Change

Short of plastic surgery is there any other way to change your face? 

देखे मुझे जब वोह आँखें, मैं खो जाऊं।
इन आखों के रास्ते मैं उसके दिल में समाऊँ।
कुछ कह न पाऊँ उसे मैं , कुछ सुन न पाऊँ
उसके बिना मेरा जीवन जैसे कोई सूना गाँव।


Ooooh...look I can type in Hindi still. 

A stranger in every land

A friend used to have a blog called Stranger in a Strange Land (or was it a one-off post...can't seem to remember).

Of late, that phrase keeps jumping in and out of my cranium a lot. Yeah, that measly little cavity (that in India would be called chullu-bhar).

In my own land I am just another stranger. Irrelevant, insignificant and part-of-the-wall. Elsewhere, I am still a stranger.

And, yes, despite what we would all like to believe - color does matter. Here, elsewhere and everywhere.

" Hush little baby! Don't say a word 
And never mind that noise you heard 
It's just the beast under your bed 
In your closet, in your head... "

I don't understand why I am horribly polite to people. Especially to women. And especially, when the favor isn't returned most of the times.

Gah! I wish I'd had bad teachers who taught me to be flippant and irreverent and disrespectful to women. Looks like those are the guys who are "interesting" (eye roll, disgust and mimes puking).

Oh...happy weekend folks! And hope the summer holds out with good weather where ever you are. 

Things I am not.

a) Cute
b) Handsome

EDIT:
c) Incapable of flirting. Apparently, unless I explicitly state that I am flirting, it isn't obvious.

#fml

Un anno dopo...

Last year, about now (if you discount the extra day in February, or if you are splitting hairs, then yesterday), I was sitting quite uncomfortably by the window on a flight to Dubai and then I'd fly on to Rome. It's been a mixed bag of things, this past year, living in Italy - a short walk away from the Leaning Tower (which, by the way, has to be the least impressive 'Wonder of the World'). Bear with me, or skip this, while I rant, wax eloquent and try to playback the last 365 days in my head.

I landed in Pisa knowing exactly one classmate from college - who has long since moved more or less permanently to the United States. Language was the biggest problem - it is still a problem, but I can speak a smattering of Italian now. I can still clearly remember the first visit to the supermarket to buy bread, milk and eggs. I located the milk and the bread, but I could not find eggs. I tried very hard to explain in English that I was looking for eggs to the store attendant, but with no results. Finally, I had to mime a chicken laying an egg and then breaking it and making a fried egg when she exclaimed, "Aaah! Uova!". That was my first lesson in Italian.

It took me a while to get used to finding my way around. I used to be terribly scared to walk out without a map - not because I was scared of getting lost, but worried because I couldn't ask for directions back home. Eventually, I learned just enough to ask for directions in Italian. Then to order food. But, I never got around to learning to speak fluently because it was just too hard to have a technical conversation in Italian and almost everyone at work spoke reasonable English.

The first six-months of research was fun. Fiddling around with the comfort of knowing that even a negative result was acceptable - now, we know that doing X or Y this way is a bad idea. I managed to write one silly paper that was accepted at an equally silly conference. I guess half my joy was writing six-long pages in two-column text in Latex as opposed to the three years of writing in 10-point Comics Sans. Then Berlusconi decided to make life difficult for academia and the group that I work with started breaking up and so did my desire to continue on to a Masters course here. I disinterestedly applied to universities in the US (if you are counting, I applied to six and two have already politely told me to take a hike. I am waiting for the other four).

The bunch at the lab was good fun. I started playing football with them Italians. And I scored two goals in the handful of matches that I played. I stopped for a long time in between for various reasons - all of which in retrospect seem silly, but then hindsight is always a bitch. I have two more Tuesdays and I intend to play both of the matches if they happen. Chris aka NastyBoy, Juri, Azzy, Cosimo, Claudio, Symone, Ghibo, Stefano, Matteo, Giulio, Pellix, Estebagno, Bertogna, Enrico, Antonio Sr., Manfroni, Secco, Pepe, Danielle and the other guys at the pitch were always quite tolerant of the cricket-familiar-Indian-idiot. BBT with Nino, Gianluca, Bertogna in the middle of the week.

