Visa applications!!!

Whoever said VISA application interviews are the hardest thing before going to the States.
Have they tried filling the Application Forms. They are too Hilarious!! One section actually says:

Have you ever been arrested or convicted for any offense or crime, even though subject of a pardon, amnesty or other similar legal action? Ya Like i would Say "Yes"

Have you ever unlawfully distributed or sold a controlled substance (drug), or been a prostitute or procurer for prostitutes? Hmmm Interesting!!!!

Have you ever been refused admission to the U.S., or been the subject of a deportation hearing, or sought to obtain or assist others to obtain a visa, entry into the U.S., or any other U.S. immigration benefit by fraud or willful misrepresentation or other unlawful means? Blah Blah & Blah

Do you seek to enter the United States to engage in export control violations, subversive or terrorist activities, or any other unlawful purpose? Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the U.S. Secretary of State? Have you ever participated in persecutions directed by the Nazi government of Germany; or
have you ever participated in genocide? Dis is too much, Giving Ideas and all!!

Have you ever been afflicted with a communicable disease of public health significance or a dangerous physical or mental disorder, or ever been a drug abuser or addict? Yes, that’s why I am APPLYING for a Visa!!!

Am i a Cook?

I Know! I Know! Everytime I take a break, I give a crappy excuse for not blogging. And believe me, this time its not going to be any different.

So to begin my mom came visiting along with an aunt and a few cousins and they decided that we needed better looking after and bought all sorts of household items for cooking which set me back quite a few thousand.

After that I had to start cooking just to justify my investment and at this point I have a statement to make. Cooking is one of the easiest things in the world. Seriously if I can cook rasam, dal, chicken etc after limited (read extended) instructions on the phone (courtesy Airtel), then I think anyone can. I have reached such a proficiency level that I am inviting friends over this weekend.

So here’s wishing DD, Lamba and my bro all the luck in the world.

Also here are a few mesgs urging me to blog and this is just today and only from my workplace. Never knew my blogs had so much following.

S$$$$$$ $ R$$ - how come you have not blogged

T@@@ S@@@@- also what happnd to ur blog?

B##### N######### - No blogs for along time, what happened?

Phew, too much fan following I say..

PS.. Too boring i say!!!!
PPS.. Pic courtesy Blabberwocky

Resurrection

I have not blogged for almost a month now. After numerous people asked/ mailed/ called/ questioned/ badgered me to know the reason, I decided to come out with this blog.

Firstly

Who says Weekends are for relaxing?? Part TWO

Let me keep this short as it’s been quite a while and frankly you have read the more interesting part.

Sunday

Dropped girls home – Went to P’s promotion party – met aunty – went to airport – reached Delhi – no reservation at Radisson waited for 30 mins - called AMEX– Booked a Costlier room – Slept.

Monday

Woke up and had an awesome breakfast – went to STEW in Gurgoan – cheated by taxi guy (and that too, a sardar, too bad!!!) – was in class all day – yawn, yawn and yawn. Met Soo, Lamba and other Team Blue junta. And then more yawn- yawn and more Yawn. Had a Meeting with boss, which ran very very late. Started from office only at 8:30 for a 10:10 flight, went to the hotel and checked out. Got stuck in traffic – so missed my flight – took an early morning flight and since I had checked out of my club class deluxe suit in Radisson, I went Pubbing in NCR(National Capitol Region). After having lukewarm Beer and awesome Parathas(curtosy Tanku Maharaj, near IIFT) – Saw IIFT – saw lamba being treated like Royalty – Went to his house and slept.

Tuesday

Woke up at 4 and believe me after the exertions of Monday this was hell. After that spent about 45mins trying to explain the whereabouts of lamba’s house to the Hertz guy. Got to the airport and met P, Who was coming for his early morning flight. Reached Bangalore and back to velagiri.

Back to Blogging…. Yawn yawn…

Now, after the crappy narration above, I expect no one to continue reading but if you still are, let me narrate a crazy dialogue between me and HH35. Btw, I have renamed GD as HH35 [HH=Her Highness, What’s 35? Her age maybe] No clue what, So if you wanna know why-what-how, just remember that this is my blog and I have complete intellectual rights so if you do not like it you have two choices ala The rock in ‘Welcome to the Jungle’

Option A: Quit reading and get on with your boring life

Option B: Do the unmentionable and plzz spare me the details!!!

