The bus journey from hell

My cousin's in Hyderabad for a short while and since I hadn't seen really hung out with her in a long time, I wanted to make a quick trip to Hyderabad. Since originally I had planned on going to Hyd on Feb 13th, I didn't want to spend a lot on this quick trip, so I bought a ticket on a non-a/c semi-sleeper bus. (The hierarchy going as - non-a/c, non-a/c semi-sleeper, a/c semi-sleeper and a/c sleeper. Sometimes there's a non-a/c sleeper in there, but not really to Hyderabad.) This costs less than half as much as a a/c sleeper so I felt good about buying the ticket. Soon I found out why it's that cheap.

For starters as soon as I got on the bus I found out that there was another gentleman sitting in my seat, #14. I talked to the conductor and he made a few calls to find out that they screwed up in the booking. He asked the (actually, let's call him AHole1) AHole1 to move to #22, also a window seat, just two rows behind. He refused. "My ticket says #14 and I am not moving. Bring the guy who booked my ticket and I'll talk to him." Exasperated the conductor got me a seat on a different bus.

[Meanwhile there was a meta drama in the first bus. A very huge guy(VHG) had the window seat and as soon as he sat in it, his neighbour (aisle seat guy - ASG) who was obviously cramped for space, called the conductor and said, "Look at this guy, look how he's sitting."
VHG (to ASG) - "What? How am I sitting? What do you mean?"
ASG (ignoring him, to Conductor) - "Ask him to move, I can't sit comfortably like this. Ask him to atleast lower the common arm rest."
VHG (to ASG) - "What do you mean? That can't be done. Why don't you raise the aisle-side armrest so you can get more space?"
ASG (actually acknowledging the VHG) - "If I do that I'll fall down."
VHG - "Then let's switch seats"
ASG - "Hmm. I dunno."

Meanwhile conductor to another passenger who was double-booked, this one on seat #13, "Look, you're skinny, why don't you take the aisle seat here?"
Skinny guy - "No way, why should I sit there? I want #13.]

Due to the change in buses I lost my window seat, which was a big problem since I only chose the non-a/c bus assuming I'd get some fresh air from the window. Somehow I fell asleep but I was woken up when I smelled a cigarette! "What the hell, why is someone smoking a cigarette on a bus?" I wondered. I looked around and saw that it was the guy across from the aisle. Furious, I gestured to him (since the bus was very loud) to ask him what he was doing with the cigarette. Seeing my gesture of a cigarette he replied, "Sure, you can have a puff but I think the conductor is going to get mad." Damn the loud bus! I had to tell him in spoken language to put out the ciggy. He compromised by opening up his window.

A few mins I woke up again to the same smell, but this time it wasn't him. I couldn't tell who it was in the darkness so I walked up the conductor to complain. "There's someone smoking on this bus, could you ..." I stopped in mid-sentence because I saw the cigarette in his mouth! I just put my head down and walked back to my seat.

Another hour or so later I was woken up by the kids in front of me who was shouting. Not crying, just yelling for fun. I tapped their father on his shoulder and said, "Dude, your kids are waking me up, could you quiet them down?" His angry response, "What do you want me to do? They're kids, they shout. What can I do? I can't control them." I had a large number of responses that came to my mind about a timely vascectomy or the words "adoption" or "strangling" but I just pulled my blanket over my head and tried to go back to sleep.

I'm not kidding when I say (not for the first time) I saw the merit of ssccatagapp. Sign me up.

"Knocked up" on TV: Goalie pulled

You know how they censor EVERYTHING on TV here? No nudity obviously. No swearing either. And in fact they even cut out words like "gay", "homosexual", "rape" etc. Basically anything to do with sexuality is
out the window.

So I was quite surprised when I saw they were showing "Knocked up" on TV here. "That'll be a quick 20 mins" I thought, because after taking out all the swearing, dirty words, indirect nudity etc, they'll be
left with barely anything. Surprisingly, it lasted a whole 90 mins with all the ads and everything.

