floccinaucinihilipilification

yeah, sweety is here! and we didnt miss the flight back from chicago either! Even though her flight was delayed by half an hour, she just zipped past the immigration & customs in half an hour and was out well in time for the connecting flight back home.

She was and is still kind og jet lagged. She likes it here but thinks that it is just a tad too cold! So she is kind of happy to stay warm in the apt rather than venture out. She gets up nice and early in the morning with me, helps me get ready for work and prepares me some nice breakfast then sees me off and kills time somehow till the afternoon, then I come home for lunch - she prepares me some delicious lunch and keeps it ready for me, we eat together, talk and sit together for sometime and then again I go back to work. Then she tries hard to stay awake and kill time but till now the jet lag has caught up with her and she sleeps all the way till I get back from work by 6 PM. Then we drink some coffee and on a couple of days we went out for some grocery shopping. We even went out for dinner the day before with a friend\colleague & his wifey who had come over to say hi to sweety. [his wifey is 2 months pregnant and they live in the same neighborhood]

But today she has a bad headache. I am not sure why. So she is taking rest, hope she feels ok soon. She hasnt taken her multivitamins from couple of days and hopefully resuming it will help. She is eating ok, though her sleep cycle is a bit off she is getting enough sleep - so once she gets used to the cold, I guess she will be ok.

Ofcourse we will have to figure out what she can do from now on, she doesnt want to be at home doing nothing and I agree, she can probably take up some kind of classes to catch up on something or learn some new skill and then probably see if she can take up some kind of work. Even I have to start thinking about the future from now on. The economy seems to be slowly moving towards slowdown, every day I keep reading about layoffs in some or the other technology company, so I will need to review the situation and keep my goals realistic.

well, since the i am stuck up with work all the way up my @$$.

#a. sweety - she is flying tonight. yay! I am going to ORD to pick her up tomorrow. Hope we dont miss the connecting to CMH as she has only 1 Hr 50 mins to clear immigration and get her baggage before we make the run for terminal 3 from terminal 5.

#b. masaladosa - man they are a native french band making some great indian fusion music. They have a french guy who plays sitar as good as any damn Pt. *shankar can! I had heard thier track "Yassa Masala" - sometime back but never realized that this was from some french music junkies. People, i think they are good. This whole concept of some french music junkies becoming enamored with masaladosa, ganesha and sitar is amazing. Watch out for them and buy some of thier work if you can. www.masalasound.com

There was this one more jazz artist from NY that I wanted to follow but I lost track of that guy. He plays some amazing indian raagas on his guitar inbeetween the jazz.

#c. When Sita sang the blues - :) this one is too cool. Wish I could donate her some dough :( I would if I had some extra cash on me. http://www.ninapaley.com/Sitayana.

mannn! sita looks so sexy and Rama so macho! :) after seeing Ramanand Sagars ramayana on TV it was refreshing to see an image other than Arun Govil and whatever her name was!

my dog met with an accident last week and he has hurt his leg very bad. I am feeling really bad about it. A bike and 2 people fell on him, yeah all of them and it badly hurt his nerve on the back leg and he is not even able to walk. Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that he will be ok soon enough and will be back to his happy prancing days soon.

He apparently managed to get out of his belt when dad was taking him out for a walk and started to run, to play his usual hide and seek and didnt see the bike coming straight at him from behind. sighh...

He is such a happy dog, the only time he used to cry was when he used to see me climbing a taxi with my bags - he would soon understand that I would be gone for sometime and would start howling in strange sad voice... yeah adding to the drama! Bheemz hope your legs get better soon and it doesnt pain a lot, you are my most favorite dog ever.

woot woot! sweety got a visa!! woot woot !!

and yeah, I am back! err... Its actually - I was back. I was kind of lying low for sometime. Yeah i was`working my ass off and busy paying a lot of money to my phone company as i am overrunning the minutes in my plan by a huge huge margin. I feel that phone companies should base the pricing on relationship status - eh?

yeah I am still working late tonight. but anyway woot woot! :)

1. Suit - picked up one suit at Ticknors in Polaris Mall. Not exactly what I wanted. I was further dissapointed today after I picked it up today after alteration as it looks tad too big, not the perfect fit :(. There was a perfect fit but I didnt like it. Not that I loved this one but this was the best of the lot. Well... never mind.

