Missing Life Support System

You were on life support?

Thats just a catchy title. If you know me, you know that I'm referring to my mobile phone, which for a number of reasons, is my life support system. I lost it last night.

Again?

This is the most common question I've been asked by everyone whom I've told so far. I categorically deny it. I've never lost my phone before this. It has been out of commision for repairs and stuff, and I have been lost without it, but, at all points of time, I would be able to accurately pinpoint where my phone was.

If you are always so sure of where your phone is, how did you manage to lose it?

Yes, thats the catch. It fell out of my jacket pocket while I was riding my bike yesterday. So, I knew that its in my pocket, but when I reached office, it wasn't there. An attempt to call the number made it clear that the phone was out of reach both literally and figuratively.

Hang on, but wasn't yesterday the day when Bangalore was Mumbai'ed? What were you doing riding your bike in all that rain?

Yes, thats another story altogether. I was trying to get to office. It took me nearly an hour and a half to travel around 4 km, because of the roads jammed with water and traffic, most of which I spent talking on the phone to long lost friends (yes, thats an activity I enjoy in my spare time). Once I had got past the packed area onto clear roads, I put the phone away and reached office, covering the remaining 3-4 km in around 10 more minutes. Somewhere in this rush, the above-mentioned unfortunate event took place.

Don't tell me you went looking for it later...

Well, hopelessly optimistic fool that I am, I did. However, since the phone was unreachable, I had assumed that one out of two things must have happened:

• The phone must have fallen off into a puddle of water, and all its internal circuitry must have fried up instantly. While my phone has survived getting wet earlier, this was probably too much for it to take. It wasn't a Nokia, you know, which by the way, my next phone is likely to be.


• Someone picked it, and took out the battery immediately. This would have rendered my phone unreachable, while giving them the time to get it to appropriate people who might be able to hack into the protection that Reliance built into the phone, and get some money from it somewhere.

Since both options would basically mean that I had to buy a new phone, I had come to accept this fact.

I still went to look for it. Didn't find it, of course.

So how are you reachable now?

Office phone, Home phone, landline, online etc. Or through comments on this post. I'm too distressed by my loss right now, to give coherent thought to this. Maybe I'll put in some effort later after I've bought a new phone.

So, you're blogging after a long time, right? Had a lack of disasters lately?

What kind of friends or well wishers are you anyways? I only blog disasters in my life, and you want me to blog more?

Besides, its not a lack of disasters, but rather a lack of time to type those disasters, accountable for the lack of posts in this blog. However, I could still use some goodwill.

Ok, you've lost your life support system. You deserve to be a bit grumpy. So its ok, we're not taking offense.

Thanks for understanding. None intended.

A chain is as strong as its weakest link

Since some time, my bike had developed a new 'feature': Every now and then, the chain would come off. This would then require me to take a break from the tiresome job of riding, to get off the bike and fix it, much reminiscent of the old bicycle days. The fact that this usually gives me greasy hands is proof of how much my bike loves me...

Last night (around 12 hrs ago), the bike decided to give me even more memories, and the chain came off as usual. However, when I got around to fixing it, I realized that there was something different..

No matter how I tried, I couldn't get it fixed again. The actual reason for this was that the chain had also come off the inner sprocket.. Now try as I might, I was unable to make any significant progress, apart from getting more grease on my hands..

So I decided to drag it home, and get up early to get the bike repaired..

Now we all know how likely that is to happen.

As it turns out, I ended up taking a lift to office, and still missing the meeting for which I wanted to reach office early.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a chair!

For those who can't guess, the above is the image of the base of a chair with a broken wheel. According to some, the only crime of the chair was that I sat on it.

Of course, I deny that absolutely, and claim that it was already broken before I sat on it, but there are few who will believe that.

Thankfully, I got up just in time, and I did not have a great fall.

Of course, I also prevented history from repeating, which would have been really over the top.

Proximity Warning

Recently Jyothirmayee, Vinay and their team moved to a cubicle close to mine. Vinay has been talking about impending disasters ever since.

As if to fulfill his wish, one happened today.

For some trivial thing, Jyothi stood up and called my name. As it happens, at this time, she had two things in her hand: a cup of coffee, and her mobile phone.

As she said my name out loud, she also fumbled and dropped the things from her hand... Murphy's law has it that the coffee had to spill over her mobile.

Here is the result:

Of course, what is being shown here is the coffee having been wiped off (There is the stained handkerchief as proof).

Lucky for her that the phone didn't take any significant damage :)

A tale of the fallen toothcap

A lot of disasters have been skipped here, some of the notable ones included an accident on my bike with my brother, and a flight I was supposed to travel on getting cancelled.