For a long time I had a theory that these Indian censors could not know all the American swear words or dirty references and that sooner or later something would slip past them. And much like in the movie
where they pull the goalie and disaster happens, right after the scene where a pregnant Heigl and her "too old" sister are kicked out by the bouncer, the sister is complaining about the babysitter and says, "She's such a prissy little high-school cu**. " Except, the subtitles actually showed the C-word and while I was still picking up my jaw from the floor I was thinking, "Surely they won't let her actually SAY the word" but there it was, right out of her mouth "C***".

Bluetooth cruising

This has happened to me a few times in Pune and once even in Goa. I leave the bluetooth connection on my phone turned on since I connect my bluetooth headset to it as soon as I go home. But that means that sometimes when I am at a bus stop or in the market or at the beach, among large crowds, I suddenly get a request from another phone asking me to connect.

Sometimes I directly get a request to accept a file, either a picture or a file with an unknown extension. Was it a virus? During the early days I even accepted a request to send me a pic, turned out to be a random picture of a 15-year-old boy.

One theory I have is that this might be how gay men in India try to pick up other men. Or maybe it's just to prank? Or just to play around with this "cool" "new" thing called Bluetooth? I don't know. It's just very weird.

Q&A: I have a question?

(This is about the book "Slumdog Millionaire" is based on. So if you want to watch that movie with a clear mind, you might not want to read the following. However if you're planning to read the book, read this to save yourself a few hours. Also, I haven't watched the movie yet, but will do so soon, with an open mind. So if you do comment here, don't tell me anything about the movie.)

You know that scene in the Tamil movie "Kadhala Kadhala" where Prabhu Deva paints a beautiful woman and the art students, Rambha and Soundarya, poo-pooh it, and later when Kamal Hasan throws some soda on it and smears it all over the painting they go "Wow, this is art!"? Here's my question, why do writers these days feel like they need to take a nice story and ruin it with dirt?

I just finished reading "Q&A". On my Goa trip, my friend was reading it and after I finished the book I had with me, I borrowed his. It was probably the worst book I read since "Kite Runner". Why do writers these days feel like a book is incomplete without references to child molestation, rape, prostitution, homosexuality and general wretchedness? Oh and flashbacks and references to future events in the story. It's like they're doing a "connect the dots" to complete a book. And I'm not exactly mad that the writer is focusing on all these negatives about living in India, although yeah it does bug me. It just bothers me that this trend of doing a collage of misery will only increase after the success of this book/movie. I'm not asking for the negatives about society (Indian society in particular) to be swept under the carpet, but you're a lesser person in my opinion if you think this is what it takes to make a great book.

As for the rest of the book, boy it felt so contrived! In a way, I suppose that the set of weird coincidences is the point of the book but it's so unsatisfactory. It's like a story of a bunch of paint cans being thrown off from a building and forming the Mona Lisa when they finally hit the ground. Gee really? What next, a story of a poor girl who gets married to a prince after dancing with him for a day? A girl who falls asleep till woken up by a charming prince? This is what storytelling has come down to these day?

Don't even get me started on "Kite Runner".

Getting robbed at the petrol pump

Now, conventionally there are two ways in which you get robbed at the pump. The first is when the oil prices are high, and you end up paying a lot to fill up your tank. The other is when you pull up to an unmanned pump (in the US, say) and someone pulls a gun on you.

I found a third way to get robbed and, sadly, it happened to me twice during my stay in Pune. Basically when the pump operator is beginning to pump petrol, he resets the counter. Now I have no proof of this but I am quite certain that twice so far, the operator failed to reset the pump. This means that when I look up after he's finished pumping, and see that he has pumped Rs.100 in petrol, he has pumped less (usually Rs. 50 less, since that's usually the amount the previous customer paid). If you don't pay attention to the resetting of the counter, then you won't catch this. You don't realize you've been robbed till you drive away from the pump and see the needle of your fuel gage. Or much later, when your tank is empty but you realize that you haven't driven for that long. It drives me nuts because the operator can't be working alone since he doesn't collect the money. And it's not just him and the cashier since there's no clear way for the two of them to keep track of how much they're robbing in one day. So the whole station is in on it and so you can't just complain to the owner. I just have to be more careful I guess.