For those still reading, here goes the conversation

Me: Thinking of quitting blogging

HH35:What !!!!! Why?

ME : Cos I decided to write this

HH : what’s HH

ME : Her Highness

HH: clusssshhhssssshhhhhhhhhhh (try saying this and you know what I mean)

HH : slap slap slap slap

HH: that’s too much

Me: ya too much violence

HH : okiee

HH : (a remark I shall never agree to)

HH: Prasanth is the sweetest guy I have known, let me see if you type this down.

HH: aren’t you getting sick and tired of this

HH: you want me to leave

Me: (Grin)

HH: this is crazy!!!

Me: (Grin)

HH: This is sick!!!!

Me: (Grin)

HH: When are you stopping this?

Me: (Grin)

HH: Stop typing or else

Me: (Grin)

HH: Stop grinning and typing everything I say

Me: OK OK

Well I had to stop here, it was becoming too violent and I am human, contrary to what people think.

BTW, Reasons for not Blogging in such a Long time

Well I can say a lot of things and give a lot of crappy reasons.

1. I was very busy with work (Like you guys will believe that)

2. I had to go home(Visag) for personal reasons (Believable and true)

3. Was stuck in floods on the way back (True again but I guess not believable)

4. My house was flooded and I was building a dam (Hmmm!!)

5. Swam all the way here (You tell me if you believe it)

6. Was caught up in work after I came back (Well!!! What say?)

7. Was getting kicked out of my house and could not find a place to stay(Very much true)

8. Am homeless and living on the road and hence could not find time to blog (Ya rite!!)

9. Since I was homeless and had seen too many calamities in the past few days ie. Katrina, Rita, Mumbai Floods, Andhra Floods {No fancy names here, read DD on the topic}. So I decided to take Sanyas and pray for all humanity and world peace in the Himalayas and hence could not blog. (Ahem, enough for the day. Me thinks)

Condolences

My heartfelt condolences to Raju Bava, Sangeeta Akka, Atha and Family. A blog is such a poor format for this kind of message but I just wanted to express my condolences to you on such an unexpected and untimely loss. You are not alone in your feelings of sadness and loss. Bereavement often brings with it self-doubt and anxiety about one's own personal worth. But I sincerely hope that you find solace in his memories and find the strength to overcome your grief.
You are in my thoughts and prayers

High!!! and dry!!!!

I guess i write nothing when i am high!!!!
Something i read today. Got me thinking!! Well if i cant recall anything i said or did when i was high, So how can i write?

Kewal i say !!!

Also a quote i read in coffee world.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
- Oscar Wilde

So back to work...........

Who says Weekends are for relaxing?? Part One

The last two weekends have been more work than regular weekdays. Now here I do not mean that I have working for my company but merely stating the fact that they have been so much activity in the weekends that I think I need a break from weekends. But alas, all you get after a weekend is a Monday, and boy do they suck!!!!!

Now I have said that I am writing about just the weekends but last weekend actually goes on from Thursday nite till about Tuesday morning as Friday was a holiday and I was in Delhi on Monday. So here’s a block by block account for what happened, now all this is just a rambling of a work afflicted idiot so please do not be offended and if any of the below mentioned facts have been omitted or altered from what happened, it has been done so that anonymity can be retained. But if you still feel peeved, I can tell you that this remains my intellectual property and I have complete rights over this so you can do the unmentionable.

Thursday

Firstly I have to say “Sorry” to AR. Following is the true narrative and I will not pull any punches or try to give excuses. Thursday nite I was well and truly sloshed. I had a really bad day and was dead tired and all I remember is talking on the phone with DQ. I am really ashamed of what I did and I swear on anything and everything that I do not have any recollection of what happened. Well now in retrospect I think I should have accepted GD’s offer of going to Tiaka’s. Well if only!!!!!! Anyway, I very publicly and ashamedly offer AR, My heart-felt apologies. Really Really Sorry AR!!

