Finally, I am in the same league as Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham, and Robert Ludlum et al. Dang da dannngggg (noun. - A sound effect expressing joy, surprise etc.) I have writer’s block. Although I am honored to experience something those fine authors had, it’s a little frustrating. Mainly because I experience it more often than not. Unlike the other talented writers who get an inspiration even during a very ordinary avocation, I have to sit and think to find something to write about. And because I write (type actually) on my computer, I end up staring at the PC monitor and mouse until I get cranky and the PC shuts down itself because its bored. Not the greatest of feelings you know.
There are 6 billion people in the world. And a similar number of people read my blogs. (That’s 6 including me) Sometimes I wonder why I bother to write if no one is bothering to read. Well I guess I am not writing for others. I am writing for myself. Other than the part that it helps pass my time, blogging is possible in the office while everyone will think I am working, and thus I can do something worthwhile. I have always enjoyed reading and thus developed an irrepressible urge to write. (I also get the urge to play soccer when I watch EPL, to be a DJ when I hit the club, and things like that, so its normal behavior for me.)
So, I started writing. I began when I was 14 or something and had no idea what I was doing. After numerous stories even the 14 yr old me was convinced I am going nowhere. The language wasn’t good, the story was non existent and the characters were pathetic. I gave up. I started again 2-3 years after. My vocabulary was still incompetent. I still had no seeds of story inside me waiting to sprout to a frigging big novel tree. I solved this problem by using two books; an idioms and phrases handbook and a rather heavy dictionary. I weaved a story by simply adding hard to look at words and phrases and idioms with a few characters thrown in. somehow I managed to write a few pages of some sense. 3 days later I reviewed all that I wrote and I found myself looking in the dictionary at least 4 times for each line. And to think I wrote it a few hours earlier.
The point is that, I am not a talented writer, nor am I an author of any sorts, but screw the world, I have writers block so big, its visible on my head. And that just makes me proud. And it makes me more proud that I overcame the block by writing about it. Geez am a genius. And thanks to all those people who still find time to read this and do it for the sake of friendship. thank you. I am glad to tell u that I am going to continue writing. As long as I can. Oh come on now PC don’t you shut down on me. Am done, am done, am done. I promise. CTRL + S.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Born Again Workaholic
I see dead people. err.. I mean i see deadlines. Although with the accounts department that I am in, the earlier one applies too. I have always hated deadlines. The name itself is like a threat. So when my boss said that I have to finish the reports with in 2 days, I was, well, threatened...and pissed off.
Working in accounts department is like playing with money. Minus the fun. I used to sit and work with the same enthusiasm i had when i was studying trigonometry. I still dont understand whats so fucking complicated about the triangle that you have to have so many equations and formulas. An equation for me is as simple as 1=1. Although in accounts this 1 could equal .5,1,2,3 or whatever u want it to be. Thats the fun of it, but only when u look from the outside. You can twist it around, tweak the numbers and make it so damn confusing that nobody will understand anything. Including the ones who made it. It can give anyone such a strong headache that any person with a sane mind will refuse to take a look at it again. But auditors are not sane people. And they demand an explanation to everything that is on the books including the page numbers and dead flies . They devour the account books like the highschoolers read debonair. And when they find something that doesnt tally, they will point it out to you with a "gotcha"smile, which hardly qualifies as a smile.
So when the deadline was given, i thought its another random auditing coming up. But no. It wasnt about auditing. It was just about being up to date. My boss was suddenly aware of the possible positives of an update books of accounts like easy report generation, easy solutions and a few accountants in mental asylum.
Now usually my deadlines moved so much that they didnt really look dead. But the instruction this time was clear. No extensions. No excuses. The reports where lagging by about a week. I checked again just to be sure, meanwhile hoping like anything that i read it wrong. Oh. I did. I was wrong. Its lagging by 9 days. Anybodys got a gun ?
The accounts department has 4 people who love eachother like cats and dogs do. There was no personal hatred there. Just a proffessional one. Because a mistake made by one of them may cause the whole thing to go wrong. But in times of emergencies and clamities like a deadline, we join hands together. Everyday we throw all kinds of accusations at eachother, and occassionaly tea cups and paper weights. and very occassionaly we just throw eahother. But a common enemy has united us. We have to fight against death itself. I mean deadline. Ah, its all the same anyway.