Rome and romans

I don't think this makes me a racist, probably just a dumba** but I can't get used to seeing Whites in India. Other than at work, where I generally pretend I'm in the US, I behave like any other Indian when I see Whites, I gawk! This inspite of the fact that I spent the last nine years in a predominantly White country.

Of course, it was even worse in the US. I was extremely allergic to seeing Indians in the US. In particular, Indians I didn't know and outside of Indian events like "Melas" and "Indian movies". Like at NASA, I always tried to walk away from the saris. And pretty much like any other Indian I tried to avoid all eye-contact with any Indian I saw on the street.

The journey back: Weird train

Sadly we had to spend the last day of the vacation in transit. Our train was scheduled to leave Vasco de Gama at 3pm, so we had to leave Calangute early in the morning to make it. The train journey was spectacular, more than made up for all the inconvenience of the odd timings (arrival in Pune at 4am). The beautiful ghats, valleys and best of all, the Dudhsagar falls that we got to see from the train. I really wanted to enjoy the train journey like you can only do in India. First of all there's the landscape. The fact that all the windows open up and you can stand at the door of the compartment means that you get to fully enjoy the world around you. Then there's the food that's constantly coming in, plus the food at the railway stations. But there were a few realities to deal with.

For those that haven't travelled by train in India for a while, you're in for a rude surprise. There's now a "side middle berth". Our beloved Railway minister decided to lower the congestion in the trains by adding nine extra berths per compartment. I am sure it helps handle the load but it's not fun for the passengers who are used to the old compartments. For starters, the "ninth" man sits among the six passengers on the "main" side which now are 4-3, instead of 3-3. Also, the side middle means that the side berths are no longer fun where if two people are travelling together, they can decide to sit or sleep when they feel like - when the side middle berth is functional, the lower berth isn't comfortable for sitting.

Also, the pantry car took our orders for food and we ordered an egg biryani which was supposed to be served by "8 or 8:30pm". 8pm came and went, so did the regular food for the other people. Then it was 9pm. As it is, I get cranky when I'm hungry and on top of that, there was clearly something very wrong with the system there. Either some people were cutting in line in terms of how they were getting their food, or the food was being served to the cops on the train first. Either way, I was hopping mad when we weren't served by 10pm and I went to talk to the pantry car manager. Turned out the worthless staff didn't even take our order right! I was so angry I could have killed someone. After some yelling they agreed to send a veg meal our way immediately.

We did have our little revenge when we got our meal from a different pantry car vendor and the pantry car people who were bringing the food we ordered were left standing there with a tray of food. The guy tried to argue with me that since I asked for food from the car I should eat only that, I yelled back at him saying that the food we ate did technically come from the car, it just came before he brought me my food. He was left muttering to himself and I went to bed proud of my tiny victory.

Weekend in Goa

First of all, and even I need constant reminding of this fact, Goa is a state, not a city.

Having said that, wow, that's one awesome state. At various points it reminded me of Kerala (vegetation), Florida (beaches) and Pittsburgh (scenic hill drives). Other than this one sight of a big fat White dude in a man thong, it was very scenic (There were a lot of fat, half-naked foreigners toasted to a fine crisp!). We rented scooters and drove up and down the state to our hearts' content. We saw a bunch of magnificent churches. Wonderful beaches with sand that our feet sank right into. Dolphins swimming in the ocean that we only saw after chasing them for a good hour and a half.

The spectacular Chapora fort which had great views all around. Sunsets at the beach on both evenings (and once more during the train journey back). Nights on the sandy beaches with some new friends, sippings drinks, listening to the waves crashing, watching some people doing the limbo dance and some street performers walking the tightrope with flaming pots on their heads.

