A word about enclosed spaces

My Cubicle..
Ah, my solace from the civilized world..
The place I can rule..
The place I choose to clutter up or keep neat..
The place that the company thinks should be given to all employees to improve productivity..

But I just realized that I can now justify dozing off during office hours. Check this, this and this out, to get an idea of what i'm talking about.

Thanks to Wiktionary and a hundred cats.

The Next Big Thing

It seemed apt for me to post this..

The Maldives might never know why they called their local fishing boat this, but Indian Cricket knows pretty well, that the winds of change have arrived.The chants of Sachin, Sachin in the stands have been replaced by a name that will be chanted for the years to come.

One recent news article referred to him as the Ranchi Rambo, one of the best names that journos have come up with for cricket players in the recent past. He has a presence on the cricketing arena that very few have had. His abilities, to put it mildly, far surpass the ordinary, makes you wonder as you go past the surprising, and sometimes even take you the realms of the mundane. Every kid these days, including Gen. Musharraf wants to copy his hairstyle.

I give you, Dhoni..

Did you notice that he is doing in the pic what he best likes to do on the field..

He's having a ball..

Why did Yoda cross the road?

One morning, I get flooded with birthday mails, and I reply to the mails, thanking everyone, and finishing my mails how I usually do, with the Star Wars Phrase "May the force be with you".

A mollag comes in reply for that saying this is April, not May, so it would be "April the force be with you". This agitates a certain mollag maniac, who messages me on the office messenger, and starts shooting mollags as he cannot send replies, since his office is paranoid about employees sending external mail.

The end product is a list of phrases that Yoda might have used in different circumstances, or with different people, which goes something like this: ( Note that the list below is not exhaustive, and lots of new nonsense can be added to it..)

1. Stockbroker - May the bourse be with you
2. Golfer - May the course be with you
3. Richard Stallman - May the source be with you
4. Boatman - May the oars be with you
5. Obelix - May the boars be with you
6. Soldier/sailor returning from a long hard time looking for a good night out - May the whores be with you
7. Congenitally seasick landlubber - May the shores be with you
8. Viking lover - May the Norse be with you
9. Lion recovering from sore throat - May the roars be with you
10. Personal lawyer - May divorce be with you
11. Banker - May endorse be with you
12. Sponge - May the pores be with you
13. Quadruped - May all fours be with you
14. Marvin the Paranoid Android - May the bores be with you
15. Telegraph operator - May the Morse be with you
16. Mallu guy stranded in the desert looking for a way to escape - May the horse be with you
17. Big B/Sachin - May the crores be with you
18. Terminally lazy person - May the snores be with you
19. Housemaid - May clean floors be with you (aside: a housemaid's hesitant lover might say "I may clean floors to be with you")
20. Mafia don - May the chors be with you (can also be used above - chores)
21. Peahen - May the mores be with you
22. Jim Morrison fan - May The Doors be with you
23. Democrat American population in 2000 - May the Gores be with you
24. Winnie the Pooh who's just stolen the donkey's tail because he wants it for himself - May Eeyore's be with you
25. Sutherland employee - May outsource be with you
26. Miner - May the ores be with you
27. Shopaholic - May the stores be with you
28. Selfish person - May what's yours be with you
29. Hot babe who keeps getting annoying IMs from unknown idiots wanting to be friends - May ignores be with you

Cross Posted here...

..::Catch 22::..

A good day for me to return from my prolonged hibernation to the world of blogging.

And today, ironically, the first thought that struck me was this:

There was only one catch and that as Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. 'That's some catch, that Catch-22,' he observed. 'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed

Maybe it's because I turned 22 today. :)

PS: I realize that the pic above is really pixelated. Click on it to see the proper thing. And could someone tell me why this is happening??

Lucky Strike @ Fame

It's been quite a while since I updated my blog, and quite a while since I've generally browsed around. This may be attributed to my vain efforts to finish my final semester project(sic), or how lifeless my life has become that I don't browse much anymore.

After a long time, I went Ego-Surfing today at the Computer Lab in college, and guess what I found! My Tsunami Poem has been posted on the NDTV website, and it's been there for a good month now.Go Here to see it.

I had just posted it on NDTV when I'd written it, and completely forgotten about it, until I stumbled upon it today!

I suppose this means that my poems are not that bad, and thus returns my renewed vigor to get poetic once again, so..Here I go!!

Ogden Nash - The Best Stuff

Ogden Nash is the undisputed king of humour and poetry. Atleast I think so.. check out some of his stuff!

The Ant

The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?

The Firefly

The firefly's flame Is something for which science has no name
I can think of nothing eerier
Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a
person's posteerier.

The Guppy

Whales have calves,
Cats have kittens,
Bears have cubs,
Bats have bittens,
Swans have cygnets,
Seals have puppies,
But guppies just have little guppies.

The Cow

The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.

The Ostrich

The ostrich roams the great Sahara.
Its mouth is wide, its neck is narra.
It has such long and lofty legs,
I'm glad it sits to lay its eggs.

The Abominable Snowman

I’ve never seen an abominable snowman,
I’m hoping not to see one,
I’m also hoping, if I do,
That it will be a wee one.

The Termite

Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good!
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.

The Turtle

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

Click here to get to a collection of some more of ROFL poetry by Nash

H2G2 - The Movie

Here are some stills I found from the WWW on the H2G2 movie in the making. Should make an interesting see.













