V day and all that jazz

V day just went by of course… didn’t quite find the time to notice it go by, cos I guess my personal cupid was stuck in a traffic jam somewhere. Now, someone like me writing about V day is funny, cos the indubitable fact is that geeks DO NOT fall in love! Disagree? Well, the axioms as I see it, are as follows:

 1. The literary purists declare love a feeling in the pit of your stomach, that induces one to believe that among all variants of your species walking the planet, one particular specimen (usually of the opposite sex) is apparently a beautiful thing. This does not work with geeks – for a geek, an indescribable “feeling” in the pit of the stomach must have a logical cause (such as diarrhoea). And, anything that a geek finds beautiful is typically inanimate, and usually has some kind of a silicon component! (wonder if that explains the draw of bimbettes with implants??)

 2. The whole process of “finding someone” to fall in love with, usually involves a number of things that are entirely alien to geeks – good wardrobe, social instincts, patience for idle chit-chat (purists call it the art of romantic conversation), the list could go on…

 3. Sense of humour apparently is a good ingredient for love, and geeks should have a turf advantage there, cos a lot of them have plenty of it. Trouble is, it doesn’t help a great deal, if your sense of humour is not something that ordinary mortals (i.e. non-geeks) comprehend. Lets admit it, not many people outside the geek fraternity find fortune cookies such as this one funny – (http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Fortune_4_All_2/924.html)

 4. Could two geeks fall in love… with patterns of ones and zeroes, yes… with each other no, cos that would mean mixing business and pleasure!

 Now, this post is turning out to be really boring… almost fell asleep writing it. Can’t help it, unfamiliar turf and all that! But will try to end it well… once, in a moment of weakness, HJ succumbed to “idle chit-chat”, and found himself trying to butter up a PYT. Now, the PYT is reasonably impressed, and inflated, and quizzes HJ – “Close your eyes, and tell me who you see”. HJ complied, wrapped his eyelids, almost instantly saw a F16 falcon recovering from a controlled nose-dive, and found himself pondering about the gyro-stability. Literary purists may write that the PYT got her answer from the blissful smile that lit upon his face, but they would of course be wrong!

Be-Car ka fight!

How do you fit three cars and two bikes into 78 sqft of space, especially when the space is distributed in the topology of a ‘T’, with about 48 ft in the longer stroke and 30 in the shorter one? Well, it is not just possible, but actually quite trivial… K and I, and our landlord have been doing this quite successfully for over an year now, never raising too much of a smirk about the entire business. If this doesn’t amaze you, trust me, only one of the five vehicles in question is bulimic. No, not one of the bikes… K’s bike and mine are beauties, but definitely not of the Kate Moss kind!

That 78sqft of space was until now as strangely Utopian maze of simple permutations and combinations. But alas! Paradise wasn’t to last for ever! Circumstances, Gods, Murphy, or all of the these have conspired, and our rather plaintive geometric equations have been thrown awry! New neighbours moved in recently, and brought with them such devastation as was hitherto unheard of in our uncomplicated lives. This devastating force came in the form of a petulant little red devil on four wheels, that has now planted itself in the company of a rather large and ungainly gargoyle all in about 50sqcm of space right adjacent to our utopia. The gargoyle – a large sedan, seated on a verisame number of circular appendages as the majority of the beasts above is not a new entrant into our universe. It had always been there, right next door, posing a threat, but never really intruding into our 78. A gargoyle by itself is a very docile creature, by the way, but throw in a red devil for company, and you’ve just opened up the gates to hell.

 And hell it is… K can’t move his car a few feet forward cos that would put two other vehicles under house arrest. Unfortunately, one of those vehicles is a bike that belongs to our landlord’s son, and he might not take lightly to the idea of people taking the zu(m) out of his Suzuki and leaving him with just a Suu Kyi. I can , btw, parallel park between K’s car and the red devil, and I don’t just mean the Steve-Martin-as-Inspector-Clouzeau kind of parallel parking. But then, parallel parking to start and end my day is not really one of those dreams I cherished back when I was dozing off in back-benches at school. And of course, there’s the minor discomfort associated with the fact that if I did parallel park, the only way K’s bike or mine would ever leave the premises, would be with the aid of a few Evil-Kneivelish stunts.

 Fact is, Murphy has spoken, and I have resigned to my fate! Fortunately, there’s plenty of parking space (albeit rodent infested parking space) at my office, eight km away. There is hope yet… and thus, I shall leave my car parked in office henceforth. And what pray, u ask, would I be inclined to do, when spinning one wheel sitting atop four is called for… well, there’s always the bike… office is just 8 km away… and from there on, it is after all a small world…!

And smiles to go before I weep

This is an old post actually, which I’d deleted in a flurry of emotion (and not just cos it sounds narcissistic)… reposting it, cos well, whats the point of a blog if I start deleting posts…  

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Early hours at office, and I’d started my day as usual looking at the latest stock tickers on my portfolio. A penny stock that earned me a lot of dough earlier, was making up for the impropriety of giving me profits, and was now digging away deep into my pockets. As “chotte haath” walked by, perhaps on her way to coffee, I was sporting, not surprisingly, an expression best described as a forlorn grimace.

You can imagine my astonishment when she looked up at me and said – “Whenever I pass this way, I see you smiling away looking at the monitor. Whats going on?”.

Well I’ve frankly had it and cannot explain this anymore… to all those people who apparently see a perpetual smile on my face and wonder what hidden secrets lead to the upturned lips, I apologize for the blasphemy. In spite of that rather well known (but perhaps incorrect) adage about how it takes just 17 muscles to smile as against 53 muscles to frown, I know we live in times where it is almost customary to frown, and smiling is perverse – the not done thing!

Am guilty of syntactical inaccuracy with my non-verbal communication… espc. my grimaces, smirks and such, as a result of which these emotives when displayed upon my aspect tend to resemble a smile. I also apologize for the numerous instances when the emotion painted across my frontispiece is an actual smile – I know it is very inconsiderate of me to sport such an expression in times like these, when each of us is trying to make the best of the stressful, ugly lives and worlds we live in. I apologize also for being the lazy bum that I am and trying to get away with exercising just 17 of my muscles most of the time, when I should be taking up my rightful share and exercising at least 53!

If you have read so far, just have two simple words to culminate my atonement…

Yeah, Right!

(Dan exits left stage, smiling sarcastically…)

Apology for Cowardice

This post goes out to everyone and everything that I’ve ever given up on… to SS and a few others at work, to some friends i’m no longer in touch with,  to the wannabe athelete in me, and to a birdie who might just fly by…

Am sorry I moved on when I did… a stronger man would have stuck on for better times, but guess courage deserts me beyond a point. Believe me when I say that I gave up because of lack of nerve, not because I did not care… hopefully you’ll be better off much after my flee. Guess there’s no shame in admitting, that when push comes to shove, and it gets to a point where I have run out of ideas to deal with worries, letting go is the only way I know of preserving my smile…