We even tried our some Goan cuisine but not nearly enough. We ate a nice shack run by this pleasant Goan lady who spoke to us in English. That was to be expected I suppose, it's just that I am so used to speaking in Hindi these days that I was oddly thrown off by it.

Really great trip, just did a little too much to recount successfully. I just hope the pics look good.

"The jump rope" and other short stories

The jump rope has been great for me. It started out as a (excuse the language) pissing contest of sorts between friends. To see who can jump the longest without tripping or stopping. Now that's still a motivator but in general, jumping rope has become my default cardio. The record to beat is at 350, and I'm at 210. I'm not tripping at the end, my legs just hurt too much and I have to stop. I suppose more stretching or more protein in my diet should do the trick.

But I'm enjoying it a lot as of now. For example, as of today morning, it's been 24 hours since I've used it and I miss it terribly. I didn't jump Monday night and Tuesday morning because my legs experienced a delayed soreness from Saturday's games. But now I suddenly feel the urge to just jump.

Also, all the jumping from last week helped me out a lot during the cricket matches. Everyone was sore or hurting from the games. I was not only fine, I even went shopping on MG road on Sunday. But for the soccer tournament in three weeks I don't think I can rely on just jumping to give me the required stamina. Let's see.

Some craziness from the cricket match:

1. The fights that kept erupting. They all involved the same few players. It's sad when I feel like the voice of reason and I have to talk sense to people. "Any kind of growth really irritates me". 
2. They had drinks for the players, but these included Pepsi and Mountain Dew. Who drinks carbonated drinks while playing? Especially caffeinated drinks? No wonder a bunch of people were cramping up toward the end of the day. Luckily it was winter and not as hot. Do that in the summer and we'll be carrying away people on stretchers with IV drips.
   

A sort of funny, sort of sad story

There's this guy at work that I see walking around a couple of times a day. He's clearly not a technical employee because he doesn't talk to anyone. He looks and acts more like someone from the security team, but he doesn't wear a security uniform either. Thing is, he walks kinda slow, looks at everyone's computers in a fashion that can be called creepy.

Yesterday when both my cubicle neighbor and I got a little bothered by this guy's stares, we walked up to talk to a girl who's been here a little longer. I nodded my head gently toward the guy, who was in earshot of us, and asked the girl in Telugu who he was. We spoke in Telugu for a couple of minutes, with the girl telling me that he's the assistant to the property manager who just walks around because he's bored. Apparently the guy before him was much creepier and this guy's relatively cool. Suddenly realization dawns on the face of the girl and she says in a loud whisper, "Oh my God! I forgot that he knows Telugu!" and switches to Tamil for half a sentence before saying, "Oh my God! I forgot he knows Tamil too!!"

We don't know how much of the conversation the guy heard because he never looked up at us but it was definitely an awkward situation to be in. Sigh.

One of my top 2 cricket performances

We had a cricket tournament of sorts at work on Saturday. The folks at our Mumbai office came over for a elimination style tournament. It was meant to be a team building exercise. This is sort of what we'd practicing for and the big day was here.

I knew it was going to be a different day when we were playing a practice match before the Mumbai folks got here, and when they were picking teams, I was picked 5th out of 11! Not last! This despite the fact that the last three times before that game when I picked up a bat I got out for a ZERO on the very first ball. Three straight first-ball ducks!

During the tournament I was put on Team B which meant "not good enough to be on Team A but atleast you know which way to hold a bat". Chasing 88 to win in ten overs, I opened our innings. My only thought was "Oh please don't let me be out for a zero again!" The immediate goal was to bat one ball without getting out. I played watchfully and even managed a run on the first ball.

It only got better from there. My partner and I talked to each other constantly, kept revising our scoring - slow accumulation at first and then faster scoring as we got more comfortable. We ran extremely well between the wickets. (Running between the wickets is my favorite part of playing cricket; I love converting single into doubles, and doubles into triples more than scoring boundaries.)  I was winded but I was enjoying mysel too much to care. Just kept pushing myself. I even scored a boundary and in a very un-cool fashion jumped up and down in celebration! I couldn't believe the ball actually reached the boundary, and it wasn't just a glance either, it was a full-fledged pull.