These pics are, as I see, not too clear. You can find clearer versions of these pics at the Internet Movie Database.

One Little Odyssey

Left office a little earlier than usual, and thanks to the weather in Madras for the past week, there wasn't too much heat as I started down the Old Mahabalipuram road. I haven't been into too much physical activity of late, and this was a fresh new experience for the energy levels I have been radiating lately. Though there are a gazillion maxi cabs, share autos and mofussil buses plying on the road, I thought, what the heck, let me make the most of this chance to hike a little. After having walked for what I thought must have been about two kilometers, I got tired, and decided to do what Douglas Adams had found so easy to do in his masterpiece - Hitchhike!

Putting my hand out to the first set of vehicles was not the prettiest of experiences. They were a set of punks on their Bajaj Eliminators and Enfield Thunderbirds, and one of them had the balls enough to show me what I'll put up here as the longest one of the human fingers. I could have easily been discouraged by this, but I wasn't. Instead, I showed him mine, and started to look for more people to give me a lift. I saw a battered Yamaha RX 100 coming down the road, and the guy who was driving looked like a Tsunami hit fisherman(probably he was, I'll never know!). He stopped 10 yards in front of me and looked back and stared back at me." Yenga poringa?", he asked, to which I answered that I wanted to go to Adyar. "Perungudi varaikum polam vaanga!", he said, and I got on. I obviously didn't know where the hell he was taking me, and I lost the tiniest sense of direction I had in me when I landed at the Perungudi bus stop. I thanked my first helper for getting to the first milestone.





Even now, I could just take one of the buses home, but decided to push my luck a little, and see what I have coming. If I can do it once, I can do it again, right! And I again started walking down the road, away from the bus stop. Then I saw the Ford Endeavor, the vehicle of my dreams, coming down the road, like a beast strolling alone in the savannahs. Man, I'm gonna have one of these SUVs when I have the dough. I have always thought how rad it would be travel in one, and it seemed that god seemed to be a little too pleased with me that day. With just a little wave of the hand, it stopped before me, and a rather official looking gentleman asked me where I wanted to go. Maybe my TCS id-card did the trick of getting me the ride of the lifetime, and I was talking animatedly about the weather with the man till I had to get down, as he had to go another way. Which meant I had to search for another mode of transport. And what I was about to experience was the direct opposite of the Ford Endeavor. A ride in a ricketly old maxi cab, overflowing with passengers. I had travelled in crowded city buses before, but this experience was something out of the ordinary.




I got in where the Endeavor had left me, a place whose name I can't recollect, but it sounded the all to familiar blah-blah-pakkam, like most of the places in and around Madras. The bus driver and the conductor were both barely out of their teens, and the conductor had a smart-ass smirk on his face that he gave to each of the people that got into the bus. The bus driver seemed to be a trainee, the same as me, only that I am one at Tata Consultancy Services. He had to be guided by instructions from the conductor whose mouth was already overflowing with pan masala. I was literally sitting on the floor of the bus, and I assure you, the people around me had not seen soap for aleast two weeks. A funny looking man got into the bus, and asked me directions to the railway station. Me, being in the mood for fine conversation, asked him which train he wanted to catch. As it turned out, he had exactly 27 minutes to get to the railway station, and god only knows if he managed to catch his train or not.





Got down at the Adyar bus depot, and thought that this was the end to the perfect journey, an up and down ride through the finery and not-so-finery of life. I had to wait another fifteen minutes for 5-E to come along.

Here, I would like to put in a word or two about the bus rut(sic) they call 5-E. Having travelled on this bus route everytime I have to come to Anna University or IIT, I tell you, this is what a bus ride to eternity would be like. FIVE-E probably stands for 'F*@king Intolerable Vicious Evil - Exodus'. I am obviously making this up, and I wouldn't credit MTC to come up with interesting expansion for bus route names. But thankfully, the bus wasn't too crowded on the particular day, and I got home in record time (2hours 37 minutes), and rested after my little odyssey.

PS: talking of Odyssey, be there at the Music Academy on the 26th of Jan, for the Odyssey Quiz. It's gonna be great fun. And go I I M O!

::The Ultimate Journey::

As the brilliant light shone through my window,
I woke up with a start from my sleep.
I felt it draw me closer,
and towards it I began to creep.

I turned back to look at what I had left,
the distance between the body and the soul.
Was this the start of the ultimate journey,
of all things this fair world holds.

The beam passed right through me,
I was as good as a piece of glass.
And as we started our journey upwards,
I thought, let me enjoy this till it lasts.

A gentle wind was the mood of the night,
soft fluffy clouds here and there.
The moon was growing bigger right before me,
and at the shrinking fields I began to stare.

Where did this path lead to?
maybe the heavens, I started to wonder.
would I finally meet the maker?
and would he punish me for my blunders?

All the people I had compromised,
in my quest for apparent glory.
Would someone remember me later,
or was my life just a passing story?

The money I had made was useless,
for I had nobody to leave it to.
No one to weep for this loss to the world,
if only the loss itself was true.

As I snapped back to reality,
The journey had ended as it had begun.
the light was still shining through my window,
but this was of the morning sun.

The purpose of the journey was revealed to me then.
I realized we just have one life to live.
But through the regrets and the disappointments,
it only matters how much we give.