We need Class.

Last night, as I finished a conf call with my US client, my wife very subtly commented on my fake American accent. It kept me thinking as to why we always drop our natural speech and hop onto some weird foreign accent whenever we find ourselves conversing with someone from America or Britain or any other English speaking country. I have observed this phenomenon very frequently in the so called geeky world of Indian Information Technology. Sneak into any software company, eve-drop on a geek holding close to his mouth the microphone of his headpiece or receiver of his desktop telephone, and you will be able to hear some very weird enunciation of English words. Rarely, you will find something you called a perfect diction. But if you call the same person yourself, you will miss the same accent. Why? Because now he/she is talking to a native, an Indian. 

I can’t infer any logic behind this trend but it is so prevalent in my industry, that people from outside of this geeky world, occasionally laugh at it. But the Indian IT brethren never notice this thing in their cubicles during their daily nine to five stint. May be our IT Gods i.e. our bosses and super-bosses and super-duper-bosses will notice this anomaly someday and do the required cure. After all, we are amongst the few working men/women who in their 20s are drawing big bucks. We definitely need to have some class.

 

 

Reboot

I have decided to restart my blogging (once again) and I hope to keep it up. I guess this little bit of writing would be a kind of stress-buster for the day. I am so getting spent up by the end of the day, everyday Mon to Fri. These days are always there in every project but what I'm going through is constant 9 hour staring at the screen, switching from one window to other window, copying a thing from here and pasting there, nothing technical, total crap shitload work. Last Fri, it seemed that from this week on this will reduce but no escape from the monster yet. This monster has squeezed me inside out. Monday starts and I'm already waiting  for next weekend.

Speaking of weekend, last weekend was most relaxing I had since long time. Of course, one of the day was 14th Feb and as expected Lothika took the day off. So it was whole day of spending some quality time with her: just lying around and doing nothing :-). 

Celebrating Our First Year

Read it over here: Hearts & Souls

See it over here: Picasa Web Album

I'm in Tokyo

As the plane took off from Sahar International Airport, Mumbai I headed to another new country, towards the eastern most part of the globe, towards the land of rising sun, towards the magnificent Japan. It was a jumble of feelings inside me. I was sad because for first time after marriage we wouldn’t be able to see each other for so long. I was scared thinking about adjusting in a non-english speaking country. I was excited as this will be another new country to explore, in fact third country for me. And I was so sleepy because the flight took off at 6 o’clock in the morning.

As my Cathay Pacific aircraft ascended above the Mumbai thundering clouds, I had about 10-11 hours before me to kill. This was not a direct flight. I had to change the flight at Hong Kong and I was desperately hoping this flight to land on time as I had less than 2 hours for transit. My stomach started gurgling as soon as we reached the cruise altitude. No, not because of height but I started getting hungry. Finally, the beautiful red-polka dressed stewardess brought me my breakfast and as it landed on my meal tray I was digging into it until not a piece was left. Satiated, I sat back and decided to try a movie on the in-flight entertainment system. Many new movies were on. I decided on ‘Kung-Fu Panda’ (somehow Japan was already started getting into my systems). A good timepass for about two hours and I was already started feeling sleepy. The flight was quite comfy, everybody’s window shutter were down, AC was perfect, I had my quilt, seats were relaxing and in no time my eyes were closed and I was in dream world.

It was surprising that I was able to sleep for over an hour owing to the fact that I can hardly sleep while I’m traveling. But it was well needed sleep. We had already begun descent to Hong Kong International Airport. I opened up my window shutter and the weather was clear, sunny and pleasant. As the plane descended flying over the city, I was so mesmerized by the grandeur of Hong Kong. Whatever I had seen, read or heard about the city, it was perfectly in accord. The majestic skyline, the beautiful roads and sea-link bridges, the sparkling green water of South China Sea and myriad of ships, boats, cruisers etc sailing over it gave me quite extraordinary view from thousands of feet above ground. Only I didn’t had the camera ready in my hand at that moment. I would have got some excellent shots.

