Da Bangalooru

Ever since I first got my hand on e-mail, I have first enjoyed, been amazed by then pissed and irritated by, and lastly downright wait-till-I-get-my-hands-on-you by forwards. Having had several e-mail addresses and being an ardent 'checker' of my e-mail and a writer too, I think I would have read about every girl mutilated by accident, every bad luck bringing mouse pad, every blood marrow needing husband and every 5-year old having a rare heart dysfunction. I used to fall for the financial ones, those that say that Bill Gates would pay one cent for every mail I am responsible for, HAHA those were good ones, but not any more. :) At least not the old ones. The jokes were always awesome (I guess a lot of sardarjis would beg to differ) and since a long time I wanted to write one of those satirical sarcastic sardonic sets of jokes. And I seriosuly can't remember one about Bangalore, so here goes. Please remember to laugh out loud, giggle, or at least smile after each one, you'll have good luck for the rest of the day.

Describe Bangalore:
A giant red-light area*(you seriously need to look down for this asterix) sprinkled with IT companies and malls(3 malls per IT company), with more vehicles per unit area than bees on a hive, centered around Koramangala('coz that's where I live) with the black Koramangala ki nalli meandering through it.

Describe a typical Bangalorean:
He (sorry for being sexist), fine I'll call him/her 'it'. It is in IT, well-dressed, thoroughly confounded not by its family life(which is non-existant), not by its friends(they're always inebriated and thus forgetful when they meet), not by it's boss(coz bosses talk and the only conversation it's had is over gtalk), not by it's uselessness to the cosmos (the periodic inebritaion with friends solves this, and anyways it's too busy coding to notice) but by his colleagues' pay check. It knows its regional language fluently but will still fail miserably at trying to speak passable English, though it's good at talking in C. It thinks that Bangalore is centered around the building of its residence :) , that Hyderabad is just another village(in a bad sense), that Bangalore is an awesome village(in a good sense) , that his engineering degree taught it nothing worthwhile and all of Bangalore's problems would be solved by the metro.

What do you hear in Bangalore, if you listem carefully?
Mostly honking, but if you listen carefully you'd hear an IT engineer scratching his head and noisily typing, improving code written by someone else in another company, in another country, getting paid 10 times more than him, with better job security.

What are the two choices that the Bangalorean faces?
To honk his car battery out of its life, rushing into every corner he sees trying to get home early or patiently wait and end up being late.

What is so curious about the above choice?
Every Bangalorean always chooses the former but gets the latter.

How pretty are the girls in Bangalore?
What? Where?.... HAHA trick question. :)

When do you know that a Bangalorean is lying?
When he says that he's getting enough money.

What is so awesome about the weather in Bangalore?
It's just awesome, it wouldn't be awesome if you needed a reason to call it awesome.

What 4-letter word does every Bangalorean hate?
HR (the rest are white spaces)

What is so good about Forum(the mall)?
Nothing, but nobody seems to notice or care.

What do you do when you find a Bangalorean colleague bleeding on the road, having had an accident?
Call HR and tell them, 'We need another one'.

Why is the suicide rate so low in Bangalore?
An unsigned integer can only hold so many values.

Why do I say that Bangalore is technologically advanced?
Because there are more mouses than mice.

What do the men and women in Bangalore have in common?
They both go 'eeek' when someone says pink.

What do you do if you want to make a Bangalorean go mad?
Trick question.

* the area around a junction when the light is red, or any other area where you have to stop for a jam. The union of these two encompasses all of Bangalore

... could've thought of more, but have training in another 5 minutes. Cya..

Things to do in PS

Hello. It's been 2 weeks in Bengaluru, and there's so much to talk about. I mean, as I am getting pushed and shoved in the bus, I think of a blog post, as I am helplessly swindled out of 100 bucks by these bloody rickshaw drivers, I wonder how I'm going to put the experience to words.

Office has been good, got my cubicle and desk y'day. Office people are really awesome and cool. And no, I am not trying to suck up... not so soon at least :)

However that's for later. First things first. I see a lot of status messages, saying PS sucks, or rocks(same guy actually) or giving links about what they're doing and stuff like that. Now how much does your PS rock, is a difficult thing to measure. I am sure, you'll all agree, no PS could possibly agree like mine (if you disagree go piss on yourself), so as a goodwill gesture I'll be listing some of the things that I did during my PS-2 and you can judge for yourself how well you compare. (PS stands for Practice School, and its a 6 month paid internship during the final year at BITS-Pilani) My PS was in Singapore at Infineon (no no, the list hasn't begun, I'm not so brutal :)) It was my first trip abroad, I left with an empty passport and returned with no pages to spare.

So here goes(in no particular order, all equally awesome)

1. Attended a Coldplay Concert - best band in the world I'd reckon
2. Cycled 40km for a cycling marathon
3. Ran a full marathon - and fell in love with running
4. Went to Arab Street for an authentic belly dancing show, and danced with the dancer (no I wasn't drunk, not until then and I do have pics to prove it)
5. Attended the Malaysian Grand Prix