The other team was very nasty in their appeals etc. There was a point where they thought they got me caught behind (the ball didn't hit my bat) but the leg umpire over-ruled the umpire and gave me not out. They were furious and started the smack talk. Sadly, it bothered me enough to where I started playing rash strokes and finally swung wildly to get caught behind. I had managed 14, and the top scorer was my opening partner with 16. Inspite of our efforts we fell short and ended up losing.

The only other time I can remember playing that well was once in Austin, in the grounds behind Jester. That day I was absolutely on fire. Nothing the other team did could get me out and I kept scoring even as wickets fell from the other side. I went hoarse from screaming for the other guy to run and it was just bliss. Yesterday, came very close to that.

A case of the blues

Dunno why but today I was feeling very blue. Started in the middle of the day during a conversation with a friend. Got worse as I was later talking to a colleague. She was narrating some stuff about her family and it wasn't even sad stuff per se but I just got even more depressed. I started driving home listening to songs on my MP3 player (which, btw, can now play videos!). I don't even notice what song it's playing for 10 mins and then I realized it was playing "Dust in the wind" by Kansas! Normally I love that song, and after watching "Old School" I even think it's kinda funny. But today, it made me even more melancholic. Thing is, there's a list of people I used to be able to call when I got into a funk, but all those people are halfway across the world now. "Damn it" I thought, "I won't be down. The next song that plays on my shuffle is going to be fun, and I'm going to snap out of it."

The next song that played was "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone"!

I was so startled by the irony of the situation that I burst out laughing. That cured me in a hurry!

Lingering weirdness

As I walked through the MG road area in Pune yesterday, I walked into a small strip mall-type area. There were a lot of stores here that were selling lingerie. Now I've grown used to seeing fancy lingerie being sold in stores here and this isn't a post about the decline of Indian culture. However this one store in particular had in its display case, a few frocks for little girls sitting right next to some lingerie. (And no, before you ask, it wasn't some sort of catholic school girl outfit or just some really small lingerie that I was mistaking for little girls' clothes!)

That was just creepy. I am trying hard not to imagine scenarios in which someone would walk into that store to buy the little girls' clothes or worse, buy both.

The Tamil situation

In case I didn't mention this before, my Tamil's gotten pretty good. My Tamil colleagues at work are continually surprised by my fluent speech and a couple of guys were surprised to know that Tamil's not my first language. That was probably a highlight for me! It helps that as opposed to before, when my Tamilian friends would speak to me in English with a few Tamil expressions thrown in, these people here speak to me primarily in Tamil. This one girl who sits next to me constantly speaks in Tamil each time she sees me. So even without trying my own skills have gone up.

I'm also watching a lot of Tamil channels. My primary TV watching (which I'm trying to cut down in the first place) can be categorized primarily into either Movies, reruns of US sitcoms or Tamil comedy clip shows. The Tamil networks show a lot of comedy clip shows during the night hours. I'm now intimately familiar with the works of Vadivel and Vivek.

After a lot of effort I was able to download "Kadhala Kadhala" at home and began watching it last night. It occurred to me that I find the average Tamil movie a lot funnier than the average Tamil viewer. I think it's because when I watch any Tamil show/movie, I have to translate it in my head. The understanding of what's being said comes after a bit of effort, so I don't take it for granted. Hence when I finally "get" the joke, and sometimes the hidden second joke or pun or reference, I am very pleased with myself for "getting" it. Added to that there's the unfamiliarity of the terrain. In any culture, just learning the language isn't enough, you need a context to appreciate the culture. Similarly in Tamil movies there's a "culture" that you need to get in order to find the joke funny, but on the flip-side, someone familiar with the usual jokes might not find that much humour in them. Since I'm discovering these jokes for the first time, I tend to find them a lot funnier.

