The Mentor

When we we were all Mayakovskis he was a Zhivago among us.You could always fathom that there was a certain melancholy deep inside him, behind all the sarcasm and criticism. Some kind of a abyss which he alone knows that he will never be able to cross. He needs to bid adieus from one end of the cliff.

His Philosophy has always been that if he thought of something then someone must have already done it.I recollect those days when he was literally in tears seeing someone else breath life into his thought form. (Incidentally holding a job like that of a programmer seems to inculcate a God-complex in most fellows I know.I mean this about the good ones.Not your average-run-of-the-mill-mediocrity-loving fellow who should have no such qualms because paycheck comes first for them and then their creation thus taking away the disease with it)

I am not sure how we came together to be mates. Despite the age, he probably belongs to my lost generation who feels a camarederie with other lost and lonely folks.Probably not.Its hard to tell because he always has this veil of a vision that was focussed on a far off oject, probably leading this general impression that he is a traveler in this planet and his home lies somewhere else.But I kind of know whats behind that veil.Its something to be discovered through smoke and mirrors.

I have seen him through his many moods : childlike exuberance,youthful irresponsibility, mature hesitation, conservativeness of an old hag and a supreme indifference.Almost like a Kaleidoscope plugged into his cerebrum. Some brilliant, Some naive and Some curious but all of them were original.They never lost my interest. The one I see now has come a full circle. Probably he reached the end of vanity of all things that leads to a resurgence of interest in him.

No. Its not over. What I see now must be the twilight of a new dawn and not the hangover of an old sunset.Whatever it shall be, it is worth looking forward to..

A New Motto

My new motto these days is "Work shall set you free". (Didnt something like Karma Yoga say something like that? )Whatever...Its a Friday and I cant complain..

Moment

One day on the street

I saw you

And your smile took my breath away

Though you were not looking at me

The girl on your arm

Bathed in its glow

I knew in that moment that my life would change

Now the longing of years

Had crystallized to take

A beautiful shape



You haunted my dreams

Though to forget I tried

Laughed and mocked

At that look in my eyes

But still they searched

Every hour, every street



Now, many years later

We sit across the table

And I look at you

Your smile, still special

The waitress preens, a delicate flush

You turn to me

And it washes over me

All over again

My life seems to have rushed

Toward this one moment


"So, we'll settle at 500 million?"


--PM

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Since I am challenged blogwise these days a friend syndicated me some content to be published here. Somehow I like it.

Labor Of Love

There was a popular joke among nerds that goes like this :

Windows: "Where do you want to go today?"
Linux: "Where do you want to go tommorow?"
FreeBSD: "Are you guys coming or what?"

That in essence sums up a partial truth of where different operating systems stood.The gap is closer but the distinction still exists.Anyways my access to the outside world has been say, rather limited, because I dont have my lapyop anymore and I have been trying to make do with an old relic of a machine and hence the installation of FreeBSD and the usual process of building the browser related stuff.
FreeBSD is really a labor of love and I had to labor hard to get it up and running here .( Had to go through a minor period of instanity doing the same thing over again and expecting different results)

Finally here I am with a machine to access this world again.Need to send a couple of important emails, so will be back with normal dispatches soon.

Something to Chew On..

Here is a story dug out from old links. Very refreshing to read it again..

Question?

Can Fate be tempted? or not?

Havent been doing much apart from blowing up a grand since the last week started on various things and dining experiences. Cool to know that lunar based Saka Era calendar intersected with the solar based Gregorian calendar this sunday. Oh ! that reminds me to spread the word for all ye readers to go and watch Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Mara. Really good movie.

Returning to the question the greeks had an interesting concept of the three fates (their weaving is what the french would call fait accompli :)

Reminiscences of Indian Ads

I am not much of a TV person per se but somehow I have this feeling that ads back home had much better appeal for me than here in the US. Just a trip down the memory lane yields me the following in no particular order for the concept part of it.

(a) Ericsson: Remember the punch line of "One Black Coffee Please..". Awesomely cool one.This one even one got the bronze lion (one of the first indian ads to make it so high on the internationally acclaimed list).
(b) Nestle Polo - The Mint with the Hole : The famed "Beta- Sweater Pehno" kind of ones always leave me laughing after its rendition.
(c) Hyundai : When they launched a new car (I believe it is the Accent model) they had this amazingly thoughtful ad which goes like this :

"Ask Anyone to draw a star"
[A Blank Black Screen hovers for less than a second]
"Most of the time you would see this"
[ The standard version of David's Star appears on the screen]
Then the screen goes blank.
[A bright sun appears tearing away the black blanket and exposing a metallic red car]
"Because Reality Differs from Perception"


Of course there is always the jingle part of it that appealed to me too.The top of the list would be the humming for Nestle Sunrise coffee followed by Rexona's initial jingle (supposedly AR Rahman's first commercial music after the initial foray into Dyanora's Madras TV Show..Remember Dyanora TV?) which would be closely followed by Chakra Gold Tea.The oldest jingle I remember is that of Close Up toothpaste's early 80's ad with a couple listening to the sound of waves in a conch. Even the relaunch of coca-cola at Taj Mahal had this oldie tune "Share my dream..share my coca-cola..always.."

Apart from this there is this particular genre of MTV ads which are in a class of their own. The spoofs, the concept is simply on a different scale to be compared to mainstream TV.

There are a lot more in this but this is just a sampler to note down ones that come to mind as cool ads.I am not sure how the scene is these days with regards to ads.

Club 55

Jingle of Pulp Fiction in the background wakes him up. Suddenly it strikes him that his cell phone is craving for his attention. Crawls out of his bed and gets to the ground floor with his eyes half open searching for the phone. Finally he takes the call and hears a different language.

