oxymoron?

heard this from an NDTV news reporter as he was covering the bus service from Srinagar-Muzaffarabad that started off.

"....the security as usual remained unprecedented...."

now 'unprecedented' ought to imply something that has never been paralleled. something that hasnt happened before. and 'remain' implies that something hasnt changed, or rather stayed the same. so we have a security cover at a level that has never been paralleled, but stayed the same. hmmm.

rain on my window

in continuation to Aartz's poem.

droplets dance across the window
as i race down the road
cling to the leaves
as they bend from the load

atop the hills
smell the earth
feel the sting
span the girth

smile at the rainbow
stare at the cloud
hear the banter
they laugh out aloud

pardon my rambling
i'm just not the same
there's rain on my window
there's rain in my head

the return

it feels really stupid. but looks like it was meant for me to do what i am learning to do best. observe. the blimp seems soaring high, but all is not hot air.

recount of returning to india. a first trip to a foreign land has its merits. it has semblence to infantile nature. look at just about anything wide-eyed trying to absorb everything lest something might go amiss!

day 1 attempt 1. reached the airport well in advance, nothing could have gone wrong. well, murphy (no. not my client!) struck and everything went belly up. weather was horrible and could not have been crazier. could see the cargo carts on the tarmac shudder in the wind. one could rather call it a gale! then came the rain. making foot-long marks on the glass. how could anyone possibly fly in this weather!! thats right. flight cancelled and i was put on "standby" for the next one due for the day. it was like one of mumbai's suburban stations. flight timings were mere references bearing no relation to their departure time. the courteous ticketing girl tried her best to put me on a 9am flight that was to leave at well, 11:30am. but murphy wasnt done yet.

day 1 attempt 2. now the flight i "stood by" hoping to get onto was to reach houston at 2:45pm. practical sense pointed out that it would be cutting too close to the 3:40pm connection to frankfurt. hmmm. point. was in a fix but murphy came to my rescue once again :) he went ahead and delayed that flight too. so even a mere attempt of having a go at the flight was wiped out. no sweat! out i go to get me on another flight for the next day! i love these tickets that let you keep changing the dates at no extra cost! lufthansa said i had changed it 5 times already. i had lost count. all said and done, i am still in lafayette.

a minor episode worth mentioning here though. every time i reskeduled my flight called for going through security check. why? thats a long story. but by the third time the TSA chap would've assumed me to be a proven naturist! now whenever i see a conveyor i am driven by a morbid excitement to get the laptop out of its case and my shoes off! (oh boy!!) pure thrill! have enough expertise now to do it all under 30seconds. beat that!

day 2 attempt 1. day 2 wasnt off to a pleasing start either. i was put back on the 1:45 flight. murphy still wasnt happy. but on the advice of the airline staff (they said they would do it, it was my prerogative if i was prepared to subject myself to the same bout of lunacy) to put myself on standby (once again) for a 6am flight to houston. i decided to subject myself to that bout of lunacy. i unbelieveably made it on the 6am flight. the airline staff had whispered that people were lazy to turn up that early in the day. sweet lady. was looking prettier than on day 1. will drop a word of praise for her :) but Lafayette TSA took special interest in my baggage as well as me this time.

so there i was at houston airport at 7am waiting to catch a connection to frankfurt that leaves at uh... 3:40pm. kwel! had great plans of scouting houston knowing little that by the time i reached anywhere close to the city, it would be time to get back to the airport! it was a pleasant site to see the runway uh... running over the expressway below. so spent time picturising how it would have been were i to play the lead role in The Terminal.

houston airport security was just as surprised at my eagerness to strip.

a rather hasty post. to be continued....

soulmates

For the uninitiated, this was my take on a thread on Ryze.

I say, considering the population of this World, and with faith in the concept of Probability; there is a soulmate for everyone. Come one, come all! Who knows, maybe more than one! Finders keepers!! But then Probability being what it is, what are one's chances of finding the above marked soulmate?

There are two thoughts that emerge from this.

One, the possibility of having more than one soulmate. I shall overlook the criteria of age (within reasonable tolerance limits of our own) for now - it makes our hunt that much easier. We all have what has commonly been written down as frequencies, wavelengths or (physics apart), vibes that we share with people we bump into. At times, so strong are these vibes that a mirror might give a more fuzzy image. A person who can see through you more than you can, who understands you more than you do. Would we call such a person a soulmate? Let us grant that. But what about the rest of the human race? Sure there's another specimen out there with a different set of fingerprints, but similar vibes, what do we do now? This poor soul, lonely until now, is out to indulge in bigamy!

