Rain, rain, don't go away.

The monsoon is here 10 days early, which means the rains have started!
That's wonderful news. It rained big about 10 days ago and cooled
everything down but I think it was a local thunderstorm. It got hot
again and last Sunday was the presumably the first big rain of the
monsoons. It was a massive downpour, accompanied by hail. The
temperatures dropped by about 10 C (20 F). It got so cold that the
next morning I hesitated to shower in the cold tap water. (Note to my
real estate agent who looked at me like I was an idiot for buying a
water heater in the summer - Who's the idiot now?)

The smell of Indian soil when it rains is the best in the world. I'd
give up TV for a week just for one whiff of that smell. Heck, I'd give
up one or upto two meals for that smell. It's terrific. I'm still
waiting for that dull rain, where it slides in slowly, starts, hits a
peak, and just plateau's out at decent pace and stays that way for a
couple of hours, stopping rarely. Now that's some good rain.

A rose by any other name

You know how I'm the king of all movie trivia? Yeah, you know it, I
don't need to say it. But I recently lost a movie bet. Yeah, I'm
shocked too.

I was having lunch with some guys from work, the IT guys. We were just
talking about some random topics and somehow the topic of dogs came up
and someone said, "You know I saw this movie recently, with his guy
who's raised as a dog and he has a leash and there's this black guy
too." And I immediately knew what movie they were talking about.
I asked him, "Are you talking about Jet Li?"
"Yes!"
"And Morgan Freeman?"
"Yes, that's the guy."
"Yeah, the name of the movie is 'Unleashed'."
"No dude, it's called Danny something ... got it, it's 'Danny the Dog'."
"That's ridiculous, Danny the Dog sounds like a Disney movie. I'm sure
it's Unleashed."
"Wanna bet?"
"Sure, how about pizza and coke."

We went to check Wikipedia (since IMDB is blocked at work) and I was
shocked to learn that the movie I've known all this while as
Unleashed, was released as Danny the Dog in India (and maybe some
other Asian countries). That's bizzare! As I looked up more stuff, I
realized that this is a very common concept. For eg, "Fast and
Furious" was released as "The Fast and The Furious: Part 4". One of
the movies in the Species series (part 3 I think) was released as
"Species Unleashed", so I guess there is no ban on the word
"Unleashed" itself. Of course, there's the famous story of how "From
Russia with Love" was released as "From Bond with Love" since India
didn't want to piss off USA and UK by giving them the wrong idea. (I
don't know where to begin correcting the flaws in THAT logic.) All of
this dual name business is throwing me off my game. Not cool.

(Regarding the bet itself, I explained that both of us were right, but
the guy insisted that I was wrong since I bet that the "movie's name
is NOT Danny the Dog". I didn't mind paying up since it wasn't a big
deal but I got mad when the guy asked me to pay for a big pizza order,
including two cokes and breadsticks that he ordered. He was trying to
treat his entire team to pizza at my expense. I refused to pay up and
told him that what he was doing wasn't fair. He kept insisting that it
was a normal pizza order, but I stuck to my ground. Not a great start
to a relationship but while this won't make me his best friend, I just
hope he doesn't screw me over on IT work!)

A few pictures

This is the exhaust fan at my office. Since this is a very new building, most of the fixtures weren't ready by the time we had moved in. Things like desks, lunch tables and exhaust fans for the bathrooms were placed on a "per request" basis. And I was begging them for an exhaust fan by the time it arrived. Only, the genius who installed it, forgot to remove the glass pane in front of it! So we have a fan that just recirculates the wonderful aroma of the bathroom. I guess this is much better than the bathroom downstairs which didn't have an exhaust fan either, except their bathroom could only be accessed through the kitchen! So not only could neither room be used comfortably the other was occupied, after using the bathroom, the odors had only the kitchen to escape to. Just a very pleasant dining experience for everyone.

This is the adapter for my wireless router. I left it turned on all day long as I went to work and in the Chandigarh heat it melted. But best part of all is that it still works. I just have to be careful not to leave it turned on again or I might not have an apartment to go back to.

This is a carpet I saw being sold on the street here. In case you don't recognize that logo, that's the logo of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. Either there is a huge demand for Crimson Tide memorabilia from a hidden population of Crimson Tide alumni here, or the tendency to steal logos and print them on random items has gone a step too far. I mean, I can understand finding Yankees and Bulls hats here, but this is too much!

