Castles in the bubbles

They say its ephemeral
full of bubbles.
But bubbles don't make it pretty
but imply the reality.
So, you gotta build castles
inside each bubble.

So many of those burst,
some drift away
But you are still left with few
They can start you anew
In there you have to build the castles
and paint them in pastels.

rand( );

That is what future was gonna be ... rand( );
H1-B quota got flooded the first day itself! My lawyer had warned me in the first meeting itself. He was sure tht its gonna be filled up on the first day itself.
On 2nd April afternoon, we got to know that USCIS has receiverd 150000 apps! The lottery system and the 1:3 chances of getting the H1 scared the shit outta the ppl.
USCIS later let it out that tht masters quota is not yet filled and so thankfully rand ( ); no longer features in lives of the masters quota students. But the general quota people are going to suffer.
These things were bound to happen as big companies in India like Infy , wipro ,TCS hog down a major chunk of the H1-B quota. Most of the time these companies jst file for an employee's H1-B but dont send them onsite. I personally feel that even the applicants who hv done their bachelors frm the USA shld have a comparatively easy way of getting the H1. May be they can keep a separate quota for onsite H1s or they can divide the quota according to different sectors.
Many people might have to return back home only because the lost the opportunity to someone who would hold an H1 but still work in India all along!
The US congress passed a bill to legalize large number of illegal immigrants. They would be categorized as non-skilled labour. Acc. to them, this step is valid because there is a business demand for the non-skilled. But looking at the number of apps for H1, doesn't it show that there is business demand for skilled labour too?
I am safe now but still worrying about few of my frnds. I hope things would work out for them.

Food! :D

I was scrolling through the index of the posts of my blog. Suddenly I realized ," Oh my God!! There is not a single post on food as yet!!!!!" How can MY blog be without one on food! I think thats why my blog sucks :P
Looking back, I wonder how come names on the lines of 'Pompfret Tales' or 'Tandoori Express' or something crappy like that never crossed my mind as I was naming my blog!

Thinking about 'Hinduism'....

Disclaimer: Just my naive thoughts....

Chatting with Karthik. Ended up talking about 'Hinduism' and drifted away thinking about it.
I prefer calling it as Hinduism and not Hindu dharma or religion. It was always defined as 'the way of life' and not in today's twisted way. But anyway, I am not writing about that.
I have talked to him about this 3-4 times and every time I realize that I barely know about Hinduism. The main point is that I have not yet read anything about it. Not even Bhagvadgeeta! I had read few 'adhyay' from Gita but I was a kid at that time and was not at all philosophically inclined.
I wish to read up more about it. To think of it, all the shrutis, smrutis and samhitas like the four Vedas and Upanishads , AaraNyaks etc. must be rich of knowledge. Knowledge which is somewhere necessary for a person's philosophical evolution. While reading such things , you suddenly come across to the answers to the questions that you never realized you had. A conscience building experience, I would say.
Moreover, I think that reading these things is like reading and knowing your philosophical history as history is not only the kings and queens and their kingdoms, but even the thought process that existed in that era. All the this literature is damn old and it would be really nice to know what Hinduism actually was. It might be really broad minded, but I think people start following it without understanding it properly which makes them orthodox and gives it a bad name and a twisted nature.
I feel that its a rich heritage of which I know nothing. When I wrote the words AaraNyaks n Upanishads n stuff, I know that those are just the names stuck in my brain since school, just like the other random bits and pieces of unindexed information. I am curious about it. I know that I wont be having patience to read a lot of stuff but some thing is better than nothing! Starting to read the BhagvadGeeta now.

What do u do....

Its a weekend morning. You step into the shower to wash your hair. The water streams down on u.
What do you do when you feel like getting dissolved bit by bit in every droplet? What do you do when you feel that the hot shower is the best thing in the world? What do you do when you wanna swim endlessly in the water? What do you do when you start comparing the waterdrops with pearles? What do you do when you know that these soothing but irrelevent thoughts have no meaning.... What do you do when you know that its just the ususal shower that you are finding so heavenly!....then what you do is simple....
You store that stupid content feeling in the corner of ur heart. You feel happy that ur wet hair tickeling your neck bring a twinkle in your eye and you feel grateful to the hot water for starting your day so perfect! :)

4.22 pm

..........and the time doesn't seem to pass. Waiting for 5.00 pm so that I can break free n eat Maggi :D
In the morning, I didn't feel like I have woken up. Had a shot of coffee which had its required effect. I have been working since then. Now, not a single line of the code seems to work. Now my stressed out mind( and hands too!) is crawling around the web reading crappy things like 'How to remove coffee stains' etc. Not a single person worth talking(note that!) is online. I have always noted that whenever you are busy working, every single person on all your messengers would ping you. But they just seem to disappear when time doesn't seem to pass. Not even a spam mail is hitting my inbox.
20 more minutes of such agony...and then..Maggi!