The Hong Kong airport was as beautiful as the city looked from above. Comparable to London Heathrow but not as crowded and busy than former. My flight was in another one hour and forty minutes. As soon as the boarding started I realized that I’m surely going to Japan. All around me there were Japanese people only. While coming from Mumbai, there were quite a number of Indians or people of different races. But here the scene was entirely different. I could make out about only 5-6 people of different origin amongst the bunch. Even the English accent of flight stewardesses started to sound incomprehensible. I took one of them to repeat the question thrice before I got the gist of it. Anyways, again my stomach needed food and luckily I was one of the first few to get the lunch. I relished the food to the fullest, especially the sweet dish which contained 4 gulab jamuns. Ymmmm.

By the time we were over islands of Japan, it was pitch dark and I could make out that it is quite cloudy too. Many times I could see some fierce lightning over some places. Fortunately, it was not that bad when we landed at Narita International Airport. The immigration check didn’t take much time because I think this was the only flight that landed at that time. But it took almost an hour for the baggage to arrive. I knew I will face problem getting a transport to my apartment at this time and I was quite right. The regular Airport Bus Service was done for the day and I didn’t know the train system over here. Eventually I decided to spend almost 27 K yen for a cab direct from airport to my place.

It was post-midnight hour when I entered Tokyo and the city looked amazing. I was especially impressed by the road infrastructure. It was such an intricate web of roads and flyovers that any person without a GPS system in his car will easily get lost. At one time there were at least four level of flyovers one upon other. Tokyo represents the true essence of a mega-city. I’m sure going to be getting more and more impressed by the city in my coming 5 wks of tenure here.

With a little difficulty the taxi driver was finally able to drop me at my place of stay. As I entered my apartment I was a little disappointed by the size of it. It was just one straight room with a kitchen area, living area and a bed and an attached bath. There was one bed up at attic which was kind of cute. But for a single person I was quite satisfied with it finally. It had all the facilities needed for survival. Although TV doesn’t show anything except Japanese channels, I’m glad that internet connection is there for entertainment. I have killed today’s time with sleeping most of the time. From Monday starts the work for which I have come over here. I don’t know how much hectic its gonna be but if its hectic its good for me as that will keep me busy.

Sayo-Nara.

Aye Has It ....

Aye Has It. Aye Has It.
Was the cry of Lok Sabha Speaker as he declared the results of the most popular trust vote in history of Indian democracy. I was following the Lok Sabha session the minute I reached home after office. And what a comedy show it was. Those were the leaders of our country making a sheer mockery of Lok Sabha. Was there any maturedness, any decensy, any sense of responsibility shown by them? None. All I could see was bunch of rowdies throwing brickbacks at each other, slurring each other's images, holding baseless allegations against each other and hoping that lakhs of Indian citizens who are tuned to their TV sets are going to vote for them in next elections. Whether it was UPA or NDA or Left, they are all riders of the same boat. Indian people are nothing more than mere vote banks for them on which they want to cash on as much as possible. The real motive of the parliamentary debate and corresponding trust vote was long lost somewhere under those benches somewhere. I wonder if even half of our esteemed politicians had any idea about the topic of debate. All they had in mind was whether the government will sustain or shatter. If you had asked what the world nuclear means, they would have gladly translated it into Hindi as 'Parmanu' but wouldn't know anything beyond that. And If some intelligent person (which is rare in that flock) tries to explain the pros or cons of it, they will shut him/her up. It was unbelievable. It was comedy just because it was unbelievable. It was unbelievable to see our distinguished MPs create such a scene. It was unbelievable to see the disrespect for even our PM when they didn't allow him to give his speech. It was unbelievable when some of them brought bundles of cash in the Sabha.

But I still watched it till the end because I wanted to believe in this. But couldn't.