2. Apt - Almost done, probably will sign the lease tomorrow. Electricity done, Gas - work in progress. So if I close it tomorrow then my friend should be able to pick up the keys on Dec 1st.

3. Visa for sweety - this is one thing that I havent been able to get started. My stupid dept head isnot approving it. Already the available stamping dates are beyond Jan 4th :(.

well, not all but for some last minute frustrated honeymooners like me.

1. Mauritius - Yes, it is a gorgeous place. But it is badly connected from BLR\MAA. There is only one freakin direct flight every Tuesday - for gods sake - only one direct flight every week !! So I cant take it as my wedding is on Monday and my reception is on Tuesday and we need atleast one day off to rest (yeah! after all the social functions! duh!). Relatively expensive - which was probably do to my last minute hotel bookings and multiple stopovers to get there as I coudnt do a 6 day stay - so I dropped it.

2. Bali - Exotic place but for some stupid reasons Indonasia needs us (me=indian) to take a visitor visa from a local consulate where I am residing - duh! that requires like I dont know how many days and I have no idea where they have thier tiny emabasy in BLR - I wonder if they have one at all. But all Europeans & US citizens are welcome without any visa - duh! But the deals are economical, so one will need to plan beforehand and Bali can work out very well - probably 2-3 months planning might get a deal for 2 for 3 weeks for as less as 6 grand.
>correction - Yay! I can also enter Bali by getting VISA on entry! yay! yay! (source: http://www.indonesianembassy.org.uk/consular_visa_type_arrival.html)

3. Phuket - well the website says requires visitor before hand. Nice place and economical. Probably a good option. another exotic location but not an option as of now.

4. Seychelles - Yet another gorgeous place. Visa on entry. have to connect at Dubai which doesnt need a transit visa if I fly Air Emirates - looks like the only deal that I can buy at this point of time but on the flip side the travel time is nearly 48 Hrs.

So I have to really weigh Bali & Seychelles by travel time and then the cost. I have only 4-5 days to spare and I dont want to spend 2 nights flying out of that !! for gods sake!!!

My idiot manager is not letting me to start the visa processing for sweety as she is not yet my official spouse ! crap. so which might delay her arrival here, which makes me think whether I should get an apartment now? since I will endup paying one months rent for december for nothing since as I will be away and even when I come back I can stay put in the current place for another 2-3 weeks if sweety flies only after 2-3 weeks. I can search for an apt in that gap.

so now back to one more round of search for the honeymoon deals - hope I will close this thing today.

1. Did you find a suit? - No!
2. Did you find an Apt to rent? - No!!
3. Did you make the reservations for Honeymoon? - No!!!
4. Did you start the visa processing work for sweety? - No!!!!
5. Did you atleast start sending invites to friends? - No.. :(.. !

you=degzz! crap!!! wakeup dumbass. $^&%!

work is getting hectic but I hope I can take some time out from tomorrow for the Apt search.

The question is not whether we believe in God or not but whether God believes in us or not? because if he doesnt then you are screwed!
- from a spanish movie about 5 factory workers who were part of a major lay off in thier comapany and how they cope and lead thier simple life afterwards. A simple down to earth movie which I was following via the subtitles.

No I didnt say that, apparently Hemingway did.

Coming back to reality: life is going on pretty ok. Work is ok, not too hectic but keeps me occupied. I spent all of yesterday shopping and then eating out with bunch of folks from work at a mexican place - El Vaquero or whatever. Before that I went to the Easton Town Center mall - nice place! It is one big mall and looks like you can find all the babes of columbus there! ;) (sweety I was just joking!) Went there to get my macbook fixed but the geniuses in the apple store asked me to come back after couple of days. Then I started to look for a suit (yeah the suit for my wedding reception - that I have been looking from quite some time) - which I coudnt find, I think they should open some more mens formal wear shops. (Now I have to find a suit ina hurry by next week - have to find a place where I can get a decent suit. god plz help me). Then I bought some chocolates and a shoe which I didnt need in the first place. Have to try the CheeseCake Factory & the Melting Pot sometime and the OceanView as well, if I get a designated driver. I think they were already preparing for the thanks giving, looks like it will be a nice place to spend some time over thanks giving\christmas and the new years.

