The mystery of the missing guest

We were expecting a very important guest from the US at work today.
There had been plans in place for ages now, presentations were
readied, labs were shined up. And out of the blue, about 30 mins
before we were to meet him, we get an email informing us that the
entire program has been scrapped. This was a big blow since apart from
impressing him, we actually needed to impress on him some of the needs
of our team here.

Soon I heard from someone in the office what had happened. The guy
arrived at the Mumbai airport and waited for two hours. No one was
there to receive him and he got pissed off and went back to NJ. I was
shocked that someone would behave in such an immature fashion. But
soon after that we heard the real reason. Apparently there was some
problem with his visa and he couldn't be let into India. He'll be
returning next week with all the proper documents.

The thing with the first story I heard made me wonder how these rumors
get started. I know the person in the story chain about two steps
above me and for that person to have either made up the story or
passed on an unsubstantiated rumor is just stupid. But I guess it
takes all types.

On the other hand, I felt good on hearing that someone got sent back
from India for improper documentation. I've heard plenty of stories
like this about people going to the US and being stranded for lack of
documentation and now we get to impose our will on other nationals.
Very cool.

A day long seminar: Phrases which annoy me

Today has a sort of holiday feel to it. Not because I wasn't working, nothing new about that. Today I took the day off to attend a seminar on an important software that we use. It was basically a sales pitch and so it was free, even had a free lunch. The people did a good job of presenting the new package.

The best line of the day was probably right at the beginning. The keynote speaker began his address with these words - "I thank you all coming here so early in the morning." It was 10am when he said that!!! It was kinda fun to see how fast you could guess what part of India each speaker was from based on their accents. We could easily spot the Tamilian and the "Hindi speaker".

Other than that, these guys kept saying things that I hadn't realized till then how stupid they sound. One such phrase is "... and without much further ado ..." before introducing EVERY speaker. Now I can barely accept "... without taking up much more time ..." because it's a self-deprecatory way of giving respect to the speaker. But the "ado" line has become the staple form of introducing people and the lack of originality bugs me more than anything else. And I wonder if these people even know what "ado" means. Another small thing the speakers kept saying as they began talking was "Am I audible?" or "I hope I am audible." Why not just say "Can you hear me?"

Atleast they had a free lunch, which even though it began at 2pm was worth it. Let me just mention the desserts - Jalebi, Butterscotch icecream, rabri and a kheer of some sort. Did I go for second servings of the dessert, you ask? What do you think?

Pictures of the hike

The triangle. Sasha, the temple at the base of the hill and two guys who I was pretty sure would try to steal Sasha but ended up being just some more nice Punekars.


The beautiful hills

Me!

The dancing pair.

More dancing.

More dancing.

These were this oddly patterned rocks all over the hills. Crystalline formations. I wish I had a geologist or a chemist with me.

Another odd rock formation.

More cool rock stuff

Funny story behind this picture. I was trying to climb down the hill and was caught in an awkward position where I couldn't find any way down. I couldn't move my legs and was scouting a path when I saw this beautiful sight I just had to shoot. But I was afraid of moving and causing a minor landslide. So without moving out of my crab pose, I unslung my camera, shot the picture, all with one hand.

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My first hike in Pune: The snake

Ever since I saw those beautiful hills on my flight into Pune I've been wanting to hike on those hills. Sunday I finally managed it. I was woken up early by a bad stomachache and wondered if I'd still make it. But the good thing was that it helped me get an early start. Managed to leave by 7am.

The places is about 10 kms east of where I live; I found it by just looking at the contour map of my area on Google maps and seeing where a hilly region appears. I'm pretty proud of myself for my ingenuity in finding this place, and later, my ability to find the place from memory. Just took off on Sasha and drove and sure enough, the hills popped up right in front of me. The drive was beautiful, the city just waking up, the roads slightly misty, the roadside dhabas just opening up for business.

I managed to get close to the hill on Sasha and started climbing. I had my sweatshirt on since it was chilly. It was a nice climb and I enjoyed the view (photos coming up). I reached the first peak and was walking along the path when I saw a giant snake cross my path, about 5 meters ahead. I froze! This was the first time a snake was so close to me in terms of accesibility. I saw a few in parks in the US and in IIT in India but there wasn't a real chance of the snake coming close to me. This time I was utterly vulnerable. After about 3 mins of just standing there, I decided that if the snake was going to come back, I'll just fall back on my reliable back up - scream like a girl and run. But for now, I just kept going.

