Simply Complex!

I am not a 'taller than six and a half foot' giant that I should complain about people/things around me being short/small. However, a six footer does face most of those,especially if there is a 'discrepancy'  in the torso to limbs ratio.

Sleeper berths in Indian railways are ideal for those who fit into the boundaries of the berth. Once you cross one of those, more often than not, you are in for action!

It can be anything from those unknown Co-passengers on the walkway, touching your feet with their heads to weird 'S' shapes on the berth while sleeping. My friend describes the 'S' shape dilemma here. Given an option, I always prefer upper berth where a protruding feet is not a problem for the walkway passengers. Indian railways don't give an option every time you travel, do they?!!

My amma and I were traveling back to madras in train after a good 4 day vacation at friend's and this time I had to deal with the 'Side Upper' berth which actually gives an isolated feel and hence minimal disturbance to other passengers in the bay. However, they are a bit shorter than the other berths (or i feel that way!). I try negating the length by choosing a diagonal position which works most of the time(Refer Pic 1!). 

                                    Picture 1: Top View of the Sleeper berth (And that is me!)

My amma though had other plans. She chose to make my problems a bit more complex by giving me two hand baggage to be kept besides me as they had 'valuable' contents. Keeping them under the seats would be risky! Apparently!

So now, My problem statement was simple. Sleep on a berth that would not fit me in and also safeguard the 'valuable' contents! I was trying to stay awake by sitting on the berth, leaning on one of the baggage and holding the other on the inner side of the berth like in Picture 2

Picture 2: Side view of the Berth (Chose the side view so that the baggage positions can be clearly shown. Again, Thats me!)

Obviously,I knew that was not the way I can sleep a whole night.I was just delaying my sleep as I could not come up with any solution,so to say!

An 'S' shape facing outwards would create two slots on the inner side where the two bags can be placed. This is how it looked

Picture 3: Back to top View of the berth to show the 'S' shape. Though I have shown the bags to fit into the slot, they actually didn't! 

However, the baggages wouldn't fit into those slots (Damn! will enything ever fit In!!??) More than that, IT WAS painful to be in that position for more than 30 mins! 

Whatever it was, One thing was pretty clear that I was not going to get a comfortable sleep that night.So I had to settle down for a less painful option. One that will ensure the safety of those bags and accommodate me on the berth...well almost accommodate me! And the solution looked something like this

Picture 4: Side view of the berth. I was in that position for 5 Hours with my eyes closed and trying to sleep! 

The inclination on the bag helped in reducing the body length to be accommodated in the berth by a few inches. Owing to a poor torso to limbs proportion, it wasn't a major reduction! So I had to take the diagonal position as well! This position was not comforting, but less painful. One which I could take for 5 hours and not more than that! 

And It was 6 in the morning. I stepped down from my berth and found my mom awake. She asked 2 questions

"Good morning! Did u sleep well last night? And are the bags safe??"  

She wished me Good morning! So I chose not to talk the details of it, just smiled and  said "Yes"!!

I didn't have an Answer!

We all have been there. Quite a few times we have had questions thrown at us, which either don’t have an answer or have more than one. Most often though we choose not to answer some of those! A better alternative we end up choosing is a smile followed by an appropriate pause. A smile which is neither too long to make you look like a fool nor too short to mock at the other person!

Few of those ‘smile’ moments I had last week

A colleague at office to me: “It took really long for me to move back to delhi.I was finding it tough to manage in HCL Chennai for the last 2 years.Language problems, no proper north Indian food you know….I think there is a conspiracy behind all this for which Shiv Nadar is responsible. He is deliberately moving North Indian people to Chennai and people from Chennai to places like Noida. That clearly explains why you are here! “

( Trust me!..He was damn serious about his observation and …..I chose not to answer…..errr….Chose to smile…Phew…Of all the things in the world, Shiv Nadar handed over the reins to Roshni Nadar,ONLY to get into this ‘Conspiracy’ thing full time!...huh…..)


My little 3 year old niece to me:" I think I am not going to talk to you the next time you visit me. You are so grown up and I always see you in half pants. I think Grown ups are supposed to be only in full pants and you are one of them! We will talk further when you are in full pants"

(Boy! I didn’t see that coming….and didn’t have an answer!)

At hindsight though, I guess those questions were better unanswered, for one, it would have dragged the conversation to no logical conclusion and perhaps would have diluted the ‘surprise/silly/fun’ part of those questions.

The best part is it gives you a reason to smile! Helps people who just cant stop smiling! I have quite a few friends in that category!! (ahh well....I am in that category too..)

Pressing Pain!

“Senior VP is visiting us tomorrow, make sure you present yourself in neatly pressed business formals”, reminded my Project manager.  Of the 16 words he uttered, one word that kept ringing in my mind was ‘PRESSED’!

Pressing the daily clothes may sound a mundane task which is not worth a piece of your mind. But believe me; it is far more than that, especially if you are as lazy as I am!

Every weekday morning, when I open my eyes to the first rays of the sun seeping through the window, beyond the feeling of a ‘new day: rise and shine’, comes a series of questions on the overnight official emails, the first meeting of the morning which I have to sit through, the lunch I should pack etc.

And the most tiring thought of them all would be on what I should wear!?  Ahem…Let me rephrase this!..are my formal clothes pressed?!

Typically, I press a pair of pant and shirt once and use it twice or thrice before I wash! (Yeah.. I am lazy!). Now, that makes a minimum of two pairs of pant and shirt or four pieces of clothes to be ironed for the week. This sounds simple as all I have to do is press two pairs over the weekend and I am all set! But then, I wish I would listen to myself once!

