Do I have a hangover, or is it how it is supposed to be

There are different types of hangover, the most obvious is the one that you get after a healthy dose of booze, which you get rid of fairly easily. However, there is one more type of hangover, which is difficult to get rid of, or maybe it is not meant to be gotten rid of. Most of my friends including me, appear to suffer from this type of hangover. 

Even though 5 years have passed since we passed out of college, we still believe that we are just out of college, and do almost everything that college kids “supposedly” do, whereas people like us are expected to behave “responsibly”.   But if you look at the scenario logically, it might appear to you that all those things which are supposed to be done during college are quiet expensive, and there lies the constraint, which is not there once you start earning. Hence, the frequency of partying actually increases only after college; it’s more like a catch 22 situation out there. 

Further, note that the definition of partying is a function of time, which means it changes with time in accordance with the equation, which I am yet to derive. At this point of time, by partying I mean, getting out of your house and getting into a public place (not your friends’ place), having at least a couple of pegs, if possible dance a bit, . There need not be a dance floor, you need not have a girl by your side (anyway, you would end up finding all the other girls more attractive than your girl, it is true, if its not in your case, rush to a doctor immediately); you could do a snake dance (my favorite), or stand on the restaurant’s chair and throw your hands and legs in every possible direction (this is the best way to dance), it is still called dancing. Further, while returning home you should have the fear of being caught for drunken driving, and if possible, when everything shuts down, drive down to Mysore road coffee day. Broadly this is what I call partying. 

Now moving on to the trend of partying, if you were to study the trend more closely, you would notice that it follows a bell curve, like the one I have picked from a book called “crossing the chasm”, which I am reading at present. While the book is about a more serious subject, I still believe that the concepts or at least the curve can be corelated to the current topic.

In the present context, you could consider the X coordinate to represent the frequency of partying and the Y coordinate to represent your age. The bell curve has a big void pointed at by the arrow, which is called the Chasm. The age at the beginning of the void could be, say 26 or 27 for guys and 24 or 25 for girls, and the age at the end of the chasm could be, say 29 or 30 for guys and 26 or 28 for girls. Lets call this age the chasm age. 

You would notice that from the time you start making money till the time you reach the beginning of the chasm, the frequency of partying increases exponentially. You are game for partying every second day, and NO is not an answer, life is a party, and you tend to fall short of cash every month irrespective of how much you earn, but you never stop having fun. But before you know it, you would have hit the chasm, you wouldn’t have realized it. A hint that you have most certainly hit the chasm, is the fact that a guy (I am not referring to Teja ;-)…) in your gang is going to get married. You are really exited about his marriage, only reason being, there is good bachelor party coming your way! Next thing you hear, a second guy gets engaged(I am not referring to Giri ;-)…), and few weeks later, you notice that they have become good guys. They go back home early because their fater in law would be joining them for lunch, they don’t drink much and some even talk about quitting sutta and liquor, and they even justify their moves. Sooner than later you realize the bindaas guys in your gang have reduced, and the frequency of partying has drastically reduced. This is when you are falling into the chasm, a boaring life.

While some surrender, and fall into the chasm, and never ride the next big wave in the bell curve, others emerge as winners (Daridra I can see some potential in you to be a winner, while Dog the Tiger might end up becoming an uncle). How to cross the chasm is a whole new topic in itself, and we will not touch upon it in this post.

I, along with some of my friends realized that we had arrived at the beginning of the chasm when we were chatting on facebook at 8pm ON A FRIDAY, I know its sad. But we didn’t surrender, we didn’t want to let down our parents, who would be concerned if we don’t get our healthy dose of liquor. So we just moved our lazy asses and marked the beginning of crossing the chasm by having yet another kickass party! Got high, ate well, danced (minus the snake moves L ), checked out chinks following Gandhiji’s principle (minimal clothing, awesome!), and got caught for drunken driving!

Will be cross the chasm? Will we ride the next wave? Most probably, WE WILL! And we hope to see you there!

PS: Cops can not fine you unless the reading in the alcohol detector shows a number more than 30.

Bahadur - The power of an immortal. The soul of a human. The heart of a hero. Sometimes it takes one to kill injustice.

I blog only when something provokes me to a great extent, and its been a long time since I last got provoked. Now, time has come; I have been provoked, and this time by a guy called "Bahadur".

In fact, I don't know his real name, but most likely his name would be Bahadur, if you had seen him, you would have know why, and I know I am a Racist. 