I am flying back next week! Yay Yay! I cant believe the days are going by so fast. I still have lot of work to do. Have to find an apartment, have to buy a suit. Have to book hotel for honeymoon - gosh, god please help me ! and ofcourse have to worry about the visa for sweety. Hope everything falls in to place by december end.

Today - it was raining all day. I had plans to go out for shopping again but then dropped it. Got up late and then saw a movie and now I am killing time. Still contemplating whether to go to the gym or not.

Got some packages today - some stuff that I had ordered online. I cant stop laughing seeing one dress that I got for sweety ! :) tihihihi !

Well, a very slow sunday evening. All I did was to get a haircut and sweety is going to be furious when she finds out that I got a haircut - she wanted me to grow hairs for the marraige.

then saw a movie - 'American Gangster' - umm well ok dokey movie. I thought it was a bit slow paced. Real story! looks like people in columbus are not all that crazy about going out to movies - the theater was literally empty on a Sunday evening. Probably should go to that AMC at the easton center to see more crowd - its about 20 miles from my place but I have go there since they have an imax theater out there.

Yesterday, it went off quite quickly actually. Roamed around - had food in an Udupi Restaurant - which is about 15 miles from my place - it turned out to be pretty ok. Then went to Tuttle Crossing Mall in the evening and roamed around all evening there. The aim was to find a suit for myself for the wedding reception- found a Jones NY store which had a lot of suit's but could find any that I liked and had to postpone the buy since I wanted to ask sweety once if she would like me to wear tuxedo ! :) or a normal 2 piece suit. Then I ended shopping some stuff that I didnt need in the first place. Then went out for a late nite dinner - surprisingly the Applebees nearby was crowded at 11:00 ! Not bad! :)

I badly need that cellphone and I am so angry with those wirelessgalaxy.com people! I chose a 3 day priority shipping - about 2 weeks back and I still dont have it - crap! Sweety is going to be so cross with me for not talking to her properly. All the time I have steal my roomie's phone and call her and usually I cant talk for more that 30 mins. I think enough is enough, I will go get a phone from a nearby store tomorrow.

I am in columbus. I am bored. :( I somehow dont like it here. Well, i have got nothing against the city but its the situation i guess. I'd rather be back home - sleeping on my comfortable bed, eating my moms delicious food, kill time lazily in office and most importantly be with sweety! :(...

I also dont like how the assignment in Dublin is shaping up. First of all its like a staff augumentation stuff which usually my company doesnt take up and isnt really the type of the project I like being in. Project anyway looks screwed up already and they are putting together a new set of people to fix things - I really dont know why I get stuck up in such projects. But its not the work that I am concerned about but it is the uncertainty associated with it (the staffing uncertainties) - especially with the kind of spineless managers that my company has here, it sucks. Cant take a yearly lease on Apartments, have to think twice about buying a car - it really sucks. The group of people I have here is also not exactly.. well.. my roomie is ok, kind of kiddish and boring but ok. The manager is manipulative and not really enterprising and all others seem crap.

So... boring people and boring place - doesnt add up to an exciting prospect to look forward to. Nothing against columbus though, it looks like a nice little city. Mostly have been in the outskirts along I270 S and Dublin and for me who comes from NY this place looks tad boring, plus it has been raining from a couple of days. I really dread the winter - craptastically I had to land here just in time for it. But i liked the river and the riverside Dr - I guess I'll look for a apartment along the river.

I am really looking forward to the flight back home on 23rd. Againn craptastically I booked a flight on 23rd wasting one day of holiday - the junk manager put so much pressure on me to push the dates further that this totally slipped off my mind.

and tomorrow we are driving down to Pittsburg for a boring drive. Atleast I'll get some good food and get to visit the temple.

One good thing is that I am sleeping tight in the nights. Wonder how I am going to pick up my exercise routine - all of it has gone down the drain and at this rate I am going to be totally out of shape for my wedding.