Two (an offshoot of point one), the chances of finding one, were our needs to change through time. Just added to the complexity didn't I? (Are simleys allowed here? If not, FYI, I am smiling) We are humans and our needs keep changing. Since our hearts and minds are interlinked, their needs change too. A tug-of-war between the two might end up in a change of course somewhere down the line. What about the previously unearthed soulmate? Does it cease to hold throne and succumb to a new entity with vibes to match? A New and Improved Soulmate!?

I, with my weakness for binary options, reach two outcomes.

One, have multiple soulmates (if we are convinced about defining one) and vibe with all of them, simultaneously or individualy through the course of life. Two, scrap the whole idea, be with yourself and enjoy life the way it is.

My understanding may be flawed here, but I eagerly await comments.

chained

chained and forbidden
when I am with you
strangled and overwhelmed
as I try to be with you
Freedom, when I run away

longing for togetherness when I am away from you
under the weight of togetherness when I am with you
Depressed and joyless
I seek togetherness
when I am away from you
I seek an escape from
Solitude
Freedom, when I ran back to you

I am everything with you, I am everything without you

~~~

with a little help from Jyo :-)

ergonomics revisited - II

yes, life is sure a cake walk here in the US. but like a friend mentioned, how can one possibly walk on cake and make an easy task out of it!? what about the slippery cream and all the cleaning that one has to do later? bottomline, every attempt here is a conscientious effort at giving life a comforter. you dont need a cushion to break your fall 'cos everything is a cushion! ever wondered why it takes a show like fear factor to inflict yourself with hardship!? try a trip on the 5:43 virar fast in mumbai. will bet your adrenalin would have given you more thrills than you could have prayed for! (purists from a more rustic existence argue that the virar local is a pleasure trip)

walk into the nearest walmart to be submerged under a plethora of do-it-yourself tools. you might find anything from the odd tool-kit to a whole barbeque grill sitting there calling your attention. the kind of stuff you might find elsewhere in specialized stores, you find it here in your neighbourhood walmart. and no, i am not walmart's brand ambassador. come weekend and it is very common to find boats being hauled onto dollys and trailers and families(?) headed towards the nearest shore/river/lake. its just a part of your life! duh! do you need to be a goliath to handle all these!? excuse me no! you have tools to help you out! (nothing would stop you from doing what you would want to) probably this approach emanates from the freedom-gene code thats engrained into the american DNA. mammoth sized vehicles with power drives, power windows, power doors, intelligent sensors everywhere to allow the most immobile to be well, mobile. oh yes, nothing in this can go wrong. poka-yoke extreme! nothing is left to chance. why! you are even told that hot coffee is... er... hot :-) (just in case your tactile senses fail you, the lady at the counter will be there to remind you so)

vehicles of all sizes just abound this place. and thats another point worth looking at. the roads, if not anything else, are out to impress any newbie. with endless stretches of freeways, you could practically scout all of america on a set of wheels. i am told this mammoth network was an outcome of the US administration's plan to get the country out of the great depression. must be! seems to have worked! what further strikes me is the cost of fuel and how they manage to keep it that way!

sample this. if i were to reach houston from lafayette, LA (where i currently am) and back, a flight would cost me $800 upwrads. or, i rent a car for $150 (insurance and rental inclusive - a free estimation), fill in a lavish 20gallons ($40) and some misc expenses that would total to a reasonable $200 - mind you, for a round trip. An hour's flight with its essentials totals to 3hrs and the road trip lasts about 4.5hrs. in effect, 1.5hrs of my trip is valued at $300. 1.5hrs that i would save by letting myself be stuffed in a 20-seater jet; which i might otherwise spend crusing peacefully on the road admiring the lush landscape that abounds the freeways. i wonder which option an individual who respects his senses would take.

is it any wonder why this land behaves like a permanent magnet?

the american beauty

beauty is skin deep. yeah, sure. tell that to my boots! look around you. go to a restaurant, a drug store, a shopping mall. who would you find at the counter? a male? probably yes, provided he looks and/or talks like a female. it doesnt take a while to get a hang of people's priorities here. its obvious how pleasant it is to have a lady walk up to you, take your order, help you select your footwear/attire, or even give you directions.

in a land where first impressions mean a coup or the boot, one ought to know better. switch on the tv and you find infinite ads on anti-aging creams, slimming tablets and what have you. magic wands that would make the mirror change its face the next time you stand in front of it. did you know that your teeth grind each other when you are fast asleep!? well, scientists here know that and marketers have jackets that prevent you from gnashing your teeth while you fight your fiends in dreamsville. what would you call this? a cosmetic or a health solution?

a walk in the clouds

 

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons ev'rywhere
I've looked at clouds that way...

~ Joni Mitchel

calling it a surreal experience would be understating what i felt today. yes, being confined in the metal case was a dissappointment in a way. felt like opening the door and just reach out to those clouds... touch them... pull off a piece like ball of cotton candy and bring it back home. glistening in the glory of sunlight, shining with angelic brightness and dark on the underside ready to shower itself onto the lands below... i've looked at clouds that way...