So we think up of a lot of plans ranging from resigning to taking the whole workforce at our office as hostages and demand that deadlines must be banned all over the world. Although the idea appealed to all of us , we were not sure to whom we should demand. Finally we gave up. This had to come. This is why we were hired.To work. And to keep books up to date is but a reasonable and fair demand (yea , i missed un twice...)
So we took a decision.... to work our ass off. To meet the challenge instead of running away from it. To face it like a man.. and a woman(if i dont add that my colleague is going to sue me for sexual discrimination.) We decided to declare ourself bron again workaholics and finish the damn books. So deadline, u dont scare us anymore. We are staring down at you and laughing. The last laugh before we finish the work and kill you. Oh . But u are already dead.
Working in accounts department is like playing with money. Minus the fun. I used to sit and work with the same enthusiasm i had when i was studying trigonometry. I still dont understand whats so fucking complicated about the triangle that you have to have so many equations and formulas. An equation for me is as simple as 1=1. Although in accounts this 1 could equal .5,1,2,3 or whatever u want it to be. Thats the fun of it, but only when u look from the outside. You can twist it around, tweak the numbers and make it so damn confusing that nobody will understand anything. Including the ones who made it. It can give anyone such a strong headache that any person with a sane mind will refuse to take a look at it again. But auditors are not sane people. And they demand an explanation to everything that is on the books including the page numbers and dead flies . They devour the account books like the highschoolers read debonair. And when they find something that doesnt tally, they will point it out to you with a "gotcha"smile, which hardly qualifies as a smile.
So when the deadline was given, i thought its another random auditing coming up. But no. It wasnt about auditing. It was just about being up to date. My boss was suddenly aware of the possible positives of an update books of accounts like easy report generation, easy solutions and a few accountants in mental asylum.
Now usually my deadlines moved so much that they didnt really look dead. But the instruction this time was clear. No extensions. No excuses. The reports where lagging by about a week. I checked again just to be sure, meanwhile hoping like anything that i read it wrong. Oh. I did. I was wrong. Its lagging by 9 days. Anybodys got a gun ?
The accounts department has 4 people who love eachother like cats and dogs do. There was no personal hatred there. Just a proffessional one. Because a mistake made by one of them may cause the whole thing to go wrong. But in times of emergencies and clamities like a deadline, we join hands together. Everyday we throw all kinds of accusations at eachother, and occassionaly tea cups and paper weights. and very occassionaly we just throw eahother. But a common enemy has united us. We have to fight against death itself. I mean deadline. Ah, its all the same anyway.
So we think up of a lot of plans ranging from resigning to taking the whole workforce at our office as hostages and demand that deadlines must be banned all over the world. Although the idea appealed to all of us , we were not sure to whom we should demand. Finally we gave up. This had to come. This is why we were hired.To work. And to keep books up to date is but a reasonable and fair demand (yea , i missed un twice...)
So we took a decision.... to work our ass off. To meet the challenge instead of running away from it. To face it like a man.. and a woman(if i dont add that my colleague is going to sue me for sexual discrimination.) We decided to declare ourself bron again workaholics and finish the damn books. So deadline, u dont scare us anymore. We are staring down at you and laughing. The last laugh before we finish the work and kill you. Oh . But u are already dead.
Question Marked ???
In life we ask a lot of questions and get a few answers. Although i hated them during my 15 years of educational circus I ask a lot of questions too. What the fuck currently tops my list. It is a very powerful and versatile question with a lot of application in day to day life. My boss asks this question every time I submit my report. It can be rephrased to mean a whole range of things. like "What the fuck am I writing" to "what the fuck are you reading" The variety of online forums I visited had this wierd looking word WTF in almost every article. I had no idea what it was and I was like what the fuck. And then it struck me. Bingo. WTF means what the fuck. Talk about discoveries.
But WTF is not the point here. Asking questions is the sign of an earn for learning. To learn new things, to make new discoveries and to irritate the hell out of people. The first one to put this idea into my head was my teacher in school Mr. Satheesh. Now he was a gem of a person. One of those rare personalities who can talk for an hour and say absolutely nothing. He used to preach about the importance of asking questions.
Mr.Satheesh - So class. I am what I am today and in this poistion because I asked a lot of questions.
My idle brain - ( point to note down...never ask questions or you will end up like that)
Mr.Satheesh - If you pay attention and ask questions you will certainly succeed in life
My idle brain- (Contradicting Statements)
Mr.Satheesh - So start asking questions. who has a question here
Me Me Me - OK. So what the fuck are you talking about.