Which is the best airport to kill a night waiting for a connecting flight??
Well, I cant comment on the best as I have had the opportunity of waiting in only few airports but anyway lets see
1. Charles De Gaulle - Paris, France - the worst ever. Donot take a route via CDG if you have change flights. If you are flying out to CDG out of some busy airport such as JFK or Heathrow or London then it is best advised to avoid CDG. Air France has shitty flights then to add to it they dont have as many flying partners as one would expect, so if you miss a connecting then you essentially have to wait for >=24 Hrs in CDG. Now CDG is not a 24 hrs airport, only one small portion of terminal 2 is open 24 Hrs and they shutdown all other parts overnight - which is really hard to believe considering that it is one big airport. Now the section which is open is a place where you checkin - there are no stores\cafes open. all you have is some 5-6 steel chairs for your comfortable nights stay. Yes you read it right there are too few chairs to sit, forget all other comforts. CDG is an insult to international airports when it comes to killing a night.

2. Dubai - Not a bad place, looks like all of it is open 24 Hrs. But it is one crowded place full of overclothed arabs and under clothed americans who are still in thier vacation mood just having stepped out of those exotic resorts and all others staring at the underclothed babes. It has all kind of stores\cafes open all the time.

3. Heathrow, London. I liked this airport. Ofcourse too many people fly out of this place but this airport is good.

4. Ohare, Chicago. I like it - considering that I am writing this while killing a night waiting for a flight here, this is a decent place. Atleast they have loads of chairs where I can stretch and sleep. It is not crowded but there are people to give you company {all the "scrub"s et al}. But I got frustrated getting from the terminal 5 to terminal 1 - these UA people conviniently closed their counter at terminal 5 and by the time i hauled all of my 2 big suitcases and the cabin baggage to terminal 1, I had missed my connecting flight by 10 mins. Yeah craptastically I seem to miss domestic connecting flights these days. I will kill somebody if they make me haul all of my luggage for a domestic connecting.

5. JFK - well, my favorite city but not my favorite airport. For one, it is too big and then there is too much traffic. You are almost certain to miss the connecting - you would reach the airport on time but your flight would be in queue to find a gate to get the passengers down for such a long time, your whole life will flash in front you by the time you get down. Now if you are starting then also you will board on time but you usually have to wait for such a long time before your plane take off that you would have forgot all the plans that you would have made.

5.

am recovering from a week long hiatus due to a really bad bout of viral fever. For the first time I am feeling light headed\relieved - after a week long of literal sleepwalking due to very high dose of antibiotics etc. Hope my body has trashed that virus to the place of no return. Dont remember when I last had such a high fever - it must have been one bloody battle inside my body.

Am flying to Columbus, OH this Sunday. After some serious negotiations I managed to stick to my vacation plan in Dec - for my marraige !! :) I am starting back on Nov 23 and then flying back on Dec 16. Hopefully I will get most of the visa work for my wife done by that time and she will be able to fly back and join me by the end of the year.

Actually I didnt want to fly at all, so that I could be around and help with the preparations for my marraige but I coudnt help but take this one. I had rejected 3-4 assignments earlier but I had to take this one as this was slipping away from my company and I had to step forward to take that role. But I hope I can manage - I have more or less wrapped up all shopping - all jeweleries\dress{saree} et al are done, the invitation card is out for printing, Hall is booked, menu is finalized and all required people are booked. {Oh man I never realized that shopping for a lady is such a costly affair and shopping for mom\sis and my fiance almost cleaned up my bank balance - phew ! one piece of jewelery wipes out a years saving - rolling my eyes - I thought I was a big spender, spending on my gucci's & d&g's but they dont come anywhere near the price tag of gold\diamond jewelery! gotta learn to keep my mouth shut and stick to nodding sideways in my future shopping trips ;)}. All thats pending is finalizing a place for my honeymoon! I will get 4-5 days for it, so I guess it will have to be in SE Asia - the likes of Mauritius, Phuket, et al. Hopefully I will zeroin on it soon. One thing that I am going to miss out is going out to all the relatives and inviting them for the marraige.