I moved into an apartment that I shared with three women. It shocked the conservative middle-class sensibilities of my family and made my friends conjure up and jibe me with jokes that could only be, very charitably, called risque. Fortunately or unfortunately, two of the women had serious boyfriends and one (the cutest of them all) now I realize did not really like boys. They all moved to different cities shortly and were replaced by guys - Alessio, Stefano, Raffelle and Lorenzo. In between, there was for a short while a slightly neurotic paranoid lady doctor - but thankfully my health held up during that time. All these four can swear reasonably enough in Hindi now and Raffelle is the only other Italian who knows the Indian National anthem - albeit he plays it on the guitar. At least, he understand the notes, while the other probably does not even understand the words.

I learned to cook Italian food. More importantly, I changed my ways of dousing everything with pepper or chilli powder. I will one day have my own Italian bistro in Bangalore. Nothing fancy like Toscano or Little Italy. Good rustic pastas and meat. And, if I can find a source, good cheese as well.

I traveled a bit. Not as much as I hoped to - it got quite boring to travel alone. I walked in snow with my mouth open to catch the flakes. I swam in the Italian Riviera, hiked in Liguria, kind-of-holidayed on the Cote d'Azur, drank wine in Provence, wandered the streets of Florence, ate pralines and waffles in Belgium, saw Al Pacino in Venice, traveled in Eurostar trains at 300+ kmph, gawked at the sheer opulence of St.Peters, got drunk at the Oktoberfest in Munich, walked along the East-side gallery in Berlin, went to the top of the Eiffel tower, spent the best four hours dancing in Barcelona - all in all not a bad time. I think the best I remember these trips is for the random people I met - everyone was interestingly different.

But the one thing that I will always remember this one year in Italy will have to be for the craziest and most impulsive thing that I've ever done (possibly, also, the one that I'll ever do). If not anything, it was proof for myself, that I do have a little sliver in my head that does not subscribe to logic, reason and academic thinking. That, I am thankful for.

In a couple of weeks from now, I pack my back to head back to Bangalore. Where next? God knows, but I am slowly learning to be okay with not knowing.

I couldn't make a tyre, but what the hell, it was still a damn good year!

The nerdy nice guy conundrum

Here are some good reasons not to be a nerdy nice guy.

Nerdy guys usually have this wide network of contacts in the nerd world and hence by 'n' degree ( n > 1) into the business world and the likes. Nerds like to keep themselves informed and up-to-date on things like gadgets, software, services and job-openings. It takes them ten-minutes or lesser on Google+Facebook+Linkedin to get the job done with a couple of emails.

Nice guys are guys who help. Who don't think twice when even a vague friend asks for help. Sometimes they will go out of their way and put in more effort than necessary to help. They most often ask for very little in return.

Both of them usually have terrible social skills. The nerds for sure and the nice guy because he doesn't know how to say no and be selfish. And, that is exactly when the screw-up happens.

Every woman-friend of the nice nerd takes undue advantage of him. In more ways than one - money, contacts, assignment and what not. Then the only thing he asks in return is "Please find me a girl. A nice simple girl." It's quite hard to believe that there are either no nice simple girls, or all of them are married, or have boyfriends and etc etc. Even over a fricking half-a-decade time window they can't find one. If they do introduce you to a girl, invariably it will be some total messed up situation - in the middle of a break-up or can't decide which boy to pick. And then, they will say "You have to fight for it."

Hence, simple economics and logic and common sense have led me to the answer. The next time someone asks about a job-opening - "Nope, no more jobs in India", a new phone suggestion - "They don't sell to people who can't use vowels", a glass of water - "Sorry, everything just evaporated. You have to fight and cool the world down for condensation to happen."

