Yet another birthday.

Gone are the days when I used to wait for my birthday to come. For all the kisses, gifts, cheek-pinching by aunties and cousins ( it is a customary exhibition of love, but used to hurt), new dress (was in the same school for 12 years, still on birthday I have to ring up someone just to hear from them that I am allowed to wear ‘color dress’ that day), greeting cards from friends, birthday songs, candy distribution at school, and the special chocolate cake made by Mummy.

 Today birthdays are painful, that there would be those number candles on the cake so everyone comes to know my age. This is also why I never publish the photos of the cake cutting event on orkut or facebook so that I can avoid at least 300 + people coming to know the "secret" number :-) (see how smart I am) . I also silently swear that I’ll use the same candles for at least three more years, but end up the next year with another pair of candles where 
age = age + 1. Sigh.

One has to consider birthday as the day to remember and celebrate the day one was born. Why add it to the age and spoil the fun? Putting up those number candles showing the age is such a pessimistic thought you know. 

I am sure that it was invented by some spoilsport guy.

Here are some things you can consider when someone is celebrating their birthday.

• 1.       Never buy those candles with numbers unless its your enemy or your ex.
• 2.       Avoid birthday cards which scream ‘yay! Its your n-th birthday!’
• 3.       Avoid saying stuff like ‘yaayy…Miss. X is n years “old”

J Thanks to everyone who kept all those lovely birthday wishes flowing in on orkut and facebook all day. Love you all J

P.S: If anyone is laughing by seeing the numbers on the cake in the image, then don’t laugh too much. 

Repercussions of a Dental Extraction..

Two days back the local dentist here extracted my wisdom…err …a troublesome wisdom tooth. It was a noisy melodrama with an elaborate gush of fluids, blood and tears. Although blood was manageable by the dentist, it took two nurses to wipe my tears and giggle at my misery. I wished them both the same fate in the days to come. :D . Whats more…hubby was sitting in the same room carefully studying the E72, marking the dental hospital as a ‘favorite’ on his Google map, and conveniently ignoring the sobbing and wailing. And while going back, pointing to the Barber shop and saying ‘that belongs to Barbara Mori’ dint help.:-(

I am the only person in my family to have tooth problems. If anyone who is reading this wants to remind me to brush my teeth, God help you!

 I brush my teeth everyday.:-)

I have a green oral-B toothbrush and colgate toothpaste with which I brush every roads, lanes and sub lanes of my mouth religiously. And I saw the tooth which was extracted. Yuck! The “was-that-thing-in-my-mouth-all-these-days”  look on my face with tears still in my eyes set the dentist and nurses roll with laughter. Hubby too rushed in to take a final glimpse of the priceless piece of fossil which was just evacuated. Okay its yucky. But still it was my tooth and it was there when he married me! Finally he bought me all those medicines and also a nice dinner (to be eaten with one side of the jaw) and I finally decided to withdraw the furious signals I was radiating to him. (Well the furious signals were the ones which originated from jealousy…that he has an enviable row of pearly whites and also… in Muscat there are fewer people to whom I can show my true colors).

Now comes the ‘presentation to everyone at home’ part.

(Aside: Papa is currently reading the English edition of the Holy Book of Quran. )

I explain the whole episode in a nutshell.

Me: Papa, my tooth is still bleeding you know…

Papa: Are you taking medicines?

Me: Yes..but it is bleeding and its slightly swollen as well..

Papa: Don’t worry…one had to be brave and patient …these are all trivial issues..

Me: If you have one such tooth you will never say this..

Papa: Dental health is very important.

Me: I realized that while at the dentist…

Papa: Delayed realization of reality is the main reason for…

Me: Noooooo! Please spare me from philosophy...I have a bleeding mouth.

Papa: (laughs)okay Anu, we’ll talk later then. Take care.(laughs again)

Mummy is up next and she sounds worried at the catastrophic turn of events. The area of concern is surprisingly not my tooth. What?? Is he reading Quran? He should first try to read the Bible properly no?

Now that is one ISD call.

Way to Exit...

Hmm..Currently I'm in no mood to write, but I can’t seem to abandon my blog just because a drastic wind of change swept over my life. Well, I resigned my job in Bangalore and have landed in Muscat, in a product based company. (Time to play client now ;-) ). It is high time I shared some details about people in my previous firm who even managed to make exit process complicated for me.


In the beginning of the month of April, I dropped a small bombshell titled ‘resignation’, in the form of an email, which was expected to bombard my team of a few programmers. However it took the guise of a nuclear bomb and smoked out the entire project including the teams who were onsite and I started getting international calls with strange people (whose names I’ve seen only in the ‘Cc’ of emails) asking me soberly why I took this decision all of a sudden, in a fake mushy tone as if their life and living depended solely on the lines of code I was painfully and regretfully writing. Many a times I indirectly I asked them questions which in plain language means ‘Who in God’s name are you?’

The biggest reason behind all the fake concerns flowing in from all over the world is that, if people leave the project, it requires immediate explanation from the project managers to the senior management. So they come down from being the commanding morons that they are to be the forged ‘perfect’ boss and try their level best to pull you down from prospering any further. Well, my case was different. My supervisor was this guy who doesn’t know how to talk to people ( I have seriously come to believe there are a pack of dogs at his house to which he commands ‘Sit’, ‘Eat’ etc and he practices the same tone with people who reports to him). He called me on phone, very impolitely demanding explanation on why I am leaving, to which I was itching up to my toenails to say ‘You are why’.

On the day I was running around departments to get clearances for exit, I was not aware of some formalities and approached him. Well his response was ‘I don’t know, I never exited from here’ coupled with an evil grin. The guy who sat next to him then knew that I was exiting and said , ‘Ohh you decided to resign, is it? Then we can’t help you’. This happened with a bay of people watching as if they were watching a saas bahu serial with the bahu getting beaten up.

However I managed to vent out my frustration at the innocent HR who during her fateful duty called me for an exit interview and I talked 40 minutes nonstop. I am sure she must also be thinking of ways to quit or opt for a role change now. Well that was the least I could do. :D

And yeah, on my last working day, the last person I pinged from my desktop was my supervisor, to whom I wanted to say Bubye. I really don’t know why. Just a bubye, and no ‘thanks for support’,’or thanks for anything else which he wasn’t …and this is how the conversation went.

Me: Hi

Supervisor: What do you want now? For exit formalities contact Mr.JP.

Me: Okay.

And that was it. Well, we can’t change some people or expect even humanitarian traits from them.
 I have no regrets.

The weekend trip that was..

Green picturesque hills, stunning meadows, spectacular streams and everything that is romantic. However the guys were more interested in capturing butterflies, frogs and flies when my friend and I wasted our strawberry lip balmy smiles and blow dried hair staring at them.

Yo and there is a big rock. The perfect place to pose for a couple snap. With a lot of effort I climbed up the rock and waited for him. Then he came and stood next to me. I pulled him, and tried to lean on him.

Then…

‘No! Move out of my reebok logo!’

Oh so there was a logo on the shirt.

So I decided to pose alone, near the car.

And.. ‘Move away from the alloy wheels’!

So he is going alone for the next trip.




And that was my 50th post :-)