"ROON JAHAM".

Optimum resource utilization

(You shouldn't read this after eating. Or maybe you should.)

A "rice plate" or a "thali" in most generic restaurants here comes
with a couple of curries, a daal, chapathi, rice, yogurt in a small
bowl, a sweet and some sliced onions and lemon wedges, maybe a pickle.
That's usually a nice lunch, but not all gets consumed. Some don't
like the yogurt, some don't like the sweet and most leave behind the
peppers or stems of the curry leaves that come with the curries or
daal. This doesn't even include those that just can't finish their
food and leave behind half their daal or something.

After a few week of getting lunch delivered to the office ("dabba" or
"lunch box") I decided to eat out for a few days, just to mix it up. I
went back to my old haunt "Mala's Inn" a regular lunch area for people
in my office. I was surprised by the change in the demographic. Now
the place was flooded with kids from some technical school nearby and
there wasn't a single person from my office. Luckily I brought a book
with me and I read it as I had my lunch.

A 30-ish guy sat in front of me and ordered a "rice plate". I didn't
pay any attention to him except to note that he got the rice plate,
and that his plate arrived just as my food (chapati and curry) did. As
I wrapped up my lunch, I looked up and was surprised by the empty
plate and bowls in front of me. Not only were they just devoid of
food, they were "even out of the basic elements of food". Not a
pepper, grain of rice, speck of curry in them. As I sat there stunned
at this excellent display of resource utilization, the fun began.

He had finished consuming his yogurt, and he poured water into the
bowl, rinsed it and drank it up. He did this one more time. The he
washed his hands into the same small bowl, using the lemon wedge
(usually lemon wedges are provided in finger bowls to help get rid of
the grease from the fingers). Then he added salt to bowl, stirred the
liquid with his finger and drank it up again!

Ewww!

Now look, I'm all for being efficient, and I really hate wasting food.
And, for what it's worth, the guy didn't exactly lick the table or
something. Anything that went into his body was actually meant to go
into his body. All the same, I think there's something to be said for
being a little wasteful and throwing away the water you've washed your
hands in!

A proud longhorn

Bevo completed a long journey and finally showed up at my desk. Among the two suitcases of stuff that I brought back from the US, this had the privilege of being included. I had to (sigh!) cut it in order to make it fit in my luggage but glued it back soon as I got the chance. It was sitting at home since I didn't want to bring it to work since the Longhorns were winning and I didn't want to jinx them. So I waited and waited and now that the 'Horns won their season finale, it was time to bring him to work and tell everyone, "See, I'm still worshipping cattle."

Taad-gole, Parasailing and Shredded feet

Just spent the best day of my Pune stay so far. It's hard to see it being topped easily. A team from work planned a trip to Alibag, to visit the beaches there. Since not everyone from that team could make it, there were a few vacant spots on the rented bus and I jumped at the offer. This team is a very close, fun-loving group of people so that made the trip a lot of fun. There was antakshari and Bingo on the journey. So much screaming and shouting :) The thing was, it didn't feel like a trip with co-workers, it felt more like a college trip with the casual camaraderie and banter.

1. Coming to India I decided to indulge in all sort of foods, including fruits and vegetables that I won't normally find in the US. One such item is "tegalu". These are sprouts of the palm tree that are planted, sprouted and then boiled. Another item is called "munjulu", basically fruits of the palmya tree. I love these things. I used to look forward to my annual trips to Vizag to eat them because you didn't get one ones in Hyderabad. And now, after maybe 15 years I got to eat them. At first I didn't believe my eyes when I saw a cart selling them. I ran to the cart, found out they were selling 3 for Rs. 10, and started. The vendor was amused by how eager I was to eat them. Soon the other members of our trip were curious and tried eating a few. It kinda made me sad to realize that there are people growing up in India right now who don't know these things.
2. At one of the beaches we visited, this guy was running a parasailing operation on the beach. He saw our group and approached us with an offer to carry us for a reduced price since we were a big group. For the low price of Rs. 250, I got to fly behind a jeep for a couple of minutes. It was great fun.
3. The worst thing about the beach though was the rocks under the water. In all the inital excitement we didn't mind that these rocks were sharp but after the adrenalin wore off we realized that our feet were cut up pretty bad. A few guys were even bleeding from their cuts for a while. Luckily we had a few bandages to wrap. Also the salt water helped keep the wounds infection free while they were still raw.
4. One interesting aspect was the flat nature of some of the beaches there. The land there was so flat that we had to walk about 150 meters to go from the high tide point to the low tide point. This of course meant that you could walk quite some distance into the water as well. I prefer that to the Vizag beaches where the drop-off is quite steep and scary.
   