For starters, a little about Bahadur. He always wears a well pressed uniform, disciplined!  may be his uniform also has a few stars, I can't really recollect. Girls who like men in uniform, he is the guy for you...go for him, I don't mind brokering the deal. He always wears a cap, I haven't seen his hair in the last two years. I could have called him a 6 feet giant had he been a couple of feet taller than he is now. So what if he is not, he is a 4 feet giant. And if you look deeply into his eyes, he sure looks like a man on a mission, with a damn serious look on his face, he appears to be on a deadly mission.

May be he is on a deadly mission, may be he is from the armed forces, or he could be a spy. May be he does a lot of things throughout the day, but whenever I see him, I see him SAFEGUARDING! He safeguards a part of our country, and I am proud of him! This part of the country happens to be closer to the southern boundary of India, to be more precise, in Karnataka, to be even more precise, in Namma Bengaluru, to be even more precise, in JP Nagar, to be even more precise, he safeguards a ~ 60*40 feet vacant plot next to our company.

Well, our Bahadur is a watchman working for a restaurant next to our office. If you didn't guess that Bahadur was a watchman before I told you, then you are a dumb @#!$ and should consider hanging your self. You guessed it even before reaching the end of the last paragraph; good!  we need engineers like you; aren't you an engineer? don't worry, shit happens in life!

Coming back to Bahadur, his BIG mission as far as I know, happens to be to not let me park my car in that empty plot! and my reaction to it is - WTF and F*%$ OFF - my brain can't think beyond that.

In a quest to accomplish his mission, initially he asked me not to park my car there, but he had a angry face when he said that. So I made an even more angrier face and asked him to ... you know what. Since then he has never asked me to not park my car there. But he continues to walk around with his angry face. He gives a very dirty look, and keeps staring. Staring is the part that irritates me the most. Imagine someone doing this to you 5 times a week, twice a day, continuously for 2 years. If I quit my job, it will be because of Bahadur :D

Till a few months ago I was under the impression that he treats everyone who park their vehicle there in the same delightful way he treats me. But I was wrong. One of my female colleagues happened to get a very different treatment. She parks her bike there. Till a few months back, this is what he used to do. Hold on to a nice place for her to park her bike. After she parks her bike on its side stand, he used to park it on its main stand. He used to clean the bike's seat, and , whenever he found the bike's mirror crooked, he used to set it right. I was shocked to hear all this. It reminded me of my BE days, preferential treatment is not something new.

However, his attitude towards her, I heard, has changed a lot recently. No more cleaning the bike, holding a parking space and no more setting the mirror right. Now, he just puts up a nice angry face at her, minus the staring. But the big question is, what happened? what went wrong between them?  why this bad ass attitude towards her now?

Only Bahadur can answer all these questions, but we are not the best of pals, are we, to ask him all these questions. But had to find some answer to these questions, so we brain stormed. We did arrive at some kind of conclusion. It appears that his attitude changed after my colleague came back from her month long vacation. May be he is upset that she didn't inform him that she was going on a vacation, a long one at that. Had she just passed a word about her vacation to him, may be she would have been spared from this treatment. A mistake has been made, it can't be corrected,  he thinks injustice has been made to him and I don't think he will forgive.

All we can do now is wait and watch out for his next move. It could be deadly, but I am sure he will do JUSTICE!

BAHADUR - THE POWER OF AN IMMORTAL. THE SOUL OF A HUMAN. THE HEART OF A HERO. SOMETIMES IT TAKES ONE TO KILL INJUSTICE   

Shri Shri Shri DOG'S ONE NIGHT STAND

Reporter: Kartik Puttaiah
Camera man: Tejas H S
Columnist: SENIOR from KAREE KI KAHANI
Location: Malahalli falls
Channel: Zealots of DOG (Post edited/reproduced with permission from Zealots of Dog - Orkut)