Friday

I woke up at about 8 thinking that I had gotten really really drunk the previous night and had a huge hangover. But I had to go to office that day as I had yet to book my tickets for Sunday’s trip to Delhi and also had to get Bro’s CAT application. So left Su’s house at about 8:30 and did both these things and while I was in IIMB, caught up with a lot of friends. Ordered pizza with Prithvik and in the process dumped my luncheon plans with DQ but for all this I plead guilty with just an excuse – HANGOVER.

Came home and relaxed for about 2 hours before I called Su who told me of my behaviour the previous night. Was absolutely flabbergasted and spent the next 2 hours apologising to everyone involved till people began to swear at the very mention of the word ‘sorry’. Thought I shall go and apologise in person when Bala and some other guys from IITM called saying they were in town. So went to B-11 with them but did not drink at all. Had dinner at Nandhini and came home to LIMPY, Andaman and Kibm drinking at home.

Now this time I was as much a spectator as junta in Su’s house were the day before but Kibm and Limpy really went bonkers. It was Fun but I still had a bad hangover so went to bed early.

Saturday

Woke up and went to office. Spent an unproductive 2 hours before going to Su’s house as he was going back to Birmingham that day. Had lunch and then drove him to the airport while frantically copying Super, Island and Sarkar on to my TP. Had an enlightening conversation with R and A on the way. Avoided my gaze for about half the journey to the airport as there was yet another kind of movie running in the back seat. Before you get any ideas, it was a sob story not the kind you guys were eyeing for. Perverts!!! But then again who else would read my blog. Read on.

Dropped him in the airport and then had a sort of snack fest at the airport lounge where I hogged everything from a Hot-dog to a Khatta role. But that being my first meal of the day it was very satisfying. Went back to office with A and R and collected my tickets and hotel reservation slip. Then drove the back to Su’s house. The plan then was to drop everyone at Deep’s house and park the car. But I was invited to go to Tiaka’s and considering what happened last time I balked at that suggestion, I really wanted to go. So I dropped everyone at Deep’s place and proceeded to Taika’s where DQ and SR were waiting along with Scary. Well Scary’s husband was in a bar someplace close so she left us and joined us and left us again and joined us again. Ya I know it’s confusing but what do I do if she’s scary as well as confused.

Anyway we then went in (cover charge of 600 bucks per couple, free entry for girls) and went directly to the dance floor. Well it was supposed to be the dance floor but it was anything but that with people sitting around on a gallery sort of stands and nobody dancing even though the music was awesome. Well we ordered drinks (I had just one considering the exertions of Thursday and also the fact that I had to drive back). After some time the place really started to groove and turned into one of the best hip-hop joints I had ever been into. The pace of the music was electrifying as was the crowd and DJ played to the crowd to perfection. When all this was going on Angelina and SR kept disappearing at regular intervals just so that I and DQ had space (ironically, it was too crowded on the floor) to ourselves or else they thought.

After some dancing and then some more dancing during which I got a lot of filmy dialogues from DQ (aka Drama Queen) who said things like “I am soo hungry, but I shall not eat anything”. I can bet all the money in the world that none of you would guess why? Well she claimed she had no money so created a major drama which would have put Shakespeare to shame. Once I got the reason, being the chivalrous guy that I am (no less than two people have told me this, so pls let me have my say), I ordered food for her and force fed her while she dramatised saying things like I shall definitely pay you back etc.

But the dramatization had just yet begun on what turned out into a total adventure of a night. We had had enough of the dance floor so we went and sat in the lounge. This was when DQ and SR said that it was too late for them to go home and hence were homeless for the night. I (being the chivalrous chap as stated before) offered to lend them my house at the expense of Limpy and co (I had the only key to the house).

But I hit an unexpected barrier as DQ being the drama queen immediately said “I shall sit up all night”. Now I do not have any pretensions about being suave and handsome, some kind soul might put me as being reasonably presentable but by no means am I thinking of myself as Don Juan so I put on my inadequate conservative thinking cap and came to the conclusion that she misunderstood my helping nature as something which frankly did not occur to me.

So I suggested we take the car and drive all night (third time chivalrous) when SR said she has a place to stay and I only needed to entertain DQ. By this time DQ realised that I was apprehensive and mistook it as reluctance to admit her into my house. So being the DQ she was made an awesome statement “I am homeless, I have no where to go, no body cares for me”. Well if this was after 2 vodka’s I would like to hear her talk after 5 or 6 strong ones.