riding the rainbow

 

a pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow.... am already half way up!

the rain had just stopped and the sun breaking out in the skies. the air was still wet with the rain and nature presented itself in its most gracious form... the rainbow! a giant arch of colours, bursting out from the earth below right through the skies.... could this be for real?

I dreamed I could fly
Out in the blue
Over this town
Following you
Over the trees
Subways and cars
I'd try to find out
Who you really are

~ Roxette

close encounters with aging

there was once a time when i used to religiously maintain my website. right through my engineering days it was the apple of my eye - for obvious reasons! duh! not that the admiration has wilted over time, it certainly has maintained its level. somewhere towards the end of the course where i had to move out of home to a land less connected, i lost touch with the site. regained it during the hiatus 'tween quitting the job & getting into my post-grad. brought it to a respectable level of finesse in web designing prevalent at that time. lost touch again when course started and have been alienated ever since.

cutting a long story short, i am trying to aggregate the changes that have taken place in a span of two years. web design & graphics are mere examples of how things that were once second nature have now become so distant and different just 'cos it wasnt under your scanner for a wink. for years i strived to provide the best presentation platform to my thoughts and ideas on the website. html was the 'in' thing - juggling with it was even cooler! then came javascript, i said i gotta have it on my site! ditto for style sheets! shift focus to other 'important' things in life... web-gyan takes a backstage and getting that degree is under spotlight. rest is history. shift focus back to the website... now php, asp, jsp and all other tlas (three letter acronyms) have come in. makes me wonder when or where did i ever miss the bus? i was good at this man! there was a time when i could work magic with my skills in web designing! jaane kahan gaye woh din....

new kids on the block will tell me i'm too old for this now. look at those wrinkles! no, not on your face birdbrain... look at the site! whoever puts up sites like those today! have i actually grown too old for this? or putting my time elsewhere just another way of looking at things?

i am a novice in my line of work. yet to draw first blood, but have been commended for being good at what i do. all said and done, i am still learning. supposed to be the young bright sparks carrying expectations of a lot many people. wait a minute here.... but i was tagged a veteran elsewhere and a young spark here. interesting aint it!?

is this metamorphosis? or evoloution? death of one ability giving rise to another? it just breaks the jigsaw puzzle into smaller pieces.

ergonomics revisited - I

my first trip out of india and first into US. the famed land of opportunity, as most would call it. first impressions are not to be taken at face value, so i took time for the transition to sink in.

like elsewhere, people strive hard to make life simple. how ironic! you work hard so that you can be lazy! only here, they go overboard. reflected in an ad here where the boss tells his sub, "hey! we've got an Easy button to do that for us!"

its good to have a procedure for everything. everything is systematized, so right down to the T, i wonder how people would handle were the system to fail or if protocol is broken. would they know that if the automatic boarding pass ripper fails they need to tear it themselves and enter the seat info? i guess thats where one picks the phone and dials 911.

ok. i am being harsh here. is there a limit to which one 'simplifies' things? you design a handy "do-it-all" gizmo with a zillion possibilities. make it life's Easy button and hand it over with a carton load of papers as intruction manual. sure! life is so much simpler now! but in the same breath one needs to look at the sheer attention to detail given here. almost always, everything is taken care of. there should be no room left for doubt or misinformation. one ought to truly appreciate that, and probably learn from it. this is where we go to extreme limits. we end up learning more than thats needed, without applying thought.

more on this...

the jigsaw puzzle

one of the things i just love about life.... the meshing of different events.... probably something like the Chaos Theory.... at hindsight it might seem to have happened by design

the sheer randomness of life that makes it look so well planned!

anthropology

wonder if anyone finds it fun to watch people. by that i mean, to see them behave in a certian way. why do they do things the way they do it, and the situation that makes them do it in the first place! of course, when one starts observing so much of it around, you come under your own microscope.... wont take time falling prey to it!!

i wonder if you are still with me! transactional behaviour - thats what i think its called. the different 'roles' people take up when they deal with the diaspora of other people that they come across everyday. the adult-parent-child behaviour. thats what its called i guess. (never quite took it seriously back in school!) why all this shit load you say? oh something rather non-descript crept up today.... was just observing the way my client was speaking to his boss vis-a-vis he would normally speak with the rest of us (i know, the 'rest of us' can be further categorized).

i agree, its pretty natural to behave so, just that i felt like disecting the observation....

at the threshold

getting started with this blogspace was one thing. putting in some content - a wholly different ball game.

just need the right opportunity to pen in my views.

The Blimp sees it all.