The adventure started when BHAGWAN DOG (Aditya aka Motte aka Lassi lota) decided to explore Malahalli falls. The geography of the location was something like this: A huge water fall, followed by level water where a small portion was safe to swim and the rest was really dangerous due to intense force of water, it could easily wash away any normal human being, but I am not very sure about our Shri Shri Shri DOG though, this level water was followed by another huge falls, basically a cascade. We were at the place where there was level water. To put it in our Shri Shri Shri DOG'S words - "Naavu Mezzanine floor alli idhvee". Shri Shri Shri DOG decided to ROMANCE (We all know that ROMANCING runs in his blood) with danger, and I followed his TRAIL (That’s what Zealots do right!). I jumped a few rocks and reached a point, and OUR DOG just walked through. Later, I got the long awaited opportunity to pose with BHAGWAN DOG. Our camera man took a few snaps. Little did I know our DOG would convert this steady ROMANCE into a ONE NIGHT STAND (We know our DOGGIE’s tendency…remember Vegetable Cover). Here is how the ROMANCE ended and a potential ONE NIGHT STAND started; we decided to come back to the safer side of the water. I started off first; I had to jump from one rock to another which were about 1 and half feet apart. Water was flowing mercilessly in between them, it was a little scary. Hence, gathered all my courage and strength and leapt onto the other rock. DOG who was the on looker, commented “Maga neenu MONKEY tara jump madthyaa”. I took it as a compliment (we respect every word that DOG utters; it’s like the GOSPEL). Now it was DOG’S turn to take the leap. As you all know “DOG KNOWS NO FEAR” in DOG'S words “Nann dictionary lee FEAR anno word aee illa”, if you Google search “DOG getting scared” you will get ZERO results ;-) it just doesn’t happen. DOG could leap with his eyes closed, carrying his harem over his shoulders. DOG was extremely casual; it was more like our DOG was taking a walk in his BEDROOM (Zealots who know him closely, know that DOG never gets out of his BEDROOM). Instead of jumping, he decided to walk over the water. As he moved, the water parted (or so he thought it had). As he started walking on the first rock, he skidded (I am sure he pretended, just to give THE ZEALOTS some fright, we all know that our DOG’S has ANTISKID FEET). DOG’S holy left foot blessed mother Cauvery  (river) and she welcomed him with open arms, MAAAN blessed was she having the DOG on her lap. For a moment we thought Cauvery was taking our DOG away forever to enlighten her temple leaving all the ZEALOTS in darkness orphaned, confused, with no one to show the TRAIL. Instinctively I laid out my hand begging him to stay back and continue enlightening the ZEAGOTS (http://www.orkut.com/CommPollResults.aspx?cmm=40252494&pct=1192767816&pid=1134481631 the poll speaks for itself). DOG touched my hand (firmly ;) and I could feel an unexplainable magnetic force bonding me with his HOLINESS the DOG. The DOG washed off the sins of the second rock with his HOLY right FOOT. This marked the end of his romantic tryst with danger without any reason (We all know OUR DOG’S concept “NO QUESTIONS ASKED NO ANSWERS GIVEN”). Later, he said “maga you saved my life” (We all know that DOG is INVINCIBLE, not even YAMA can defeat him, and THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DEFEAT THE DOG IS THE DOG HIMSELF). 

Mother of screw ups ;-)

Ø  Working continuously for 33 hours

Ø  Harassing a women J

Ø  Not being allowed to take an international flight; sent back from the airport

Ø  Sipping the strongest coffee, ‘Bika’, of my life in Lisbon!

If the above lines sounds interesting, then don’t read any further, the rest of the post is not that happening J

If you have decided to read further, then let me tell you that this post is about a series of screw ups that happened few days back.

Let me first give you a brief background that led to all the screw ups.

The butt of all the screw ups:

It all started when my colleague forwarded me an email, which was sent to him by a lady, who happened to be a colleague and a good friend of my colleague’s wife, when my colleague’s wife was perusing her masters in some reputed college in Germany. Read the previous line again if didn’t understand the relationship, or just chuck it, you don’t really need to understand it. So now coming to the email, essentially, this lady, let’s call her Anna from Lisbon, not quite comfortable using real names, wanted to find out if we could provide some patent strategy consulting, and she sent a request for proposal. And I was asked to make the proposal, and I also love doing it! So I happily made a proposal, which in my opinion was kickass. And this, my friends marked the beginning of all the screw ups.

The first one:

For some reason, I think we Indians get really excited when we get to work for a client who is not based in India, even though many time we just make the same amount of money working for an Indian client. And in this case I was no different, very excited, I made a nice proposal, but with a small assumption, and with this small assumption I would make an ass out of myself and a few others, literally, at a later date. But guess what, as part of this project I would get to go to Portugal.

Now coming to the assumption part, it’s just that I kind of under estimated the number of hours that would be required to complete the project. The extent to which I underestimated is something I prefer keeping it to myself; the true numbers would put me in deep shit, not that I am not used to getting into deep deep shit, but I rather not this time. But when I was preparing the proposal I was really confident that I could complete the project “single headedly” in that many hours. This made up the recipe for the second screw up story!     