Anyway to cut the long story short, we got into the car and started to drive around when RP (who was at deep’s place) called and said she wanted to go home. So I was stuck between two unique problems, so I dropped DQ at my place and picked up AS and company and dropped them home. Now I can only imagine what they thought of the gal in the car but at this point in time I was too tired, wet and totally confused to do anything about it, so I just shut up and asked them to take the situation at face value.

Then I had to drop SR at her friends place but the roads were so flooded and at one point of time we were driving through waist high water (I forgot to mention it was raining buckets by now). So we abandoned the idea and went back to my flat where SR really started enjoying herself by pulling up DQ and her manifestations. She used well known phrases which included words like “lie down”, “molest”, “irresistable”etc.

After watching “Sarkar” for some time, we called it a nite. And what a night it was, Phew!!!!!

Sunday

Sunday will always be remembered as the day my Landlords decided to kick to me out. Imagine scores of drunken parties, late nite music, fatty’s antics but still all it required for them to give us the nod (or the kick) was two girls leaving the house at about 8 in the morning. Well does not say much for tenant-landlord relationships right?

Anyway woke up and after DQ being as inquisitive as she is, unearthed some crazy stuff (for which I claim total innocence and blame Limpy) in our house, left the house in full view of all tenants and the landlords. Went had breakfast at Adiga’s and dropped both the girls at their respective adobes, but not before DQ put in that morning’s quota of dialogues. “Please drop me here, I shall catch a auto” and “I fell so guilty that your Landlords saw us”, Well the actual dialogues were much more dramatic but lets leave it there as I cannot recall so much prose in one go.
Came back home and packed and started to Delhi.
But that’s in Part Two.

Appreciate

Why does love have to become something like a barter?I never quite understood it but my dad provided me with an insight. He said Love is doing something for someone close and not thinking about it ever again. This is precisely why relationships fail. And here I am not thinking of anything romantic. Just think of anything you have done for another human being and see if you have not asked for a favour in return. Well I tried yesterday after coming across this thought and I found that I could not think of a single instance. That apparently sums up the mood for this blog!

Now I was thinking of things I miss and things I yearn for and decided that I came to know the true value of things only after I started to miss them. So I decided to appreciate good things in my life instead of trying to attain the impossible or the improbable.

Do not think of what you do not have but think of what you have and appreciate that.

This is what gives you complete happiness!! (Boy, I would be amazed if I achieved that!)

Now I may not be Tolstoy or Marx who have given people food for thought and can influence thinking but I know one thing if you do not appreciate good things in your life you will never experience happiness.

PS… Me totally sloshed…so excuse the content.

And read more crap on Life written by some other blogger…..

Life is full of hypocrisy and contradictions. In a world of extreme competition everything is fair as long as one does not challenge the norms of the established society and camouflages an alternative perspective within the realms of power and affluence. The only other possibility is living under the diktat of what has been approved and pre-judged by the society.

I come from such a society and life where it ain’t possible to survive without hypocrisy and contradictions. It puts me at great unease searching for answers to questions that have for long haunted my imagination. And yet I am faced with the same contradictory positions and hypocritical postures in my quest.

In this journey with other bloggers I intend to pick up some relevant social issues and seek answers. I hope we all will make an endeavour in at least discussing these issues….its not up to us to transform the society. It requires a revolution to do that….but may be it’s the start of one!

Too much work I say, chill madi and stay VELA.

Kwaheri !!!!

Just in case any of you got that, Let me please repeat that in english.

Goodbye!!!!

Going home today after about 4 months, bought a gift for mom , everyone else can take a hike. But more importantly and even more hopefully, Pray she likes it.

Writing all this with a slight hangover due to a pub called "Legends of rock" where Karan, Hoosh and i tried to get wasted yesterday. Had a long conversation with a ST after that and covered so many topics that i felt i cannot talk to her any more. But being the chatterbox that i am, started off today morning again.

