Observations

Two random things that come to mind...as of now

1) Are pets, hmmm specifically dogs, a reflection of their owner/s...by that i refer to the person/ family's personalities and way of life etc

2) When someone snores (snoring patterns), does it tell you something about that person?

Thoughts, opinions and the like are welcome :)

System shutdown

I think most of us have faced this at some point in our lives

When you've been working on your PCs, laptops...it's been a long day of staring into the screen

Much effort has gone into your excel sheets, word pages, programming stuff etc etc

You then come to the end of the day, thinking, 'ah, i can finally close this'

Then you click on the explorer button to 'shut down/turn off' the system

It then says, 'saving data', and then quickly progresses to 'shutting down' and then you're just about to take a deep breath, or the deep breath is half held when...

The shutting down process has taken more than a minute...you wait cursing the damn microsoft updates, thinking these things could not have better timing! And yet your damn computer has you waiting and waiting and waiting 

You finally think to yourself, 'enough is enough...f#&$ this', pull the plug and be done with it

Why am I talking about this at length? Well it's happening to me as well...only difference is that it's my brain system that refuses to shutdown and sleep! and no plug to pull and be done with it!

Morbid? 

Errors

Do pardon the errors in earlier posts

Its just that one rarely knows what to write on

And when the thought comes, one has to dash off immediately

Before the thought slips out

Am sure this happens to all

And one also doesn't like to go back and revise

To keep with the authenticity of the post :)

Cheers!

a festive christmas

or is it?

otherwise the busiest, most crowded street in town

Universal pronunciation

What really gets me riled up in the land where the supposed 'universal' language came about, is that the people have way too many ways of pronouncing a damn word in their own little 'universal' dimension. So why does one call it the universal language when there's no one universal way of pronouncing the same words that make up the won

So what i'd like to know:

1) Tomato: To-mat-o, To-maa-to, To-may-to
2) Gross: G-ross, G-roce

Only to name a couple!

Losing faith in 'being polite'

My first time in a dorm, with other poeple from various countries and backgrounds...so far so good; so i thought! (they're lovely, though). So we're six of us in the dorm and share a hallway and a kitchen...thankfully, each of us have our own rooms, having very thin walls doesnt help the cause though...but i'm not complaining.

The area of my concern is the main door to our flat. The problem occurs when someone enters or leaves the flat. It's one of those things that in various scenarios will make you go so:

1) If you're sleeping, and the door closes, it'll make you get up with a frightening fit

2) You're writing away furiously into your book/paper; either a love note, or a hate note or penning down thoughts for an upcoming assignment...the unexpected occurs and the next thing you know, your pen's been flung to the farthest end of the flat OR the next time you're cleaning the top shelves, you find a bunch of them there, not knowing how they got there in the first place

3) You're using your laptop doing an eletronic version of the things listed in point 2 and then the door shuts and you furiously look at the room door, then when you look back into the screen, it looks something like this...'jhfoiy ure0u reu yth;ioftbru yrj mbrp yureu pfj hlyib0-E P'

So i decide that it's high time for me to do something about this...For most of the people who know me very well, they can vouch for the fact that i can be a stickler when it comes to being polite...yes, so i hate telling things as they are, being blunt etc etc...and try and be the 'nice'person (well most of the time) and avoid unpleasantness.

I casually mention something about this to a flatmate who vigourously nods her head, (she and one more fellow roomie to share my sentiment about the door), when we hear the darned 'S-H-U-D-O-O-M ', leaving a thundering after effect!

And then i say to myself,enough is enough, storm into my room and make a poster that reads, (politely, mind you), 'please shut the main door gently', go to the common area to pin it up on the message board...only to hear a 'S-H-U-D-O-O-M ' after a couple of hours!

So then, as if to defy the laws of the hall office, i scribble over the Important Notices put up by the hall manager on the darn main door itself, thinking ok, now everyone WILL have to read the damn 'plead' now, get back into my room thinking this has to work and guess what happened next................

the oldest 27 year old

back to school, always wanted to be a student for the rest of my life
obviously selectively forgot the exam fever i always have
ok so i'm growing older, but hey my memory not supposed to be giving up on me so soon
from all that i've read, 35 years is when one would start questioning their memory or attention span...

well, i guess my attention span is more of a problem...
if i were a child growing up in today's world, i'd be labelled off as someone with an 'attention deficit disorder'
fellow sufferers like me take comfort in the fact that it's the mark of a true genius...and for a long time i believed in that...

not so sure about that anymore!
come January and results, i'll finally figure that i am a genius...
or maybe not... gulp!

travelogue

So my journey, as people would have it begins at the damned airport...there’s this amazingly long line to get baggages screened...around 33 people in front of me...so i kill almost an hour in that darned line, thinking that i could have just left my bags there and spent more time with my folks and friends...but unfortunately life’s never bloody fair!