Looks like lot of people might not make it to the marriage. Best friends Nir & Imr might be stuck in China & Germany respectively on Dec 3. Other friends from work are also suspect as many of them might still be in US. Even for the people in India, it might be tough as the marriage is on a week day - Monday and the reception in on Tuesday. Coudnt help it, our astrologer woudnt let us take any other date. Hopefully many will be able to make it.

Now it is kind of hitting on me that my life is going to change a lot. I have lived this carefree life all along. I will have to start thinking, plan and start living as per plan from now on.

for future reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W00t#W
jajajaja...

1F OO h/\\/3 m0r3 time then read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

NO WAI. EIF OO 571LL have time then give this a shot: http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

w00t! w00t!

Am happy and I have no work today! Tihihihi! No I am not high, this is what boredom does to a perfectly fine bag of bones.

no I havent bought one yet but I have been thinking of buying one from a very long time.

This is the one that I have in mind right now: http://www.india.ford.com/servlet/ContentServer?cid=1178826973874&pagename=FIPL%2FDFYPage%2FDefault&c=DFYPage

But that piece of metal costs 7.8L INR. Not that I cant afford it, I can afford it but I am kind of tied with my liquidity, with my assets stuck in USD's (USD Xchange rate has been falling without an end in sight ) and in INFY stocks (which like every other stock in the IT index is falling due to a falling $).

To add to this I have this thing going on in my mind wherein I am not able to decide whether it is worth investing in a big sedan at this point of time when I am not sure of how long I am going to stick around here, most probably I will be back in US soon and I will be travelling a lot as part of my job - so I could very well do with a compact car.

Initially I was very much fascinated with Mahindra Scorpio (SUV) which also falls in the same price range but somehow now I feel that it appears too boxy and I'd rather go with a sporty sedan. Scorpio is up there in terms of performance and it runs on diesel as well ! Then I started considering Honda City - which is a simply superb city car, but I felt that it didnt have that extra bit of zip on the highway or offroad that I wanted but it is unbeatable in terms of luxury & comfort.

The fact at this point of time is that
#1. I like this car - ford fiesta
#2. I can afford this car at this point of time

well, never mind, i am coping up with it. I have been irritated umpteen number of times but never once have I lost it till now. yeah so I must be faring pretty okay till now. But there are one too many issues to resolve before I move to that happy place from where I can trudge on - the place where I was about a month back. well I see this as a investment well made after all i am investing on my future. had a tough time getting out of the rut that we had fallen about a week back but we are out of it... finally! phew and things have been smooth since 2-3 days. Things actually got too choppy but it helps that I have this ability to cut out emotions and somehow force myself start afresh by totally ignoring whatever happenned before. Yeah developing this ability to "not to keep scores" is a very critical ability to survive and nurture a relationship.

sweety: if you are reading this, I love you.

#the girl - I call her sweety :)
#she looks - she is tall and sexy ;) well she thinks that she is fat - all women think so dont they? now I know better than answer that question
ps: psst.. ladies: if you are fat it is okay, guys dont like those bony supermodels that appear on fashion shows!! and please dont ask whether you are fat? like everyother second. if you think then you probably are!!

sigh.. to be contd tomorrow. sorry I totally forgot about this post when I started photographing my kitties, yeah did I tell that I have 3 small kitties and one mommy kitty and ofcourse my dalmatian.

go twitter me at http://twitter.com/degz

phew.. I badly needed this: Do Not call registry details: http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2007/09/join-india-do-not-call-registry-stop-telemarketing-calls/

I was getting more than 5 calls per day from people selling all sorts of things. But those buggers at Hutch replied saying there is a problem please try after sometime! How convinient. I want to sue these idiots.

this was what I started writing last saturday but never got down to finishing it:
after a really long time I spent a weekend at home, just eating, lazing around, watching TV, talking to mom\dad\sis and finally got some time to catch up with you ppl! Almost all the weekends since I flew back were spent in bangalore(yeah my fiance lives there :)) and some of them were spent travelling to the places where our extended family resides - which is near Mangalore\Udupi - which is on the coastline of the southern india.