Learning French

I have a client who is French. I saw Pink Panther and the protagonist was French. "Zis is chief inspektor Jhaq Clusseou spikkingg on the feone". Man, there is something to this language, I decided. And so I did what any curious, up-to-no-good character would do. I started learning French. My method was simple. I had no time to go poring over books and webpages and buying fancy CDs and DVDs. No siree! Me, I'm efficient. In fact, I'm the epitome of efficiency and smartness. I decided to put my iPod to good use.

I downloaded podcasts and thus began my journey into the world of langue française. The only bad part was my spellings. But hey, you don't wave a piece of meticulous French writing around some Frenchie's nose when you want to ask him where the loo is - you TALK.

I travel to office by bus. It takes me a good hour too. I plugged in my iPod and started going through lesson 1. "Bonjour! Je m'appelle Shivani. Très bien!!" I muttered to myself a thousand times. My neighbour gave me a stare that would have frozen lava in its tracks. I smiled forgivingly at him and continued in a louder voice. "Parlez-vous l'anglais? Oui Oui. Très bien Très bien". That day, I blurted all the French I had learnt to my client and boy, was he stunned or what! :-)

Mission accomplished.

I need Serenity

This one was taken in Pondicherry on Serenity beach.

What I like best about it? The symmetry of course. Incredibly, the horizon is straighter than a benchpress, something you don't see often.

As they say (don't ask me who), the earth is round and there is always a curve to the horizon when seen at a beach, but here, I have defied all principles of science! Of course it happens to be a miniscule part of the frame coz my camera isn't the all-encompassing wide zoom but don't let me bother you with such minor details. I also used the tungsten filter to make this dusk scene look more well, dusky.

The reason for being...

And the lord said "Let there be a blog" and thus was born http://devil-yeah.blogspot.com/. What's not in the bible is that I was bored to death and didn't have a thing on earth to do. So I got online and started typing any shit that came to my mind.

The Waste-line

It's pretty easy at first. You start with one kg, two kgs. Soon it turns into multiples of ten. And when you are not looking, it quietly sneaks into multiples of twenty.

It was at one such time that I decided to weigh myself, having nothing better to do in my hotel. I walked into the bathroom and turned on the tap in the bathtub, meaning to give myself a luxurious half hour doing nothing but patiently bursting the umpteen teensy bubbles while sipping on cranberry juice and stuffing myself with fries. After satisfying myself with the bathtub, I turned my attention to the weighing scale and climbed on it.

A sickening crunch echoed in my ears and I was half immobilized with the realisation that it was my weight that had caused a 15000-dollar weighing scale of the Le Meridien, Kuala Lumpur to shatter like a cracked egg-shell.

Ever the optimistic, I thought of the thousand and one other ways that could have resulted in that sickening crunch but was terrified of getting off that scale to confirm my suspicions.

After about twenty minutes of contemplation (and further creaks and crunches) I slowly got off the scale and looked down.

The scale, praise be to Allah, was intact. I mentally struck off the $15000 that I had added as penalty to my bill. It was my 30000-dollar Dolce and Gabbana eye-glasses that were lying dead under the scale.

Optimism

It all started as usual - with me checking out every nook and cranny of my hotel room. I was on one of my many travels to foreign lands and I really like to see what they have kept around for my enjoyment. You never know if they will gift you a 50-cent diamond in a neat little package on your bed along with the laundry some day. Besides, I had lost my pen and was trying to find it.

In my fruitless (fruitful if I find the diamond, who cares about a pen) expeditions was I thus engaged when suddenly I espied some shiny object winking at me from the darkest recesses of the room. Muttering encouraging adjectives to myself, I advanced upon that corner of the carpet.

It really was in the darkest possible recess and I had to do quite a bit of squeezing and pushing and pulling to get my pinky there...but I did manage to, in the end. My hands closed around something hard and cold and I was ecstatic. My pen!! I wondered how my pen might have wandered there. I carefully pulled it out in the light to examine my find more thoroughly and to make sure no ink was dripping around.

I blinked.

I blinked again.

It was a 50-cent diamond.

Why i am called Devil

Alright. The question now is - why Devil? Pretty obvious isn't it? That was my nickname a few months ago. Because I wasn't exactly your second version of the ms-goody-two-shoes-with-angelic-blue-eyes. And the name stuck. The new folks I meet don't know about this for obvious reasons. I mean, come on, you can't be a Lead Project Manager in a fancy MNC and have a nick like that.....your nick should be something like "The Corporate Leader who motivates and energises cross functional teams.....", but Devil, no sir!! My older friends however, won't recognise me by the dashing corp title.
I guess some things can never change. And yeah, I am still not your second version of the ms-goody-two-shoes-with-angelic-blue-eyes.