I'm glad I did since it was a beautiful hike. The hill was very interesting, had some interesting rock formations and some green formations on rocks that looked like copper oxide. (If anyone buys that hill after reading my blog, I want a share of the profits.) I got to watch a ballet between two birds which seemed to be dancing with each other.

Getting off the hill was a little trickier though. I fell about three times, which is three times more than what happened in my years of hiking. The pebbles were loose and the ground was very slippery. Finally I just decided to show the hill a lot of respect and took my time getting down by scrambling down on all fours. That took care of the falling.

An inch deep

Saturday evening I took my laptop and went out in search of a good wireless signal. I couldn't find it, but I did find a roadside DVD seller and managed to kill some time. I got home around 10pm, opened my door and stepped into an inch of water!

I knew I had left the water tap open so I could fill the water tank in my apt, but in the past any overflow just stayed in the bathroom. So my first thought was that my neighbors had decided to dump a lot of water in my apt to punish me for leaving the water on. Later I realized that the bucket I'd left in the bathroom to collect the overflow had ended up blocking the drain and caused the water to leak into the apartment. As I surveyed the damage I realized I had a fully flooded bedroom with more than an inch of water, a kitchen that had mainly served as a passage for the water and a living room that had one half of it covered in an inch of water.

My initial thought was that I would have to take a cloth and soak up the water and empty it into a bucket till I soaked up all the water but I realized that my second mop, which is a squeegee, could be used to push the water. I sent all the water from my living room either into the balcony or into the stairs (and ended up cleaning them too!). The water from the bedroom and the kitchen went into the bathroom. It took me about an hour to clear all the water and the fans dried out the moisture. The one downside of this was that as the excess water evaporated, the room temperature dropped a little overnight and ended up making the room go from cold to really cold.

When I saw the flood, I was almost in tears as I feared the worst for my clothes and electronics but as silver linings go, I couldn't have asked for a better day for this to happen to me. I had just mopped the floor in the morning and has removed all critical items from the floor. So no extension cords or wires on the floor. In fact, since I was trying out a new mop (incidentally my third mop since the first two didn't work to my satisfaction) I had added a lot of detergent to the water and as a result my floor had been sticky. I was wondering if I would have to do a second round of mopping but with this water overflow, the excess soap got washed off. Of course, the fact that I live in a fully tiled apartment, on the lowest floor meant that I didn't need to worry about water damage. It really could have been much worse.

A small conversation

DB came by my desk and chat and her phone rang. It was her daughter and I could only hear DB's side of the conversation -

"Hi Chinnu, how are you?"
"Have you finished your homework?"
"Chinnu I don't understand, what does it mean?"
"No ma, what does वाट लग गई mean?"

I just about fell down laughing.

In case you don't know, "vaat lag gayi" means something like "I got screwed" or "I am in trouble". Except it sounds much funnier in this mumbayi slang fashion. And especially when I pictured little AB talking to her Telugu-speaking mom in slang, it was just too much.

More roads and electricity

The road from my apt to work is improving at a phenomenal rate. When I moved in, about 30% of the way was unpaved road and pretty much after crossing a certain point, it was hell to drive back to my apt. Now the roads are being worked on so fast, I can barely remember what it looked like just a few days ago. Now I think about 95% of my route is paved, the only patches being the connection from my neighborhood to the highway and the path outside work. Even the tiny roads that lead to my apt that were peppered with potholes are miraculously flat now. My estimate for the time it'll take for a super clean road from my apt to work to be ready will be way off, in the good way.

Power cuts are back. They had reached a peak before Diwali, the explanation being that they need to do this in order to ensure the Diwali days were free of power cuts. And they kept their word. The two weeks of Diwali (!) were heaven - hot water to shower in the mornings, news on TV etc. Now the power cuts are back. My neighbourhood has it back, 6am to 9am in the mornings, which means it's back the IIT system where we used to skip showers in the mornings (because it was too cold and we didn't have time to heat the water) and have them in the evenings. However I'm still thankful for my current system of laptop and data card for internet. There's the occasional frustrating day where the network speed is just horrible, but by and large it's nice to be able to browse the internet even when no one around me has power. So I can still do my morning ritual of checking my email and the news in the morning before I go to work.

The power cuts apparently last from 6am to 9am and noon to 4pm. The latter cut doesn't affect me much since I'm at work, but today I had to come home at 3pm all the way from work and I seriously considered just staying home and watching the rest of the England-India cricket match but there was no power! I just took what I needed and hauled butt to work.