Bitterness

I had a dream, for long that working in a start up environment will be fun, invigorating and allow me to find my peace in life. Over the past 6 months, I have let a bad experience, blur my dream from fantasy to hell. I allowed a bad experience and the resulting bitterness and rancor to change my views. I am wrong to change my views so often. The present experiment was a pure vanilla failure.

But, it may have changed a few things for me forever. There is this song from the movie Sindabad the sailor from Rock on. All it took was this song and a casual chat with a friend, though not on the above lines, for me change my outlook once more.

So often I have advised my friends, two very close ones who have had emotional break ups, not to let the bitterness remain. Ironical, that though I myself had a different experience, but I could not let the bitterness go. Back to the saying, easy said than done.

The dream lives now, along with a tinge of bitterness for now. Let's see how long before i free it up.

Yercaud

So , I am not a camera person anymore, having lost my camera a few days back.

Cities/Towns I have visited in last one and half months:

• Chennai
• Vellore
• Yercaud

Met Jayan and Pathak in Chennai, Saw the golden temple in Vellore, got drenched while boating in Yercaud, coz it rained and we were adrift.

give up

One of the easy ways to bore people is not to write for a long time, then the blog achieves its objective of being a vent to my personal frustrations and disappointments and remains personal.

Many years ago, I use to have principles. They make life a tad difficult to live, but when the going gets tough they help you navigate tougher times. Conversely, not having principles, makes life easier generally, but when the going gets tough you don't have the wherewithal to navigate the tougher times.

Expecting disappointments in my current job, as in my previous job, I had made a list of things to expect and not to expect. In a better mood, I would have given the hyperlink, but frankly sitting in my room in the afternoon, when I haven't even brushed and just woken up, i just fail to care.

The most important point in the list was that, don't care of people not backing you. That to me remains the most important point. Unfortunately , I don't have the energy to remain true to it. If I had remained true to that, in tougher times like this I would have passed through.

I feel like quitting the job today, though I have felt such for the past 6 months, but the feeling is stronger and perhaps more desperate today. I feel like going to Mumbai and finding something there. Perhaps , it's got something to do with the bhagoda gene in my body, which advices me to run away when the going gets tough. I start worrying about pay parity, loosing out the ROI race with my college peers, expecting people to back me, and feeling pissed off.

I know, i will come over it and look over to this day just to have a hearty laugh at my little problems. My problem of the moment is do I just switch off and become a vegetable and let the spark die, or keep of fending mediocrity, trying to win over it, when I have realised there is nothing more dangerous than mediocrity with a strong backing . It shreds excellence to pieces.

Excellence needs to be pure in it's own right, but can excellence stay aloof when it knows, it should win a fight, but suddenly reality knocks. Excellence rather than winning is on the verge of breaking down and it will take tremendous fortitude to merely stand and repeatedly be defeated and not disintegrate.

Ladies and Gentlemen , on subsequent thoughts, I give up at my workplace, for now. Better to kill the spark, by itself than wait till a day when mediocrity extinguishes it.

I might change my mind, it will only take a moment. But not today, not in this game, not on this field, not against the assholes I am pitted against right now.

Alabama

Google Analytics informs me that i have visitors from Alabama (2), California, Arizona, Louisiana and Massachusetts and none from India.

Life's little ironies, a year back all these states in US would have appeared Greek and Latin, but 6 months into outsourcing and i have picked up a few things, east coast, west coast, west coast accent, mid west( and how it lags both coasts) etc.

The weather in Bangalore more than makes up for the crazy autowallas.It rains in the evening in the middle of summer and soaks up all my cloths in the balcony, and since I work US timings, I am not at home at these blissful instants to take preventive action

Just finished Alexander- sands of Ammon..decent read. Am back to reading Black Swan, as usual backwards. One of the problems in life, when you have left a non fiction unfinished and moved on in life, is to come back and find the exact point where you had ditched the book. So the simple solution that I found is to read the book backwards in that case. The twain will meet someday.

Boss : Don't get married before 30
Parents: So what's the deal with marriage, the society asks us uncomfortable questions
Friend : I have made arrangements for the Bachelor party, you just nod your head.
Wiki : Marriage is a personal union between individuals. This union may also be called matrimony, while the ceremony that marks its beginning is called a wedding and the status created is sometimes called wedlock. The act of marriage changes the personal status of the individuals in the eyes of the law and society.

Marriage is an institution...

INSTITUTION....get that.

Book of the moment : Crime & Punishment, for things at office which I won't talk here.

Been visiting the GYM. tread mill, KMs run, fitness...BTW why do my thighs pain when I run, I am just 26. And yes I only run in the gym, nothing else, no weights, no stretching for me.

Woh subah kabhie to aayegi

Filhaal aadhe ghante main aane wali hai . It's about 5:30 in the morning now, and all i can recall is, had i been where i was about a year back, i would have have waited for another half hour and seen the dawn break from my window and gone for a walk around the pond.

Times have changed and so do have I.

During my engineering days , i had this theory which said the temperature of blood in a human body is inversely proportion to his age.( Garam khoon.. got it??) When I was there, I use to think, I will change things, I will do this that etc. Pithily put, I had this million things to do and I thought i would do them.

Today at the door of celebrating the fourth anniversary of getting out of my engineering college( which at that point I badly wanted to) and one year after getting out from a top B school, I realise the things i want to do now have actually reduced from millions to single digit numbers.

That's why the homage to the temperature theory.

Have been on a marathon session of watching movies. The two i saw ...well the incorrect usage is ..tonight.. but i will still use it ( correct usage is, previous night, but it's still dark outside) , are

1. The bridges of Madison county
2. American Gangster.

Yesterday i had seen
3. No country for old men.

Last weekend

4. Manorama, 6 feet under
5. Johnny Gaddar
6. 3 : 10 to Yuma.

My best pic ....well for once i will stop judging the best in a set of unrelated articles.

None of the movies were in a theater ...my way of protesting against the frivolous pricing in movie theaters in Bangalore.. 300 bucks..thanks but no thanks.

Things i have picked up in the last few days..

1. Difference between copy and content.
2. It's tough to find the right website vendor in Bangalore who accepts a payment cycle of 30 days.
3. The worth of money.. not in the statistical sense, but more so of having whatever number, when you need and at the place you need.

Books i have been reading

1. iwoz..according to me not worth the 395 i spent at the Oxford in Jayanagar. Well, I did find an Oxford in Bangalore. Since then I have discovered a thelewala on Brigade Road, near New arya bhavan who sells good, inexpensive , pirated books.

Actually there are 3 good shops on church street who sell, new and old books at a discount. Unfortunately they still do not stock pirated books, a concept equally acceptable to me and Thomas Friedman.

2. A million little pieces..james frey, a great start ..fizzles out later.
3.Banker to the poor, Mohd. Yunus, reading it..makes me remind of my days at a bank where we use to insist on collateral.


In about some time i will make some coffee, if i am able to find the coffee powder in bhabhi's kitchen ie and wait for the breaking dawn from the balcony.