So then i finally get the baggage screening done only to realise that i have to wait in yet another queue to do my check-in. Good thing was that the line moved fast. So i approach the counter and give the lady my passport and ticket and tell her that i have 2 bags to be checked in. I put the heavier suitcase on the weighing scale first and she tells me that i cannot take the bag coz UK labour states that bags over 32 kilos aren’t allowed on board. Therefore i have one of 2 options; one being i miss my flight and take another one...(this, - the stupid dimwit, knowing that i’m a student and i can’t afford another ticket) and the other being that i get someone to reach the bags to me.

It’s now 12:05 am and the check-in counter shuts by 12:45...so i rush with all my stupid bags on the trolley which refuses to move in spurts, manage to find the nearest payphone...call home and ask them to rush with an empty bag, so that i can distribute the weight of the bag.

Rush back to the Jet counter and ask one of the attendants to give me an extra 5 minutes to redistribute my stuff...and the pompous bum tells me, that’s only IF they reach and shows me his watch which reads 12:20...and tells me that i need to take the matter up with the superviser

Superviser tells me that i dont need those extra bags (which finally arrive, thanks to Smita, Nitin and Ameya), that she would pass my bags through...and so the good part of being held up with the bags and all that, apart from me at the edge, but seeming to be the epitomy of calm, i got to do an express immigration!! And was ‘escorted’ to the aircraft

Sat next to 2 gujjus from london...mommy gujju was worried about me travelling alone for the first time to england, so invited me home for dhokla ne thepla (no jokes), while baby gujju (in her eccent) tells me how life is ‘osum’ in England

So far so good, caught 2 movies on the flight, one glass of wine, 5 hours of sleep and a crick in the neck...apart from that flight was swell...6:45 in the morning London time, captain announces that we are about to land and i still see the clouds...so i figure that we still have about 20 minutes to land and i tell baby gujju to wake me up in 15 minutes...so she dutifully does that...and we still are in the clouds and suddnely i feel a thud and a glimpse of a building...and realise that its ‘bloody fawggy’

Get to terminal 3 and go to immigration...didnt have a problem, got it done in 15 mins and headed towards baggage claim, where lots of Indian students helping fellow Indian students with bags and all that...and ironically i find someone who’s as light as me, if not lighter to help me and vice-versa for her J

So there i’m headed with around 50 kilos in all towards the bus station(had no problem finding that, coz there were university reps stationed all over the airport) So here’s this gargantuan of a man, who looks mightily annoyed and unfortunately for him, he goes to load my suitcase first(remember the one that weighs 40kilos!) and screams ‘blimey what have u got inis?’; gives me the dirtiest of looks, ‘charge ye 2 pouns ikstraa fo tha’. Well so while the rest shell out 18GBP, i’m ready with my 20 pound note and the sweetie that he was, gave me 2 back and says that he forgives me and welcomes me to England

So then the journey to Oxford begins...initally nothing out of the ordinary...didnt understand why people fuss about England and all that...the drive was very reminescent of the Bombay-Pune expressway, right down to the phool,jhaad and paudas...they all look the bloody same...or so you would think...just as you exit Heathrow and move closer to the countryside, you initially see the occasional cottage or two with bircks and tiled roofs and a couple of chimneys sticking out

Then you see the meadows and little hillocks a la Pride and Prejudice and lo! There are the fat (maybe juicy for all ye non-veggies) sheep grazing with the hounds watching over them (God knows from what...unless the hounds are trained to chase away Volvo buses from those priceless sheeps!)

So basically Oxford is filled with the cottages i described earlier, looks very Victorian...the playhouses, and the old University buildings...architects’ field day here! People here are very friendly , helpful and everyone smiles at each other, there’s always a hello, thank you, welcomes, sorry etc etc etc...they’re just amazingly polite...i feel at home here (now, that is after spending 3 days and things seeming more familiar day after day)J

But truly this place is truly a global village...there are people from every corner of the world...scholarly, wise , eager to learn and meet other people...(maybe not the undergrads, they’re just drunk all the time)

I’ve made friends with people of so many nationalities that i never thought i’d meet...Kenya, Germany, a few English, Danish, Chinese, so for now, things are good.

So for now, i’m making the most of the calm before the storm...more later people!

Cheers!