5. The drive to and from the beach itself was worth the cost of the trip. We drove through the beautiful ghats and as beautiful as they were in the daytime, they were even more beautiful at night, under the full moon. Just a beautiful vision the entire way back.

(Picture and videos coming up later.)

Night blindness

For almost a whole week, I had a bad problem - I couldn't drive at night. Saturday night, when I went out with my friend, the headlight of my bike went out. It must have happened when I turned on my bike with the light still on. For a guy that used to insist on people turning off all lights/air-conditioning/stereo before turning on their car, that was an inexcusable mistake. Thing is, it wasn't the first time I did it, but it clearly wasn't a problem before.

I didn't even notice it for a while while I was driving. Luckily I have "parking lights" that prevented me from getting tickets but basically, if I was driving at night, on an unfamiliar road, I'd have to drive at 5 kmph to avoid falling into any potential holes on the road. So no night driving! Had to leave work early, had to avoid meeting friends at night.

On the other end, the repair shop closest to my place closes at 6pm, exactly when I leave work. So when I took my bike there at 7pm, they did everything short of laughing in my face before politely asking me leave. The next day I drove like crazy just to make it there by 6:30pm and the guys, bless them, didn't make a fuss. They just repaired it as fast as they could.

The worst part with having no lights was that I couldn't fight back against my biggest nemeses on the road - the high-beamers. Everytime I see a gratuitous high-beam headed my way, I flick my own high beam to let them know that they should dip their lights. Now I couldn't do that. After the repair, I'm back to "communicating" with the other drivers on the road.

(In case you're wondering, my success rate at getting people to dip their headlights is about 1-in-30.)

You're fat!!!

Indians don't hold back when it comes to commenting on another person's figure/weight. Now maybe it's just people at my place of work. I'd also like to say, "maybe it's just because they've become very comfortable with me and don't feel the need to censor themselves". But the latter is definitely not true. My first day at work, J, a guy who met me when I was in Houston, told me that it looked like I'd gained 10 kgs (22 pounds) since he last saw me!

Since then the people at work don't seem to mind giving me a piece of their mind when it comes to my weight, or what I'm eating etc. Stuff like, "Are you sure you want to eat that?" or "Hmm, have you gained weight recently?" or "Man, if this is you now, I wonder what you'll look like after marriage." That last one comes from this observation that guys in India balloon up after marriage. That is understandable because these people are usually working odd hours, eating lousy food, which translates to not eating at all. But after marriage, with a wife that's cooking tasty food every meal, the weight gain is inevitable.

Thing is, I don't mind these comments because I actually have lost weight after coming to India, my clothes are loose. But the sad truth is that while I was average or a little above average when I was in the US, I will always be significantly over the average weight while I'm in India. (The plus side to this is that while I was definitely much below average height in the US, I am of average or at worst, slightly below average height in India. Almost all the girls at work are shorter than me, many by about 3-4 inches, which almost never happened in the US.)

One change I've noticed in India is that a lot more people are now getting health conscious. Indians will never balloon up like Americans simply because they walk a lot more, eat out a lot less and in general have a different genetic composition. But now I'm seeing more people frequenting Gyms. They're actually aware of what's in the food they're eating. They're not counting calories or obsessively dieting, but atleast they don't stare at me when I say "this food is too fattening". My parents, maybe because of constant nagging from me and my brother, have begun eating earlier in the nights and reduced the quantity of rice they eat. A good change.

