense pleasure in having it there every day. Art is a magical tool. A regular boring workstation having a factory archaic setting can be transformed into a beautiful place to work at with such drawings or pin-ups. I can just imagine the pain they must have felt when being asked to just "clean-up". Why is it we are forced to stick to norms and anything divergent is treated as violation? The Gen-U generation are like antique pieces who don't even want to scratch any creative surface.

Part 2 of the gripe is with the objective setting for the upcoming year. Every year at this point of time we need to complete a form that details our objectives and targets that we plan to accomplish.

Kar Chronicles - Jul 10

Woke up very early today, around 5:40 A.M. There was slight change in plan. First I went to driving and then came back home. Set out for jogging.

Weather was bit moist and dew was still settling in. Perfect calmness and pleasant atmosphere. Nothing more I can think of.

Things on my mind-
About reality of realty blogging, fashion show.

Kar Chronicles - Jul 10

Woke up way too early today by 5:40. Hit the snooze and slept for other 10 minutes. Woke up the second time, refreshed myself and reached the park in other 20 minutes. Weather was quite cold outside. Did some warm up, let my body get some heat. I set out to jog and damn it was very tiring. By second round, I was literally waiting for the elusive 10th.

When I reached my 9th round, I saw the same girl from yesterday in the park. Happily smiling, she said "Hi" and took a nice seat of the bench. Her father had already started his round of jog.

Things on my mind-
Most part I was thinking about most important topic of my married life "Realty, House and the Rest..". Two other things I tried to turn my mind to were Car driving and the discussion around the house.

Overall a good and exhausting jog, the way I wanted it.

Kar Chronicles - Jul 8

Woke up around 6:45 today thanks to Nanna's Galaxy Tab lying outside on the dining table. My alarm on phone was quietly "Stopped" not "Snoozed" by my sweetheart. By the time we hit the bed yesterday it was around 2:00 A.M. Understandably she didn't want my precious sleep taken away. 

I peeped outside my bedroom window, could see some sun light pouring in. Yesterday I had to forcibly skip my morning jogs and I also had eaten a lot in the last two days. So I got up, got ready and was out on the road by 7:10.

I reached the ground and began taking doing my warm up exercises. I saw two cute girls holding shuttle rackets which were almost their height facing each other with about 5 feet apart and trying very hard to make contact with the shuttlecock. It was quite windy. I started with my leg press exercise i.e. standing upright, bending your right knee backward while keeping the left leg straight and holding in that position by the right hand for about 15 seconds.I did the same with left leg this time. When I was about to do the second rep I heard one of them say "Uncle, you already finished that leg". I told her I was repeating.

As I was proceeding to do the fourth rep, with way of reminding, the same cute girl frantically shook her  hand in the air. Once she got my attention, she did some mock leg stretch to tell me I needed to do that. It was such a cute site. I wanted to lift her and give her a nice kiss. I gave her a smile, told her that I had few more reps to do before I came to that exercise.

I then proceeded to do my leg stretch.

Pat came a question "Uncle, do you come everyday"
"Yes"
"Oh..but it is so difficult no?"
"Ya..little difficult. And you?"
"Only Papa gets up sometime and takes me, otherwise I can't come daily" she replied with a cute smile. It was time proceed with my jog. So I told both of them one really strong advice "Don't play shuttle in this atmosphere. Its too windy. You can jog if you want" and off I went.

Came back home, finished my quota of crunches. Feels good. Really good.

P.S. - Had to forcibly skip my jog yesterday and couldn't do it either in the morning or evening. The morning is thanks to Lester, my onsite manager. He just ate our brain non-stop for at least 2 hours on the phone. Even a routine home exercises at home was not possible. 

Kar and Car should go together - II

This post is continuation of this one. Do read that one.

The second such movie we saw was 'Don-2'. This was scheduled at a reasonable timings i.e. around 8:00 P.M. Somehow that day it required me to stay and have a call on clearing up some blocking issue. Work and life dilemma kicked in. Love won the war fair and square. The toughest part was to reach the theater. I successfully managed to extricate myself by 7:20 P.M. With a single point action mode and geared up fully I zoomed full throttle, honking like never before and zip zapping through the tough traffic. It was a photo finish by the time I made it. Deja-vu. This was eerily reminiscent of the time I had made it to the first time. Movie sucked, we both agreed.