Well going to miss Bangalore weather and my friends!!
But shall be back on thursday. until then,

Tog, Adios and Jaaw!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank You

To say "Thank You" is one of the most natural things, a cultured person learns by principle or by practice. Well I say cultured but yesterday someone actually said that I do not thank people enough, so I decided to be thankful to that useful bit of information and thank them in the best possible manner.

Now I have said best possible manner but let me tell you this is just my point of view and others who do not like this can be thankful to the fact that I do not tell them to take a hike.

So here’s “Thank You” in over 465 languages.

Thank you for reading this crap, BTW.

Why do i Blog?

Because of the fact that I claim to be a Blog addict and am most certainly not, added to the fact that I am hopelessly lazy, I could not post a proper blog last week. But today I started writing this and as usual, I had no clue about what to write. So I thought I shall blog for the Blog of it and if anyone reads this, well!! not my problem.

Well blogging for me is a stress reliever and after talking to my boss for about 3 hours, I guess I have the right to torture other people with musings like this. Now let’s get to the 4 stages of browsing as it’s popularly known.

Well for me it started as it does for most guys/gals during graduation years when you have time and money to kill along with a small problem called a hormonal overgrowth (people might smirk saying this is too late but what we Indians lack in one aspect, we make up in another. Look at the population growth for Crying out loud). After discovering the joys of internet back during pre graduation and discovering things which frankly are still the most educating courses of any person’s lives. For convenience sake (and the lack of a proper sex education in India) I call this stage “The Enlightenment”.

People move into the next stage to see if they could actually get to do all that they have seen. This stage is known as the chatting stage where people try their hand in communicating the fact that they are cool. Most people tend to find nameless, faceless people more interesting and scintillating than people right in front of you. Thankfully I was young enough to be scared so as not to actually getting around towards meeting the fellow chatters, else I am sure that opinion I had on them to be scintillating would also rapidly change.

Google helped me when I was above the Communication stage so lets call this stage simply “Google”. Well if you ever reach a stage in your life and you don’t know what to do, try searching the answer on Google as it always helps. If not directly atleast it gives you a distraction and keeps you occupied. The irrelevant can turn out to be very very relevant and vice versa which actually distresses you.

Finally Blogging, well who else will even listen to my continuos cribs/complaints except jobless morons like you. So for your benefit (and mine lest I become crazy) I write these crappy monologues which are defined for literary sense as Blogs or Live journals. So for your Sake and mine BLOG, BLOG, BLOG.

Who's voice in the MoRe Room is CUTE?

I learnt a new thing today.
K's voice, whatever he says is supposed to be cute!!(according to people in Mo Re Ro)
How i wish i never hear things like that for the rest of my life.
I mean i am called by my nickname for a certain reason.

So Sheeets, say it once more so that i can say 12. or 13...?
Dunno, i lost count.

The Best Hostel in the world

For old times sake..........

Mandakini Hostel

Awesome sites

If you think you have seen it all on the net.

Think again!!!

A German company is making wallpaper for people who live alone. The wallpaper has a photo of a "flatmate"

hmmm Maybe Su can try this!!!

Spoken too soon!!!

Yesterday while i was talking to Casio, i mentioned that i had nothing to do and i was bored.

Violaaaa.

Within minutes i had work to do and ended the day making 5 calls and working till 7:30 in the evening.

So here's to staying Vela and not saying anything about it. CHEERS!!!!

All’s well that ends well @Shivasamudra Falls

After months of planning, deliberation, postponement, rescheduling and more planning. We finally got to go for the outing. Now I consider this initial tirade about planning essential as we as a gang were planning this trip since about a year and when it finally materialised it did live upto its expectations.

So we got together on Friday evening to celebrate R’s birthday and during dinner & drinks at Inchara, made the final arrangements. Then the plan actually got into action as K and I went to get booze (about 48 cans of KF strong and an Australian wine did the trick). Came back and hogged like crazy before Su dropped me home with plans to go to some sanctuary and saying that he would pick me up at 6 in the morning.

Well the plan was still tentative and I got a reality shock in the morning after I had taken a bath at 6 (the whole narration is non-fiction, so hold your breath) and came to know that the venue had been shifted to Shivasamudra Falls and also that people had just woken up and the whole program had been revamped as A was flying down from Hyderabad for this event.