However, the last one really takes the cake as being the whackiest.

Yes, this is a tooth cap. It fell out during a recent flight from Delhi back to Bangalore.

I can hear you going GROSS, but I'm sure you also understand that this means I now have a poor tooth with a huge hole in it, which lies exposed to the big bad world of bacteria without any protection, and not even a life to speak of (yes, they killed the tooth during root canal surgery). There is also a slight hint of pain involved.

This makes the impending visit to the dentinst extremely important and urgent. Priorities in increasing order are:

1. Find time to visit dentist
2. Take an appointment with a dentist
3. Find a new dentist. :(

Of course, this might have the side effect of getting all the other cavities cured before they become this serious, but that would only be a side effect.

Megalomania: Happy Birthday

Megalomania: Happy Birthday: "After thinking about it for a while we decided that the Chicken Heuristic was a little too simplistic and so we abandoned it. Using the other 3 heuristics we managed to separate the non-vegetarian noodles and the vegetarian noodles and put them in different bowls. Once that was done we found pieces of chicken in the vegetarian noodles. It was a little confusing at first, but we finally figured it out. Our heuristics hadn't worked. We now had two bowls of noodles, both containing equal amounts of the non-vegetarian and vegetarian noodles. Luckily we had some more vegetarian food and so the vegetarians didn't starve."

Since most of the sequence of events is already outlined above in sridhar's blog, let it suffice to say that I was(am) one of the vegetarians, and we just about managed to get by with what little food they had spared for us.

Add to this the fact that I hadn't slept for the past 40 hours or so just complicates matters a wee bit... albeit only slightly...

Its gaim this time

When I moved my workstation to a cubicle closer to my new team, two things went wrong.

1. The office boy screwed the keyboard PS2 plug, when trying to plug it into the socket.


2. My gaim (instant messenger client that I use for ICQ and MSN) stopped working.
   Yes, I mean stopped working. I mean, I'm not sure what went wrong, so I decided that this was an appropriate time for an upgrade. Alas, even the fresh latest install didn't work. Am back to using the sucky MSN and ICQ clients for now.. :(

Leading through vision!

One of the first things that we learnt during the company induction is the stages of leadership.

1. Learning the ropes


2. Leading through example


3. Leading through others


4. Leading through vision

While this blog itself is proof that I'm in stage 2 (just like in my career), there is a particular post which shows that I'm developing properties of stage 3 as well.

This post is here to show that I'm making small waves in stage 4 also. Yes you got that right, Leading through vision, in the disaster zone.

Here go some small incidences that prompt me to make this statement:

• So I got myself a website. That is, I purchased a domain name and some web-space from DJ. The intention was that I would be putting up my family tree on the net. So, the root of the website still points to this blog. However, eventually I did get around to installing some family tree software on the website. Hey, what do you know, barely 2 days within my getting the family tree started, something happened, that I've not heard happen to anyone at all. DJ's web space provider went down! So, I thought that it must be some temporary problem, but eventually it became clear that my site was not coming up anytime soon. As it turns out, one of the main stake-holders of the provider had gone underground with all the money, and the rest of the company was about to declare bankruptcy or something like that.. Of course, DJ did make alternate arrangements faster than humanly possible and he gets full credit for that... After all, its not his fault that he took me on as a customer.


• So I thought that only my computer behaves wierd. However, one day, even Sridhar was naratting that his computer was behaving completely wierd, in a way he has never seen it behave before... Apparently his shell used to exit everytime he did a "cd". Now does that rock, or what!


• Ok, I know this is over the top, but DJ actually blamed the Tsunami on me, in a joke one day... Now that is definitely over the top. I disclaim it completely. It wasn't my fault.

Now, if only my career was progressing as fast... 8-|

No food once more.

Another day, same mistake.

Because of the late breakfast that I had, I didn't feel like having lunch at the normal lunch time.. Asif, Sridhar and DJ were going to Forum for lunch once again, so I just asked them to get me a burger or something.

Guess what, they forgot.

I wasn't even surprised or shocked at this.. Its just that I didn't think that three people would forget me like this.

I feel like shutting these people in some room, and leaving them without food for a month.. However, I'm too much of a nice guy to actually try that....

Being a nice guy doesn't take away the anger, though.

The Ripper

What happened today is one of the greatest proofs of the fact that I'm a disaster zone.

So, we decided to go out for lunch, instead of eating in the office. So, we walked down and were getting into Mrinal's car. Just as I was sitting in the car, I heard a rip.

Guess what! It was nothing but my jeans. Now, the surprising part ofcourse is, how can someone's jeans tear, without any provocation whatsoever..

QED.