Like Spyder Jerusalem said - "Being a bastard works."

If you could...

...go back in time - you know like how Sheldon has that clause in his room-mate agreement - and leave a note/message/letter to yourself, what would that note be and what would that point of time in your existence be?

Random question that popped into my head today.

Bah! (Again)

When the going gets tough, shut the fuck up and stay at home. If you can annihilate the world, then I suggest that you do it. If you can't then seriously consider annihilating self.

March 19, 2012 will go down in my personal timeline as one of the worst days ever. EVER.

Epic quote.

"...and even if I did get a girlfriend, it will still be after Sheldon Cooper got a girlfriend!"

Sigh! You just can't beat that now, can you?

Euphoria

Long long time ago Euphoria fronted by Dr. Palash Sen used to be all over the TV, radio and every little public function. And, I liked them. Still do. Sometime in Surathkal, Euphoria performed and I met the entire band - and like a little kid got autographs (which I think I lost somewhere), photos and gushed about how I used to listen to Euphoria out of tapes that I recorded off the radio or bummed off friends.

Oh, why, because I've been listening to their songs for the past hour or so on Youtube.

Hypocrite

I have slowly and painfully realized that people who wear their ideals on their sleeve screaming loudly about liberty, progressiveness, equality and justice to anyone and everyone who is willing to listen are usually the ones who do not even understand what each of those things means.

And, they cannot accept being told that they might be possibly wrong. For them, the entire world and all of creation can be wrong - it is impossible that they are wrong.

Sigh!

All I can do is just write on my blog. Welcome to the real world!

Wandering around Paris alone has its ups and downs. The upside is being unfettered by the collective opinion of person(s) other than yourself on what to see and what to do - walk around, stop and stare at a small church tucked away in a corner or sitting down in a cafe staring at stunningly beautiful Parisian women. The downside is that eventually when your feet tire, your neck is sore from looking up at the stained glass and all the women have left you are left with nothing but your own thoughts. I have a slight problem with thoughts. Invariably, I always have some thoughts that keep running in loops - infinite loops. And, we all know that Linux is awesome - it can do infinite loops in five minutes. Sadly enough, my brain does not run on Linux - not yet.

One of those thoughts is this insane human desire to posses something - tangible objects or experiences. The harder it is to get them, the more is the drive to have them. Exactly what Twain was getting at when Tom Sawyer starts whitewashing the fence. What just makes this whole thing worse is when someone you know well has object X or experience Y chooses to constantly rub the lack of X or Y in your face. In ways that are sometime obvious and in ways that are sometime disguised. Their sense of disguised being standing in front of an A380 with a broken wing and holding their arm out hoping it will draw away attention. Bah!

In my particular train of thought I realized that in most cases the "rubbing it in your face" is done on purpose. For lack of anything better to do. So much so that X and Y could be things that normally you would preen off to others, but people will try to wrap all that under psychological hogwash filtered and cast into positivity using third-hand misinterpreted Freudian theories. The kind people who say "Fre-yood".

I have this deep desire to stand such people in my life in a line and rail them. Or worse - use the gauntlet. Die, fuckers, die!

Pop goes the planning

You sit and think about doing something. You write it down in painful detail - an explanation meant to demystify it for people who will work on it with you. Then, two days later, you see an article on your RSS feed that has the same (or a very similar idea) which is up and running. And, they got a few million in funding.

Feels just like spending the entire evening over dinner telling that girl how nice and awesome she is, pay for the dinner and all, the when the time comes...

"No no...it's ok. Don't worry, my boyfriend will come pick me up in a few minutes. I just messaged him."

That is when that massive 'L' neon glowing on top of your head falls on you.

Bah!

Bitter truths

A small list of clarifications.

