My Smiley Face

Always the restless and dissatisfied with things they way they are, I lose no time or trouble over turning things the way I want them to be.

You should really take a look at my office desk. The whiteboard is covered with cartoons of Judgead, Moose, Mr Weatherbee, Calvin and Hobbes and all other sorts of rubbish you expect to find in a kid's playroom than the cube of a Lead Project Manager.

But then again, by virtue of being me, these eccentricities are best forgotten. So, here's my latest addition to my world - I call him Pee-Ping Tom. He is Chinese. Well, second generation Chinese if you want to get picky about the big eyes. His job is to remind me all people are morons and to laugh at their stupidities instead of getting mad and all worked up in office.

Monday Morning Mauves

What could be better than spending a day outside office on a Monday morning? Spending the day outside office on 'official business'!

It so happened that one of my clients was visiting India. I lost no time in making detailed plans on how to get to spend some time with her.

So, on the fated Monday, I picked her up at Oberoi and took her to Ebony for a leisurely lunch. How time flew! Before I knew it, we had already spent 2.5 hours eating and gossiping in the glorious 13th floor terrace, surrounded by attentive waiters and cool breeze.

I then drove her around for a while so she could see India and get a feel of what we are like.

When I finally dropped her back to Oberoi and reached home, it was already 6 PM. A mighty satisfactory day I must say.

Purple Haze

Its infuriating when you long to go to a nice disco and they ban all forms of dancing. Worse still, there's no decent place that plays your kind of music. Never mind if your tastes are out of this world, we shan't let minor points like that ruin a perfectly good whining session. Little wonder that I just didn't feel like going to a disc for the last three years. Till now that is.

I met an old friend and we both decided to go out for dinner. He picked a place close to my house that I didn't even know existed - and it was this smashing pub Purple Haze! This was a branch fo the same chain that's in the city and I was thrilled to bits. They play hard rock here and ever since smoking has been banned in public places, these pubs and discs have become altogether more attractive to me.

So we hung out at this huge lounge bar and he sipped whiskey while I wolfed down huge slices of sandwich. And all the while we had Metallica, Hoobastank, Pink Floyd in the background. Bliss, what?

Mundane Mondays

Somehow, no matter what happens, I just can't bring myself to get to work on Monday mornings. Apart from the fact that I am just recovering from the activities of a most pleasurable weekend, the whole thought of getting back into the groove unnerves me. There are endless meetings, disgusting food, traffic jams and unfinished piles of laundry.

Monday blues? hah, blue at least is a color. Mondays are Mundane.

The Guns of Chikmagalur

When you book into a homestay on a vacation to the nearby hillstations, you envisage yourself being surrounded by greenery - birds chirping, cattle grazing, pretty butterflies fluttering around, fresh crisp breeze playing with your hair, refreshing aroma of freshly made coffee and what not.
Being the kind that attracts everything out of the ordinary, it would scarcely suprise you if I were to say that this wasn't quite what happened at the nice quiet homestay I had booked into.

I found a couple of guns. One was a normal fairly harmless airgun, and the other was a shotgun.

Sadly there was no ammunition. Darn.

Take a ride - Chikmagalur

We decided to dedicate a weekend to the joys of the hills. Thanks to the internet, we managed to find a hill station that wasn't at the other end of the world and that sounded like we wouldn't be required to climb up and down some dumb mountains to see sights all day. We settled on Chikmagalur and thus begun our journey into the wilderness...

As a seasoned traveller, I would like to share some nuggets of wisdom with you - if you have planned a trip at the last moment, some things are bound to go wrong. We didn't disappoint Mr Murphy. In fact, we did a lot better - we didn't let a single thing go right.

For starters, the so-called AC cab hadn't a patch of AC in it. Then we lost our way twice before we could reach the right town. When we did, the homestay we had booked turned out to be situatied in the farthermost regions of abandoned coffee plantations. To top it all off, it was hotter than the inside of a microwave popping pop-corn. Ah, well. At least it was a vacation.