Now knowing our gang I knew it was highly improbable that they stick to even this altered plan or for that matter any plan. So proceeded to wash my clothes and do Sudoku before I got a call saying I should come up to Su’s place instead of they picking me up. Since Su’s car does not have an audio system I also had to take my TP along with me and the fact that autos are extremely difficult to obtain near my place, I had to walk lugging my hand-all for a considerable distance and two phone calls, before I actually found one auto.

Once I reached Su’s place (at about 8:30) I realised that I was the last one these and we started at once after a round of vulgar obscenities. After that it was a nice drive where I and Su changed hands on the driving wheels and generally took the new Maruti for a ride. Had breakfast at Kamat, which was a bloody awesome place and then went on to a Reliance Bunk in a certain City/Town/Municipality/Taluk (as claimed by our very own R) but the city (read village) was so advanced that it did not even have credit card access in the filling station.

We reached Mandhya at about 12 and from there it was a 30 minute drive along which they are quite a few beer cans scaterred amid chaotic shouts as one of the beer cases was done with. Reached the falls at about 1:30 and soon Su was commenting that this was not the place he came initially. So all of us were a bit apprehensive and thinking whether we made a mistake coming here, but our confused and confounded host had hit the jackpot as the first view of the falls themselves were awesome. As perplexed and baffled he might have been, Su was soon beaming with pleasure and forgot to lock the car in a hurry to get to the water.

From the next two hours, we had fun unlimited as we tried to compete with the furious tirade of the water by consuming as much beer as humanly possible and disrupting the flora and fauna with wave upon wave of subhuman noises. You would be surprised to know how difficult it is to open a beer can once you are drunk enough to break the seal opener with which it is manufactured.

And then began another round of antakshari with R signing yet another Dig song that no one understand but all of us got thoroughly wet with continuos splashing and generally behaving like a bunch of behemoths. Anyway at this point A got totally smashed and fell into the muck(later, he would claim that he did not remember changing his clothes or where he kept his watch).

After some more frolicking on the water shore, we changed and made our way back to the vehicles in a haphazard manner while trying to see that we did not leave anything except empty beer cans behind (all you environmentalist, please excuse us). Once we reached the vehicles and were deciding where to eat lunch, we heard a scream saying that Sa way injured. Apparently Su had tried his hand at throwing the ball and Sa was playing fetch when he fell into a ditch and injured himself severely. He could not even get up and the screams we heard were only partly due to his severely intoxicated, injured state.

We quickly went down to the place he was lying and saw that he had cut his knee really badly. Someone got the First aid kit from the car and I tried patching him up as well as I could. We then carried him over to one of the cars and put him beside another of that days victims ‘A’. ‘A’ had absolutely gone over the edge and was seen puking his guts out quite a few times.

Then started a series of arguments which generally had only one purpose which was to scream at the top of your voice while trying to appear sober. Firstly the colonial cousins P and Su had a go and after that I and Su had a shouting binge. After unanimously deciding that we would all start back only after all of us sobered and that would take atleast one hour, we started at once and drove to the nearest cliff edge.

Friends, Romans (whoever) and countrymen who are reading this. Please do not panic as the gist of what I am about to say is that we just went to the edge of the cliff not to commit mass suicide but to enjoy nature and view the scenery which was truly breathtaking.

After downing a couple of sodas and having a refreshing talk where the words “Sorry” figured prominently. We decided to get Sa back as soon as possible and so decided to drive back. The drive back was uneventful except that we came back via kanakpura and saved about 50 kms worth of distance, petrol and effort.

Lesson learnt: You tend to drive effectively when drunk.

Anyway 5 of us had dinner at a dhabha while the others took Sa to the hospital. He had about 4 stiches on his leg while. K on the other hand had taken a bus to gultland to meet his better half. A recovered completely to even give us insights about the weather and how India fares in cricket matches. I must say I liked him better when he was wasted.

Anyway a not so glorious end to an awesome triip but as Shakespeare once said and wrote “All’s well that ends well”. So for the people who missed you can make lots of Oinks, grunts and guffaws because that’s what you can do. Sayonara.

PS.. I would have uploaded photos along with this narrative if it had not been for a certain Lazybones who goes around showing his new CASIO watch.