Sometimes, when I go into an anti-North Indian rant, people look at me like I'm a bigot. I'm really not, I don't hate all North Indians without discrimination. I pick and choose the ones to hate. Like the guy who made this sign. He clearly thinks that South India and China are neighboring countries of India. Thank you so much for helping me make my point. (In case anyone is wondering - Yes, we do have signs that advertise North Indian food in the South, but those restaurants don't contrast that with South Indian food by calling it "Indian food".)

Another "Daftar" gem

We have a water cooler in our office, the kind that takes in one of
those 20-liter bottles. In the morning, I was filling up my water
bottle with water as he stood behind me. I finished filling mine and
he filled him, and then took a sip of water from his bottle. "It's not
cold. I don't think the cooler is working." "No," I explained, "I just
filled my bottle so all the cold water is probably gone. It'll take a
while for it to cool some more water." "No, no, I don't think it's
working." He'd drawn a conclusion from his data and he wasn't going to
be corrected. I wanted to give him my bottle to show him that the
cooler was working, but I didn't want his brain to blow a fuse from
the contradiction.

Another episode of "The Daftar"

(Title suggested by a very smart chap from Austin. "Daftar" is Hindi for "Office".)

The office has two clocks, one of them has a piece of paper with the word "Houston" being held against it. The clocks were just set up by the manager, who set the Houston clock to IST minus ten hours (when it should actually be IST minus ten and a half hours) and turns to us with a very proud look on his face and clears his throat to draw attention to the clock. He has taken a printout of the word "Houston" in a large font and is holding it up against the clock. "See, now we can tell the time in Houston."

Me (not impressed): Actually the time in Houston should be 30 minutes less than what you have there.

Manager spends another 3 three minutes changing the minutes field, which he isn't sure how to do. By the time he gets it right, I have to point out to him that he needs to add another 3 minutes to make up for the time elapsed.

Scene commences about 20 minutes or so after the clocks were set.

Time: 5:18pm IST (6:48 am CST).

Colleague (fellow engineer, very young): So our meeting with the Houston office is at 8am CST?
Manager (senior ... well, the less said the better): Yes.
C (not sure of himself): So, that will be another ...?
M: Another hour and a half, man.
(a beat, while the manager turns his head to look at the clock and mentally tries to calculate the difference between 8am and 6:48am)
M: Actually it's in another hour, man.
(another beat while he looks at the clock again)
M: Actually an hour and 10 minutes, isn't it?
Me (putting gun in mouth): Please, just pull the trigger.

Too hot to function

It was going to be hot here. That much I knew. But I wasn't prepared for the intensity. I've never been exposed to consecutive days of temperatures above 100F. Days get that hot in the US, in the Austin/Houston areas but we always have the luxury of air conditioning. None of that for me here. Just my trusty air-cooler (swamp cooler), which does a decent job upto 100F, but beyond that it is basically helpless.

I am running into odd problems with this heat. Almost all the appliances in the apt heat up. One in particular is the voltage converter for my wireless router, and the router itself. So my internet will stop working suddenly. The laptop itself heats up if I put it on the bed so I have to balance the laptop at the end of the bed (or table) so the processor can "breathe".

For cooling water, I use an earthen pot. It's fantastic. It doesn't give ice cold water but it's cool enough to drink when I return home.

I would complain more but it rained yesterday - a thunderstorm with hail that went on for a couple of hours - and I am now very placated. It's cool.

Need to learn to count in Hindi

I really need to learn the Hindi numbers fast. Pune was OK because you could manage with English number a lot. But here, you need to pretty much be able to deal with Hindi for the numbers. The thing is, with Tamil numbers, they are similar to Telugu numbers in terms of how the words are formed, both of which are similar to English numbers as well. For eg: 42 is forty-two, you say the word for "forty" then the word for "two" and just put them together with some "glue" sound. But in Hindi, you say the numbers as "two and forty". And that's just the beginning. The words for 29, 39 etc are "one less than thirty" and "one less than forty" etc.

BTW, all this is new to me. I only learned this much after some extensive googling. When someone says a number I have to translate that in my head like a code and then when I need to say a number back I need to form the code in my head and spit it out. You can imagine how frustrating it is when I need to bargain with someone! Usually I pretend I didn't hear the number the first time, or pretend to be examining the fruit or thinking about something when I have to bargain. I swear, on atleast one occasion when the vendor asked for a certain price (I think Rs. 20) I tried to bargain by offering him a greater amount (Rs. 40). Luckily he thought I was being rude and just walked away instead of taking me for a ride.