The second screw up:

My boss kept asking me if I need more people to work on the project, but I said - NO, I can handle it; see, that’s called CONFIDENCE ;-)! Off late, confidence is something that is running a lot in my blood. However, since my boss was offering to help in the project (this is how I would like to put it), I said if he wishes to, he may take a small portion of the project and the rest will be managed by me, and he agreed to it. Later, one fine day when we initiated the project, it didn’t take too many hours for the reality to strike. The project was huge, in my words, it was fuckin huge, but you know what, I was confident! I told my boss not to worry I can still manage to complete the project within deadline “if I stopped working on other projects”. He agreed to it, as asked to just put a big full stop to all other projects and just concentrate on this project. That’s exactly what I did, I scrapped everything else and started working only on this project. And then reality struck again! This time it took a few days for it to happen. My boss (I was still in denial) realized that just the two of us won’t be sufficient to complete the project in time. So my boss asked to pull in a few more people. However, I kind of still believed that we could complete the project in time without taking any additional help (confidence confidence), but since my boss was asking me to include a few more people (this is again how I would like to put it), just to keep him happy, we included two more, Som and Vikram (real names). Poor innocent guys, their life was about to change! And they had no clue :P Now we all started working together, only to be struck by another reality. Working 8 or 9 hour a day would take us nowhere, and by now my confidence gaya that thel leney (confident had gone to get some oil). We had to gear up and we did! We worked non-stop, days after days. I remember there was a day on which we didn’t go back home, worked continuously for some 30 odd hours continuously. Now we knew we were getting closer to completing the project and we did in the end! While all these things were happening there was a parallel screw up that was taking shape.

The parallel screw up

All the countries have a very annoying concept of letting you into their country if you have something called, yes you guessed it right, the “visa”. So, even I had to get one to go to Portugal, and I applied for one through a consultant. In the Portugal embassy website that had informed that it would take some 10 to 15 working days to provide a visa, but when I applied there were some 7 working days left to the day I was supposed to fly. But again, confidence, I know things will always workout for me, so I was pretty confident they would give me a visa in some 5 days. But this belief of mine was about to be tested, two days left to fly and there is no news about my visa from the consultant. So my brother, instead of relying of the consultant called up the embassy, and they said that I have to give some declaration to them before they issue the visa. It meant I had to courier a hard copy of this signed delectation to Delhi, after which they would issue the visa and later courier the visa to me. It implies that I wouldn’t get the visa in time to fly. So this “procedure” of the visa office didn’t quit fit into my plan J. So I had to do something different, I called up the embassy to sort of strike a “deal”, after all they are also human beings and human beings can be convinced. In short, I wanted the embassy to accept a fax copy of the declaration and issue a visa. To convince them I called up, followed up, buttered them up, and used a lot of emotional blackmailing, among other things and got the work done. However, during this episode of convincing, the lady issuing the visa made me listen to a few kind words, I will give a gist of it:

You are harassing me

You can’t tell me what to do

I am not your servant

By the way the embassy closes at 4.30 in the evening I guess, and I was able to convince them to wait till 6.00 for my consultant to collect the visa, they waited and that fact gives me pleasure, SADIST!!! And in the end I collected my visa at the Bangalore airport 3 hrs before my flight.

I was really hoping that this would be the last twist in the tale, however destiny had other plans, yet another parallel screw up was taking shape!     

Yet another parallel screw up

I blame the fuckin Brits for this screw up, they think too highly of themselves, even though they have not been able to win a world cup in a sport they invented :P Well, some would say I am wholly responsible for this screw up, but I would like blame the Brits for this. To give you a background, this screw up has to do with the tickets to Lisbon. The office wanted to book tickets, but like any smart ass I had other plans. I wanted to complete work in Lisbon and travel around for some more days. Hence, I informed that I will book the tickets on my own and they could reimburse me later. But I had not booked the ticket till the nth moment. The catch was, I was not sure for how many days they would issue me the visa, and I had wanted to book the tickets after receiving my visa. But as it turned out, I received the visa the day I was supposed to fly. So, I basically decided to take risk, and assumed that they would issue the visa for more number of days than what I had initially asked for, and they did! I booked the tickets before receiving the visa - Schengen visa (valid in the whole of Europe) in British airways – Bangalore – London – Lisbon – London – Bangalore. With this ticket booked, I went to the airport with my visa. I showed my passport and the ticket to the lady at the British Airways check-in counter. She nicely handed over a sheet of paper, it appeared to have some law related stuff. Essentially, it was a print out that essentially said that England doesn’t consider Schengen visa even though these buggers are part of the European union, that’s crazy in my opinion! Nevertheless I was sent back. But in the end my boss felt that it was important for me to come to Lisbon and asked to not worry about the money and book the next available flight, and I did, thinking (in kannada) yaar appandhu yeenu hoogbeku (Crude English translation – Whose father what goes) I took a flight to Lisbon via Frankfurt. Finally landed in Lisbon and got introduced to my new addiction – BIKA – the bomb (A Portuguese coffee that is really really really strong!)

After Bika strangely life became normal J