I consider to be thrown out of the class as an honour. And from Mr.Satheesh's class its a privilege and gift.
All through life we come accross a parade of questions. The thought provoking, "makes u feel ignorant", intelligent questions. And then there are the people asking the most stupid and silly questions. And when u dont know the answer follow the Dilbert principle and confuse them with a list of unanswerable questions ( If u want a list of unanswerable questions, my entrance question papers are still with me)
All said and done, to ask a question is a basic right of every human being( this doesnt include asking girls for phone numbers and asking the Govt. for anything) When u have no idea whats going on dont just sit and wonder, ask around. you may feel dumb but i bet atleast half the people around you have no clue either. Nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain.
now lemme go and ask my next question to boss. When do i get my next pay rise? I know the answer already.....What the fuck.
But WTF is not the point here. Asking questions is the sign of an earn for learning. To learn new things, to make new discoveries and to irritate the hell out of people. The first one to put this idea into my head was my teacher in school Mr. Satheesh. Now he was a gem of a person. One of those rare personalities who can talk for an hour and say absolutely nothing. He used to preach about the importance of asking questions.
Mr.Satheesh - So class. I am what I am today and in this poistion because I asked a lot of questions.
My idle brain - ( point to note down...never ask questions or you will end up like that)
Mr.Satheesh - If you pay attention and ask questions you will certainly succeed in life
My idle brain- (Contradicting Statements)
Mr.Satheesh - So start asking questions. who has a question here
Me Me Me - OK. So what the fuck are you talking about.
I consider to be thrown out of the class as an honour. And from Mr.Satheesh's class its a privilege and gift.
All through life we come accross a parade of questions. The thought provoking, "makes u feel ignorant", intelligent questions. And then there are the people asking the most stupid and silly questions. And when u dont know the answer follow the Dilbert principle and confuse them with a list of unanswerable questions ( If u want a list of unanswerable questions, my entrance question papers are still with me)
All said and done, to ask a question is a basic right of every human being( this doesnt include asking girls for phone numbers and asking the Govt. for anything) When u have no idea whats going on dont just sit and wonder, ask around. you may feel dumb but i bet atleast half the people around you have no clue either. Nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain.
now lemme go and ask my next question to boss. When do i get my next pay rise? I know the answer already.....What the fuck.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
The Weapon Of Mass Destruction and the counter measures.
What is your greatest fear? Gunned down by a stranger rogue? Mobbed and robbed by a bunch of bandits on your way back home? Hit by a stray missile with a tactical nuclear warhead attached to it ? Or having to sit and watch Ekta kapoor’s KkKk serials. Nothing scares me more than the last one. But there is a far greater danger lurking around all of us waiting to pounce on us and kill us without a minute of thought. Why? Because it can’t think.
Other than the natural causes like diseases and old ages and the natural disaster ones, what kills or injures more humans every year and nobody has ever thought of banning? Guns? No. Missiles? No. This weapon of mass destruction is something you and I hop into every day and go where we want to without the inconvenience of walking or if you are late, running. It’s technically called an automobile. In layman’s terms it’s called Maruti, Chevy, Tata, Benz etc etc.
Have you ever thought that the car you drive around is virtually the biggest killer humans have ever invented? But unlike other inventions like Magnums or Kalashnikovs, automobiles were not intended to hurt people, let alone kill them. Oh well that’s why we call them accidents. Road accidents kill more humans every year than gun shots or cancers. But just like it’s said, cars don’t kill people. People kill people.
Driving safely and carefully doesn’t take much of a hard work. Just keep in my mind a few things and you should be safe.
Just keep your hands on the steering wheel instead of scratching yourself (or there wont be any yourself left to scratch) or serving yourself to a cup of tea, or on your girl friend/boy friend sitting next to you.
Keep your focus on the road instead of the beautiful thing in the car on next lane, or the billboard with a beautiful thing on it or the magazine on your lap with a beautiful thing on it. Or.. ah you got the point. No beautiful things while driving.
Keep your car on earthly speed limits. Stop imagining that you are Schumacher or Raikkonen. You are not 6 yrs old. So stop acting like one. Be responsible and drive inside speed limit.
Stop swerving and swinging your car/motorcycle on road. According to The combined study on motor accidents by various automobile associations show that careless and reckless driving like that is the main cause of death among young drivers. And if that doesn’t scare you, you are not brave. You are just stupid.
Keep your cool. Don’t get pissed off at the guy that just cut you off. What a waste of energy. Instead, laugh at his stupidity, relax and drive. And if you really want to do something about it, flip a finger.