1. Just because I live in Europe - and that too, southern Europe, in Italy and in Pisa which a university town - does not mean that I have scores and scores of pretty Italian women friends whom I hit on, hang out with or date. Despite what you might have heard of exoticness of the Orient and blah, the chances of someone finding you interesting is just as bad or good as in the normal case. Also, remember you are the wrong color.

2. Learning Italian is not a breeze. And, to do aforementioned step 1, you need to know enough Italian to sustain conversation. Additionally, there is always a better Italian speaking Italian or European than you. Your chances are slim. Friends you see with European girlfriends are not the norms, they are the exception. They found a girl who speaks English. Think of them as the sample population on the right side of the bell-curve. Both your friend and that girl. In this case two probabilities - both lesser than 1, get multiplied. It is much much smaller now. You are in the middle of the curve, possibly even on the left. Accept it and move the fuck on. Don't tell me otherwise - about you or about me. I know I am on the left, thank you very much.

3. Living in Europe does not mean you party every weekend/month. It isn't cheap. A drink in a bar ranges starts from 3 euros. Can go up to obnoxiously high rates. It is quite hard to find a Garuda/Sharad/Denny's equivalent in Europe. If you do find one and go in, chances of you coming out intact are quite slim. On more counts than one.

4. Continuing on (3). Partying alone is not partying. If you think you can party alone, then you need to sit down and examine your life. I live in a university town. Mostly filled with students who can't speak English. On shoestring budgets. Wary of foreigners from the Orient. Europeans, as such, are not like Indians. In India you can go to a noisy pub and possibly find company. In Europe if you speak the local language you can. Maybe.

5. Just because I have a Schengen visa/stay permit does not mean I will travel to every damn place that I can in Europe. It costs money and quite a bit. No, I don't get paid a lot. Traveling alone is not as awesome as you think. Once, twice, maybe, thrice. After that it becomes a pain. Do not compare your annual alone trip to traveling alone in Europe. You come back to your city to a large circle of friends and do all other trips in groups. Traveling alone for you is a novelty. For me, it is a painful regular reality. If you really want to try it out and know enough of C/C++ programming, I can help you get this position I have and you can try. Tell me six months later how it feels.

6. If your friends who are doing an MBA or a Master's/PhD. in Europe are posting pictures of partying and so on, understand that in a International MBA program everyone speaks reasonably fluent English. And they probably live in Northern Europe or Scandinavia. Or at least in a big city. Pisa is small - terribly so. I can walk from one end to another in about a couple of hours.

7. Someone came and told you about how they made out or what not when they were in Europe. How awesome it was. 80% of those possibly paid by the hour for it. The remaining 20% got terribly lucky. It's called the Pareto principle, I think. Read it up. You have a high possibility of being in the 80%. I know I am in the 80% in theory and practically nowhere in the picture. Or they are all lying about it. Following it up with a, "But, you should ask your friend to hook you up..." is as silly as you can make a statement. I suggest frontal cranial lobotomy for you. Very small chance that your friends will set you up - here or back home. Mine, most certainly, don't. If you have friends who help you that way, do let me know. I will friend them on Facebook. Further, Farhan Akthar's escapade in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is an ideal case described in books. It is just that - a description. Plus, it is Farhan Akthar. I do not look like Farhan Akthar. The easiest way to get me to kill you is to cite this as an example.

Now that I have explained some of the things that I have been asked about over the past 10 months or so, please for heaven's sake stop asking about it. If you have lived in a situation similar to mine for a sustained period of time and have had a significantly different experience, then I'd like to learn how do you did it. If you stay abroad has been limited to a 10-day or a month-long trip with friends or to a place where you already have a bunch of friends then please do not tell me how I am doing stuff wrong. And, if you haven't lived outside of India and tell me I could do this and that and whatnot, please, stuff it! Do it and then tell me about it. I have twenty times more hypothetical things I can tell you about and make you feel like a worm.

Thank you for patience. We hope you enjoyed the flight and look forward to business from you again.

The present

We are but a speck of dust in the universe, but today I realized that, in reality, that the insignificance was severely understated.