...if you're already green with envy, you had better stop, I am just starting
6. Saw a stunt biking event, back flips and stuff, in front of my eyes
7. Called friends over for a week to Singapore(Rushi and Dhruv... you guys rock)
8. Brought my family over for their first foreign trip to Singapore and Malaysia.
9. Went to Malaysia 4 times.(most Singaporeans haven't :) and its just an hours drive from anywhere in Singapore)
10. Saw Disneyland and fell in love with Snow White (HAHA, over these 6 months, I fell in love many tims over :))
11. Went to Macau and Hong Kong, for bunjy jumping(world's highest), gambling in the world's awesomest casinos, Lantau island to see the Buddha(here too fell in love with the persona of the Buddha), an awesome show that left me crazy and happy, drank Russian vodka at -22 degrees.
12. Tried more cuisines that I like count. More sea food than exists in the Arabian Sea
13. Went to LAOS, an authentic back-packers destination(I have been to places, even google maps has no info about :))
14. ohh before I forget, I did get to do a cool project at Infineon, which I finished and my mentor was impressed.
15. Had a pic taken with a prominent film actress ('twas Sameera Reddy folks, and regardless of what passers by tell you, it was she who asked, no insisted on a pic)
16. Oh, how could I forget the Madame Tussaud's Wax museum in Hong Kong. We almost molested most of the figures there :)
17. Made some really really awesome friends at CHYK (Chinmaya Yuva Kendra), who made the stay so much more awesomer.
18. Went to a Indian pub for a cricket match, and came out happy and awesome, despite not even knowing who won the match... this may not sound so great, but for some things, you just have to be there to know. :)
19. Drove a car at about 190kmph on Malaysian highways (why didn't I cross 200, you ask, it was the speed limit I say, and before you can smirk, I say again, the speed limit is of the car not the road- that was 130 :))
20. Kayak'ed down river Mekong for over 50 km, this was in Laos.
21. Tried Lao Lao, thats a drink where they politely insert whole anima parts in a rice based alcoholic drink, the ones we tries were, sea horse, millipede and bear's feet (close your mouth, yeah its true, and yeah I have pics again)
22. Jumped into the river about 6 times, mostly from a circus bar-about 3-4 m, and once from a gorge, about 8-10 m high. No pics here, but the video is on youtube :)
23. Learnt the guitar and swimming... well I haven't lied and don't intend to start. Both I couldn't realllly get a hang of but desperately want to continue here in Bengaluru.
24. Blogged a lot and also launched my website... blog is still active, as you can figuere, website ke liye, wait a little, I promise I won't disappoint. Will update not too far from today.
25. There are a lot more things that come to mind, but I can't mention for this is a public forum :), there are children reading this :) and I fear for my safety :).

I am now both tired from typing, and nostalgic from remembering all those fun times. I had a wonderful wonderful time there. 6 unforgettable life-altering months. I am sure, I am forgetting some stuff, so until I am reminded of them, you can go on feeling depressed about your life. :)

All the pics are in my album(the link is to the right) and you're free to comment.

Errata: Stuff I initially forgot

26. Brewed our own beer at home, seriously we did man! And it was wheat beer, not the ubiquitous lager beer.

Why we Indians are winners?

Hey all. My first week in Bangalore... sorry Bengaluru has just come to an end. And it was nothing short of monumental. Of course, after 6 months in Singapura, at the beginning it was like one of those scenes where I just stand there confounded while everything else around me is in fast forward. Within 2 hours of reaching here, I saw at least 37 Singaporean laws broken! :)

Also let me make a point here, there is no order in this chaos! None whatsoever. I am not going to be one of those over-optimistic, over-enthued, neck-deep in patriotism, cricket-loving, not-knowing-shit-about-politics-but-still-commenting-like-Barkha-Dutt, independence-day-flag-bearing Indians. Don't get me wrong, I love India, it's my home. But I am not blind to reality. I don't call an educated unemployed young man, an opportunity. As long as he is unemployed and can't feed himself, he is useless to the country and more importantly the country is useless to him. No harm admitting it.

OK, so that finishes my quota of serious talk for this month! This is the frustration over the bus conductors coming out in words. Crazzy bastards!!

Now I am a funny blogger. Or so I believe. My sarcasm may be a little misplaced sometimes... okay many times, but admit it, it's funny :) So what makes us Indians winners, despite all this crap. I believe this is a wrong question, the thing is Indians are winners because of all this crap, I mean seriously, where else do you find rickshaw drivers so helpful, that they go out of their way, literally, to tap another rickshaw driver on the back, so that poor-old you can reach home in time. Oh, and I forgot to mention, all this while both the rickshaws are running parallelly on a two-way street, swerving dangerously through Bangalore traffic. They risk their life, to get you home. How selfless is that!

Then there are these awesome bus drivers. You see in many so called developed countries, engineers and mathematicians, sit long hours, drawing up bus routes, keeping in mind one-way streets, working out most efficient way and stops. Here, the bus stops everywhere, seriously. And for efficiency and safety(the truck behind is just 20 feet away), the bus doesn't even stop, it just slows down and you climb in. How cool is that!!

Then there are the rickshaw drivers' love for cleanliness. They so want to see their city clean, that while they're driving, if they see a spot of dirt on the road, they will spit on it, literally change their route and spit on it, to keep the road clean.

Another observation is the dexterity and entrepreneurial spirit of the rickshaw drivers. Rigging an analog fare meter is understandable, but here even the digital meters are rigged. I am an electronics engineer and I haven't a clue how you do that!!

Then again the hunger for perfection. We will not go forward unless everything is in place. Bangalore has planned a Metro, but no work has been seen done since last October. The engineers are adamant, unless everything is in place and there's no chance of failure, they won't continue. What noble thoughts!!

And even after all this Indians are extremely helpful to their fellows. You ask them, on the bus, where to get down, they will never tell you, lest they misguide you. Bad advice is much worse than no advice na. Also as you can expect we have the perfect number of buses here, how they calculate it is a secret. All buses are completely filled, about 2.5 times the number of seats. This ensures no fuel is wasted! Also buses are perfectly maintained, how else do you explain that the same ones are running since a decade after independence!

Another thing abut passengers in buses. Whenever someone sitting gets up, everybody jumps toward him, because they can't see him standing for even a minute. He's got the seat and as good manners, we should ensure that he sits for as long as he can, he deserves it!!

I guess that's enough back-thumping for today. Don't take me too seriosuly guys! :)