I might not be entirely unreasonable on why pressing clothes is painful, especially when one adopts the Just in time pressing! (Most of them may sound ridiculous, but hey! That’s me)

One: Time is precious. When you wake up 10 minutes before you start to office, there are other critical and socially essential tasks that take precedence such as brushing your teeth, take bath and of course pack your lunch.

Two: when you choose to press in such an ‘emergency mode’ every minute pressed is two minutes lost (Einstein’s relativity perhaps!) and you feel like you are wasting time and end up messing  other tasks!

I did have a work around to by pass this pain. Sadly though, it works during winters alone! This is why I like the Orange county winters. It is not too cold to painfully wrap yourself up in ‘n’ number of layers.  The temperature would drop to bearable levels where a full sleeve sweater would serve the purpose! And this turned out to be my solution to my ‘pressing blues’.

All I used to do was to put on the sweater when my shirt is not pressed. This also made me count half sleeves, shirts which would otherwise be a strict no in the formal attire category, into my office ‘wardrobe’!

I went on to add four more sweaters, just to not be repetitive!

 One interesting thing I noticed was that there were quite a few in my office who started wearing different sweaters everyday!  Did everyone have a reason like the one I had? Everyone is as lazy as I am?  May be true or may be not

“You are not alone!”, I smiled at myself

Forbidden Apple?!

How many of you have iPhone?, asked my prof in the class. My thoughts travelled 23 months 13 days back in time, the Christmas of 2007 to be precise when I first laid my hands on the brand new iPhone.

 11 months had passed by since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in his Jan 2007 keynote at MacExpo. What Steve Jobs showed the world was way ahead of the contemporary handheld devices. He literally made a mockery of the stylus that comes with these handheld devices and showed the world why stylus was such a redundant piece of stick when you have the natural stylus, five of them in each hand!

My love story with Apple started off in mid 2006 when my cousin gifted me an iPod Nano. It was hard for me to fathom that stuff like music could be made so organized and portable. I was impressed by click wheel and the option to choose the song you want. From Walkman (the tape cassette one!) to iPod was an astronomical leap of sorts. Apple made it possible. It was indeed love at first sight!

By December that year, I moved to Los Angeles, a bit closer to the birth place of Apple. I was on the lookout for buying my first notebook. MacBooks were a bit heavy on the purse. All I could do at that point in time was to hope that Apple would give away free MacBooks to people who want to own one but cannot afford one! ( Yeah! Brand Apple makes you Insane!)

 Again, my cousin came to the rescue! He offered me to get a 25% discount on the MacBook from one of his colleagues at Apple. Flying to his home in Bay area, the birthplace of Apple was the next thing I did.  I landed at his home on a cold December morning. The MacBook was waiting for me on the table. Pure, white, gorgeous and oozing style in every inch of it. Carefully connecting the charger to the power point, I switched on the Mac Book. The Apple Logo lit up in a white light brighter than the MacBook’s skin. I had never seen anything like that before. I cherished every moment of it!

6 months on, iPhone was launched. And I did call my cousin for that 25% discountJ. I was not fortunate this time around. My friend and I used to track the reviews and feedback of iPhone users. There were quite a few complaints ranging from a battery that would not last more than a few hours to poor camera quality and what not. We were disappointed. Although we did not care much for these complaints, we still could not find a reason for not buying it. Probably there wasn’t one. 

On the Christmas Eve of 2007, my friend got a crazy offer from Amex, offering its card holders a 10% discount at the Apple stores for any purchase of over US $1000.  We sensed that probably, this was the chance. Two iPhones would bring the bill up to 880 USD with taxes (by 2007 rates). We went in search of someone who can buy for the remaining 120 USD! Fortunately, my other roomie was ready to get his iPod. We were off to the Apple store and the next call I did to my mom was on my iphone!

From being clueless on what an iPod was to a Crazy Apple Loyalist possessing three of its beauties! All this in fewer than 8 months! Although I did see that there were lots of compromises like changing your service provider, entering a 2 year contract with ridiculous terms of breaking it, compatibility issues and limitations with the iPhone, brand Apple did push them to the background. Definitely, too good to resist!

Thanks for Being There!!

TO ALL MY DEAR FRIENDS!!

The journey has been long, filled with memories. Few to Cherish and many to forget. On quite a few occasions, I have failed to thank God for my good times .Never missed to curse my fate on the not so good ones.

On second thoughts, there was probably a hidden message?..a lesson may be? Tough times were filled with moments of solitude. There was no one behind me. Nor a soul ahead of me.I looked around to realize that YOU were always with me. You shared the pain and help me fight out of it.When things were in place and ‘Plan A’ worked, we had nothing but fun. We mocked at each other and fooled around together.

But times do change. And when they changed for the worse, nothing went my way. Dark clouds surrounded. Failure loomed large. You were the Silver lining, bright enough to disperse them. You always reminded me that ‘Even this will pass away’. You brought in Optimism and hope. I began to hate loneliness. With you around, that was obvious. You have been a wonderful friend. You are a wonderful friend and you Will be a wonderful friend.

At times in my prayers, deep in my heart, I have stopped cursing my fate for all those bad times. Those were the moments of truth; ones that made me realize how important you are to me.

Stay as good as you are! Keep me afloat!!

Thanks for being there! At all times!!

Happy Friends Day!!

Date: 1 Aug 2009