Wrong Number.

ps : Venu has inflicted this popular viral fever of writing a story in 55 words and hence this post.
Mera bhi number aayega Venu :)

Have a Cigar

"Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar. you’re gonna go far, fly high,
You’re never gonna die, you’re gonna make it if you try;they’re gonna love you.
Well I’ve always had a deep respect, and I mean that most sincerely.
The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think. oh by the way,
Which one’s pink?
And did we tell you the name of the game, boy, we call it riding the Gravy train."
-Pink Floyd
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Tommorow is my last day at the current employer. As usual I would drive home with mixed feelings and look forward to this new adventure which begins a week later.

As is required of a good exit, I have given my current employer notice of my departure 2 weeks back. In the meantime there was another big online payment service company that iIinterviewed with, who got suddenly interested in me and with a dogged persistence are trying to steal me.

They wanted to know what would make me change my mind as does my current employer. Assuming they were bidding low, the hiked the compensation to 20% above my offered package. Then he turns the 'godfather prop' on me saying if I were to compose an offer that I couldnt refuse, what would that be? I tried to explain him that there is this something called 'integrity' which precludes me from accepting his offer no matter how hard he tried. I cannot go back on it. Nope.Doesnt cut the cake. I have told them fair and clear that I have given my word to another company albeit that the monetary benefits being offered were compelling to hear and does boost my ego a bit.(Its very hard to resist such temptations being human but signing on something and commiting yourself to something holds you back nicely).

A 100 years back if you were to ponder over literature of the day these 'intangibles' like honesty, honor, integrity, grace and the likes adorned the everyday aspect of life but suddenly they seem to be in a very far off-distant-idealistic-impractical zone of this modern life that they are not even taken seriously when someone swears by one of those qualities. We have to talk in action verbs and tangibles like numbers, specific benefits, etc in order to sound 'real'.But some things do not neccesarily change just because we dont use the concept frequently in our life or a majority of people dont believe in it (From when did 'truth' start depending on the number of its believers?)

Anyways talking about such things like 'pursuit of excellence' in front of my folks makes me feel weird like I was broaching about some 'taboo' subject. Dont know if its me or environment around me but just doesnt feel right. I hope it is me because that would be easy to fix. I think I have to rent out "The Scent Of a Woman" again just to feel normal (just like some folks do shopping when they are angry). One of my fave quotes in the move that applies to this situation is

" You've been the sugar business for so long, you've forgetten the taste of real honey! "

Speakin of the movie, it would be sad to part with a co-worker who shares many qualities of the character Lt. Col. Frank Slade in the movie.

Anyways I made up my mind in this aspect and I will stick to it and the consequences thereof.

Self Reckoning

I dont have anything to post and hence would ramble on regarding what kept me busy these days.

First off, its time for me to move jobs again. I wonder how people usually decide when is enough enough? I am moving just after 6 months of work at my current employer.See, I blame it entirely on the schooling. At schools, they never tell you when to stop applying their own teaching in their teaching.(Knowing when to stop something is a critical skill that comes with experience, I guess). Anyways I have decided its time to stop what I have been doing, shift gears and do something different with another startup.Its very exciting time for me because it involved my first brush with a real valley kind of startup. For those of you who are technically inclined to see what excites me please peruse this link.

Now after battling a fortnight of interviews,schedules and stuff, I have another online payment services company (Cannot divulge the name as I signed the NDA with my blood, just kidding) who were interested in talking to me despite knowing that I am already taken. In a typical auction fashion they topped my previous package and asked me to join their team. Gee, my weekend was ruined in deciding where to go.Interestingly it took me only a few hours to decide what I have chosen was ok and I was gonna stick to my guns. (Have some reasons for it which only time will prove if correct or not).All that apart its kind of sad, as always, to leave some folks out here who seem to be kinda seeing something that I cant see in myself. Great to be working with such folks and no matter what this experience definitely helps in making my future choices.

On the fun part, I had stepped into a club after a long time (something like an year back) . Got Sloshed properly and took the dance floor only to reconfirm the fact that I have legs that kinda freeze in the lights.Neverming, had truckloads of fun doing what I did. Plus, it gave me a good breather apart from these day to day stress inducing events. Also found enough time to catch up with old pals. One is getting married soon, one hates to get married, one is looking forward to paternity and one is enjoying his newly married life. As one said "every one is in his own rut"..
Quite True. As if we were Elephants (rut always reminds me of those pachyderms).Probably Once we were..but right now we fellas are just growing old despite our resistance.

Felt like going to India over the weekend. Occasionally overpowering Homesickness is a syndrome I got used to it because I dont get to do anything about it.Particularly when I went to visit the Consulate in SFO to renew my passport.That reminds me of another disease which bothers me these days called "The Lonely Inbox Syndrome".No matter how many times I refresh it, there seems to be no one wanting to email me.So I started subscribing to junk email lists just to get my inbox to go "tring..tring.."

Finally it was time for one of those bi-annual calls to sis.and check things out with her.One Happy Housewife she is...err...make that a home maker. Usually keep in touch with my brother through email and he caught on the fever of blogging and has something to write too. Fair enough. Mom and Pop seem to be totally engaged in a house hunt which seems to drag forever. Of course, me changing jobs every once in a while makes them nervous regarding the commitment to a mortgage as well as sad that their plans of getting me hitched are thrown back a little.Dad had this nice concept of me going back home and settling down. Thanks to the move I have pushed that atleast half and year. Of course they are nice and dont seem to be in a hurry or applying pressure.Thank goodness for some life's small pleasures.

Its time I opened up a book and read it straight through as I am already losing the habit of a reading which leads me to be cranky.(the rut thing is true after all). Now that I filled this post with things in my head, I assume that head room could be used for something else....