Stop honking, its not music. There are people who think that in a traffic jam, if they honk, somehow everything in front of them will magically disappear. Same with the tailgaters. Well if you really fancy the sound of a horn, spend a bit and get yourself a siren.
Don’t drink and drive- If you can’t walk straight, or talk sense or stop laughing/crying which you are doing for no reason then you definitely can’t drive.
No backseat driving. Please. Left hand drive or right hand drive, there is one simple rule all over the world. Only one driver in a vehicle. Distract the back seat driver who is distracting you by giving them something worthwhile and productive to do. Like ask them to sleep or just shut up. Threaten. If that doesn’t work just kick them out. Its better to be safe than having to hear their so sorry running commentary.
Don’t rush, don’t hurry, if you still push you will be sorry ( I made that up. Really.)
The way people rush drive on the roads make one wonder if at one time all of them used to be ambulance drivers. Drive sensibly. Don’t listen to those mad men. The “End” is not near. You have a family to go back to. Think about them.
Follow the rules.- I know rules are made to be broken, but when you break rules you might also break your bones.
And finally look in the mirror. No, not in the rear view mirror while you are driving. Start with yourself if you want something to be changed. Wear your seatbelts, follow the rules, don’t forget your signals and drive with passion and compassion. Vrrooom !
Other than the natural causes like diseases and old ages and the natural disaster ones, what kills or injures more humans every year and nobody has ever thought of banning? Guns? No. Missiles? No. This weapon of mass destruction is something you and I hop into every day and go where we want to without the inconvenience of walking or if you are late, running. It’s technically called an automobile. In layman’s terms it’s called Maruti, Chevy, Tata, Benz etc etc.
Have you ever thought that the car you drive around is virtually the biggest killer humans have ever invented? But unlike other inventions like Magnums or Kalashnikovs, automobiles were not intended to hurt people, let alone kill them. Oh well that’s why we call them accidents. Road accidents kill more humans every year than gun shots or cancers. But just like it’s said, cars don’t kill people. People kill people.
Driving safely and carefully doesn’t take much of a hard work. Just keep in my mind a few things and you should be safe.
Just keep your hands on the steering wheel instead of scratching yourself (or there wont be any yourself left to scratch) or serving yourself to a cup of tea, or on your girl friend/boy friend sitting next to you.
Keep your focus on the road instead of the beautiful thing in the car on next lane, or the billboard with a beautiful thing on it or the magazine on your lap with a beautiful thing on it. Or.. ah you got the point. No beautiful things while driving.
Keep your car on earthly speed limits. Stop imagining that you are Schumacher or Raikkonen. You are not 6 yrs old. So stop acting like one. Be responsible and drive inside speed limit.
Stop swerving and swinging your car/motorcycle on road. According to The combined study on motor accidents by various automobile associations show that careless and reckless driving like that is the main cause of death among young drivers. And if that doesn’t scare you, you are not brave. You are just stupid.
Keep your cool. Don’t get pissed off at the guy that just cut you off. What a waste of energy. Instead, laugh at his stupidity, relax and drive. And if you really want to do something about it, flip a finger.
Stop honking, its not music. There are people who think that in a traffic jam, if they honk, somehow everything in front of them will magically disappear. Same with the tailgaters. Well if you really fancy the sound of a horn, spend a bit and get yourself a siren.
Don’t drink and drive- If you can’t walk straight, or talk sense or stop laughing/crying which you are doing for no reason then you definitely can’t drive.
No backseat driving. Please. Left hand drive or right hand drive, there is one simple rule all over the world. Only one driver in a vehicle. Distract the back seat driver who is distracting you by giving them something worthwhile and productive to do. Like ask them to sleep or just shut up. Threaten. If that doesn’t work just kick them out. Its better to be safe than having to hear their so sorry running commentary.
Don’t rush, don’t hurry, if you still push you will be sorry ( I made that up. Really.)
The way people rush drive on the roads make one wonder if at one time all of them used to be ambulance drivers. Drive sensibly. Don’t listen to those mad men. The “End” is not near. You have a family to go back to. Think about them.
Follow the rules.- I know rules are made to be broken, but when you break rules you might also break your bones.
And finally look in the mirror. No, not in the rear view mirror while you are driving. Start with yourself if you want something to be changed. Wear your seatbelts, follow the rules, don’t forget your signals and drive with passion and compassion. Vrrooom !
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