Coldddddddddddddddd!!!!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......................
Finally the winter is here and its here with a bang! After a balmy January, I had given up all my hopes for beautiful sights of snow covered Buffalo. But no-no....the winter started with the new month. It has been the coldest one since I came here in the US of A.
It snowed a lot on Friday. Saturday was nothing different. We had to cancel our clubbing plans because of the snowfall.
The temperature has been around -25C to -30C . Today its warmer as the temp is -17C(1F) ;)
Waiting for the sun now....

Hmmmm.....

Excerpt from my personal diary....dated sometime in early July'06...

"...I hate 53 Springville. Living alone is not very bad but 'living alone' when you still have people around you is horrible. Your 'own' people. That sucks...
I don't think I would tag it as anybody's fault. I never thought a month long absence of a person changes things so much. So, I better learn that than wishing that times would be back to normal...
I think, hoping that people will be there in your hard times, itself is wrong... But then should I be there for them during their hard ones? Should I be caring towards them like before? Would I be able to flush away this venomous feeling? I guess, yes.. I hope to pass this as a phase. A phase when I needed people, but they were not there. May be they never understood that I need them. I guess, the batsman always gets a benefit of doubt!
Told Kanchan the following over the phone,
" People change coz situations change , and they stop caring for you, coz they no longer need you."
I still might be wrong........"

And I am happy that I was wrong...A good discussion always helps..as always!

A completely impulsive, but highly edited post. Somehow these memories clouded my head right now and I felt an urge to make my thoughts public, knowing that not many read my blog ;)

Life in an Ice Cube...

Got up early in the morning. Looked outta the window to chk if I there has been any snow. Thank god.. there wasn't any. Just a light rain.
Got ready and opened the door and whoa! I almost slipped! The steps were covered with ice. I could see the transparent ice every where. Then I remembered that Yahoo! Weather had told me to watch out for the 'Wintry Mix' since yesterday night.
My car was sparkling as it was fully covered in ice. I broke the icicles on the handle and got in. Rolled the windows down. Oh!dint I just roll the windows down? then how come they r still up? Then I realized that it was the ice on the car windows! had to clean my car with a scraper as the ice was really hard.
Throughout the day,it was all icy.....beautifully icy....every branch of every tree was covered with uniform transparent ice casing. Every road sign had sparkling icicles. Whole day it was drizzling. The whole city seemed to be made up of ice. In the evening, the bare trees looked like huge chandeliers as the street lights shown on them.
So it was a nice day, reminded me of the Snow Queen's Castle in the Hans Anderson's fairy tale.... :)

SnowFlake

Its December,

and she is everywhere.

She looks pretty

in her angel white gown.

She looks royal

with the aura around .
Playing with the wind
aloof and lost in herself.
Led by the drift,
now She is around you.
Smiling n twirling,
You know She brought you the warmth.

Ah!You took her on your hand

now all u r left with, is a teardrop....

Crib Crib Crib....

Warning: lotsa cribbing ahead...

Hate todays day. Looks like I got up from the wrong side of the bed...
It was snowing in the morning. So I decided not to take my car. Then I miss my bus! I end up reaching 1 hr late for work...Clients cribbing, clients acting dumb.... thn few more things..
Wishing tht the day gets over early. I wonder why you have some days whn nothing seems to come your way and you feel bitchy about everything. You get so frust that u want to back answer everyone and wish that you had claws like a cat.
grrrrrrrr..... #@@&%&#&&

One more storm....

Severe weather warning today as well! winds are blowing at amazing speed and that reminds me that I have not yet written anything about the recent snowstrom in Buffalo!
It was the first time that I witnessed anything like this. On 12th October( I was gonna get my car...), around afternoon it started snowing like crazy. Totally untimely snow, as even fall had not started. I was superhappy to see the snow everywhere.
As the trees still had all their leaves on, snow strarted to accumulate on the leaves. The trees could not take tht weight and their branches started breaking. broken branches brought power lines down with thm! Now almost 80% of Buffalo was engulfed in dark....
As 143 Callodine didnt lose power,we were lucky, and so were our 6 friends! The guys (Prasad, Gautam,Manu, Bhole, MPatil and Karthik) were 'The Refugees'! That Thursday night, no bosy thought that they will be @143 for the next whole week!
Friday morning I woke up early cursing under my breath (as always!) as I had to go to work. I looked outta my window and whoa! It was ONLY white outside and it was snowing like hell! We had almost 2 feet snow that day. When the snow got over, we had to shovel the driveway and all the 3-4 cars!
Buffalo spent the whole next week without power. Since we did not lose the power a sinlge day, we were happy. 10 ppl under 1 roof. We had lotsa fun thoughout the week. Candy had joined teh gang at the end.
It took lot of time to get the life of Buffalo back on track. You would see the utility vehicals everywhere, long lines at the gas stations and grocery stores. Most of the ppl lived using generators. It took more than a week to restore the power back. Road clean up work was going on to clear out the branches and tress that had fallen everywhere. We roamed arnd the city for the first 2 days to see the extend of destruction caused and took snaps of it.
Found Buffalo really different from Bombay in this period. The storm broke the spine of the city, so unlike Bombay... Mumbai jst jumps back.
All in all, had lotsa fun during the storm perios, mainly coz we were 'the chosen ones' ;)

"I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken -- and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived."