One last observation. The "fat" Indians I have seen almost always fall into one particular body type. They don't seem to have any fat on their faces, but their midsection and posteriors gain weight. These are people who by looking at their face you'd think were thin but certainly have a "tire" around them.

Saturday night: Out on the town

I barely spent a few hours at home this weekend. That's of course bad news for my apt (needed cleaning) and my clothes (needed washing). But it was worth it. It started off with cricket like last week. People were in better shape and fewer injuries. That was followed by a trip to a "Andhra Mess". I'm loving discovering these new eateries around town. This one in particular is closer to home and I anticipate coming here to eat once a week. (Incidentally, this mess is in a giant neighborhood called "Magarpatta City": more on this place later.)

Then I went home with the intention of taking a nap but couldn't sleep. I got a call from a friend who wanted to hang out, so I went to one of the malls in the city called E-Square. Turned out, my friend wanted to hit up a lounge called "Not Just Jazz By The Bay". This is a place that offers music and food and drinks. A slightly upscale clientèle and definitely one of the places to be on a Saturday night. Lots of well-dressed people, although you must keep in mind, in India jeans apparently count as "well-dressed".

They had a "cover" of Rs. 500 but apparently the way it works in most clubs/bars in India is that you pay the cover, and get coupons for that amount to be used there on that day. So in essence it turns out to be a "Rs. 500 minimum" instead of a cover. That was fine by me since I was starving and didn't want to pay an additional amount to eat the expensive "bar food". Also, we had to sit at the bar since all the tables were reserved. I didn't mind it so much and even got to chat a little with the bartender.

On Saturdays this place features a live band and on that day it was "One Night Stand" from Mumbai. I think this was a former college band that recently had a reunion. They covered a lot of popular classic rock songs from the 60's, 70's and 80's, so you can imagine I was very thrilled to be there. (I hate listening to new music unless it comes highly reviewed and recommended. Yeah, I'm close minded.) They were very good except for a few places where their guitarist screwed up the guitar solos.

One very odd thing I observed there is that there were kids in the place. And yes, they weren't "carding" anyone. So I guess underaged drinking isn't really a problem here. Also, my friend told me about how Shiv Sena went on a rampage a few years ago trying to shut down places like these. I just left that place thinking it's gotta be really hard to try and live like an Austinite over here in India.

The shortest period of happiness associated with a certain event

I woke up early Saturday morning to go play cricket. When I turned on the computer, one of the first bits of news I read was that Peyton Manning won the MVP, his third. It was a terrific start to the weekend. I was so excited, I fished out my Colts cap and wore it all day long, even at night. That meant that I was driving without a helmet and getting beaten up by the dusty roads but I didn't care. I was a happy Manning fan and I wanted to show it. He deserved to win, and I couldn't have been happier that he won it with a wide margin.

Then of course Sunday came, and since I wasn't at my apt, I had to wait till 10am to check the score of the Indy/SD playoff game and I saw they were in OT. I thought, OK, they can still pull it off. But they lost as a result of a drive by Phillip Rivers. Insanity. Ruined my Sunday. I couldn't even look at the Colts hat after that.

Oh well, there's always next year.

A very happy new year to everyone

I rang in the new year in a very sober environment, surrounded by a couple of married couples, a 9-year-old kid and a lot of colleagues from work. Not that it wasn't fun but it was no Dec 31st 2006.

What sucks is that today (Monday) is a working day for us, so we couldn't just stay up as long as we wanted. Inspite of trying to be a time Nazi, I couldn't close my eyes till 3am. And then get up by 7am so I could come to work.

Of course, work had a very "school's off" feel to it today. People sharing their NYE stories and wishing each other. Of course I could barely keep my eyes open all day and hope to catch up on my sleep tonight because there's another cricket match and a trip to the temple coming up.