We also agreed for another important thing - No movie on weekdays. It was just too dangerous, very tight time lines, late night and unnecessary risk.Again here is where Bike has got me that wonderful feeling without which movies would have been just not possible.

The courtship days have been one of the greatest moments in my life.Meeting Sammu and coming back, faced some severe redressing from Nanna about my late night travels. Athamma too had been complaining about my late night leaving. All these I accepted and apologized, vowed not to repeat, fingers crossed though. None could stop me from meeting my love and the desire, longing to be with her increased more and more as the days passed. 

Krishna used to call me crazy for returning so late in the night and also used to caution me to drive steadily. The lovely moments that Sammu and I had at the end of the day when I dropped her at the home, sharing some thoughts at the parking lot of her apartment and talking for a while were too hard to explain to him. It was a magical feeling. The ride back home was only filled with thoughts of catching up with her again.

During the time between the engagement and the marriage I had also taken up the car driving lessons in tandem with my morning walks. I used to walk for half an hour and then proceed to learning classes. I had been to around 11 classes in 3 weeks span of time. I don't remember if I had paid the whole amount or the part amount. Once the marriage dates started coming nearer, I didn't have time to attend. This, I realize has go down as one of the worst mistakes of my life for which I am seeing the after affects now. 

Marriage finally took place, followed by honeymoon which was then followed by two months of getting the house together. I was then sent out to Toronto. After I came back, frankly I didn't have time to think of driving. Though Sammu used to remind me, it just skipped my mind and had gently postponed it.

My first thoughts on buying a car was to understand how financially viable it was going to be. With thoughts of buying a flat in minds, this was gonna be a huge finance to maintain on my own. Car wasn't looking attractive after looking at the finances wherein around 55K per month would need to be shelled out to maintain our lives. These were my thoughts initially.

Amma has moved in with us after a week or so when I returned from Toronto. It wasn't until we started hiring cabs when Nanna used to frequent us to go to any place, be it to Avva's house (which was roughly 8 KM's) or to see for flats ( which were around 7 or 10 KM's radius) I realized the necessity of having a car badly. It is so difficult to go out with family and especially when we are at places like Kondapur. Back when we were living at Hyderabad, Nanna's car was always there to move around in town. With Nanna now stationed at Eluru, the transport has become very difficult.

It is indeed a painful reminder each time Nanna comes and we have to hire a cab to go out of the house. I had to learn it. It dawned on me really bad that this needs to be done on high priority. The only thing that stopped me from proceeding was the driving school. The one that I had joined during the post-engagement time was the second time I joined a driving school. It didn't give me good confidence and I wasn't sure having another one would do me any good.

I was banking on my colleague Kalyan who had offered to teach me. The last week he was bit busy and we were supposed to start from today as in from Saturday. I tried to reach him through phone but to no avail as I was getting switched off messages. These were the thoughts running in my mind and I wanted to do them in my way and not tell anything to her till I started going to drive at least 3, 4 times.

Today was the day when the message has hit me hard. We had gone to Avva's house today for the pooja in the morning. As Amma asked us to be there in hurry, I had asked her to adjust this one time on the bike.In the evening while being in the house, we saw that it was raining profusely outside, a literal downpour of rain. We completed our dinner early by 8:30 P.M. and it was then Balu anna came to rescue. He offered to send his car with driver to drop us home. During the ride back I could feel that I have failed her as a husband. I shudder to think what would have happened had the car not been there. This was the final straw on the camel's back. She was upset too during the ride back and I could somehow feel this is the cause of it.

I have now decided I would go to the motor driving school starting tomorrow. I will also capitalize on Kalyan to try out my learning with his car. Both together would give me enough confidence, energy and most importantly win my heart's love all over again. I vow myself on this day, on this post, on this very line that by my sixth month anniversary I would learn the car driving and buy a car too, if I can. The "if" is only because I am not sure how is the availability of "Blue" color models are.

I sincerely pray and hope this I can achieve with the same steadfast determination I have committed regulating my health and my weight.

In conclusion - Kar and Car should go together.