Debated with a friend of mine on this. He agrees with it! Well I do'nt......we were not talking abt this things that Margaret Mitchell talkes about in this quote. Well..I don't say that love is not practicle. Lol.

We were talking about decisions and situations in general. I believe that those broken pieces teach you a lot more than the whole piece. The broken edges are the reality. They tell u what went wrong. You can never see the mistakes you are committing in a smooth going situation. You would realize those only when the china is broken. Good that it teaches you a lot. teaches u how to handle the vase. The broken edges would always remind you to not to make the same mistakes again. If you work well on rectifying the mistakes, its worth the work!

zhagdaaaaaaaaaaas!

I could never understand how to resolve an argument. I have realized this that different people have different ways of resolving arguments. Whose way should you go when both the parties have opposite ways of solving those?

Some of my friends prefer talking about it immediately and resolve the issue. I am that way too. Hence, solving arguments with such people is the easiest. You put fwd ur points, they do theirs and you can talk about it.

Some of them would just sulk , get angry at you and keep a grudge. They are the hardest ppl to solve ur issues with. These ppl scare me coz once such people hold their grudges, they wont listen at all. They just clam up about the issue!

Then there is another sect of ppl. They will prefer not talking about the issue at all. They will just ignore the issue, they will ignore you. And this is their solution for the thing! Just run away from confronting the thing, the person. Then after taking their time, they will be fine with you. If u meet and talk to them after tht much ‘time’, they will be like normal with u. These ppl puzzle me….

So whn I have arguments with type#2 or type#3 ppl, I have no clue how I should react. Should I be going my way to resolve the issue or the other person’s? There r arguments when sometimes I go down a guilt trip and so I hv to confront the person and say sorry. At times it works, but sometimes it worsens the situation and thn you have to take another guilt trip. And why should I go the other persons way always….

Weird situations which I seriously hate. Thankfully I don’t have see thm tht often!

Resurrection...

Hmmm...hvnt blogged in ages. Not that I dont get time as such, but still.
Started with my new job. Pretty interesting one. But still I surely have time to blog. I think I hv becoem a lil lazy and hence not doing anything other than goin to work and coming back!
Decided now tht I would go back to my own self. Resurrection, as I call it. I have decided to do the following things:
1) Be more productive on the job
2) Study!!!!
3) Chat less
4) Read more (offline reading i.e.)
5) Write more (offline again!!)
6) Work out (shld be a higher priority) .....feeling lazy to move it up in this list..
7) Be less lazy!!

Hoping for a resurrection..

The Shores

I think my bestest snap till now....Should hv made sm1 sit on one of the benches.

Returnin' Blues....

Only 10 days left to go back to Buffalo! I hate the feeling. :( It feels as if every evenig is laughing at me and telling me "1 day less now!".
After staying with the whole family for almost 1 month, its very difficult to go back to a place where you know not many ppl would be that good with you. Everyone is pampering me so much here.
Last time when I came here, I had a reason to go back. I had not yet completed the degree then. But now I feel "why I am going back? Is going back really worth? My whole family is here in India and work opportunities there are equally good."
But I agree that I should get an experience of US work culture and few senti reasons r holding me back. Its always a compromise between ur loved ones and ur professional life. Life is anyways compromises.
"Its not always rainbows and butterflies but compromises that moves us along....."
I think the I am unnecessarily getting so senti over going back. I know I would be happy there too. Just discussed this with Prasad so I thought I shld post. Its just the blues that r hitting me real bad.
"Thats why they call it the blues.............."

Random Things About Me....

Saw this type of post on Shreyas's blog. So me 2222222222!
Here are few random things about me..not in particular order of weirdness.

1. I think that birthday is the most happenin and exciting day of the year.
2. And bestest b'day party has to have good food.
3. I loooove to sing, but am bad at it....
4. I love to write, but...ahem...
5. I never say no to a coffee.
6. I am still crazy for Steve Waugh.

Gitanjali

Lately while recovering, I have been reading Gitanjali by Tagore. Oh my god! I am totally in love with it!
I had never read anything by Rabindranath Tagore before, save few things that I had come accross in the course syllabus. I feel that I have never read a more beautiful poetry. Every time I read it, I can read a poem in a totlly new sense. Every time, it has a different meaning. Most of the poems are spiritual or romantic. Even the romantic poems are written in a very spiritual way. I would just say that I am simply amazed by the poetic strength of this man.
The book has an introduction by Yeats. In that Yeats says that he keeps a copy of Gitanjali with him and reads it daily. I think even I am gonna do the same. Even if u read 2-3 poems, you somehow feel enlightened and at peace. Wonderful and amazing poetry!

Monsoons here!

yippieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.......sooooo happpy! Good that even this time I dint miss getting drenched in the first rains!