Mordor anniversary

Just another month to go .... Yeehaa ! I will be completing one year in my current company.

Had to scrape through the last few months , twas horrible .

Now I can update my resume and post it all over the place  !! One year is a reasonable looking time in anyone's CV.

Getting a new job isn't a big deal for someone with 6 yrs of experience , but finding the right one is a dark art.

Cookie

Ah ,the naughty one . There has been no peace in this house since she has arrived . But I like it this way .

Either , one of us is running after her to wrest socks out of the hellish jaws , or we are busy trying to keep her away from gnawing something/someone else.

A vampirish smile with sweet looking eyes which are waiting for right time and right body part to pounce at. Package also features a deep growling sound with a dolby woofer enabled bass booster.

Loves plastic and suspicious looking items like fur toys, sprite bottles and electrical wires.
WTF, BOFH excuse #97 may be true after all !!! (Small animal kamikaze attack on computer power supplies)

Can I get some sleep, please ?

F**king pissed at this damned night shift. Got to do it for at least 2 months every year . Sucks big time , coz I can't sleep during daytime . Heat and a lot of noise.

In this pathetic shit of a city , everyone likes to blare horns and want to go top speed in side alleys .
It's supposed to be a side alley in a residential area , you a***les ! Don't they know people like peace , more than the sound of fart growling engines ?!!
Has anyone here heard of a concept called noise pollution ? Forget the decibel meter , measure this damned noise on the Richter scale.

Especially auto drivers . Don't know what bloody vintage those rickshaws come from , their engines grumble like those road drilling machines.
Must be pouring 50% kerosene or something. Makes me have weird dreams about sucking their brain jelly out and squashing it. Dreams about disemboweling them all and becoming a martyr .

Plus , its hot as hell in the afternoons.
So that's the time the power goes off. Load shedding, i guess. Nice.
The gay sadists in the power corp must be having fun imagining sweat dripping bodies , when they flip the switch.

Top that up with loads of work in the office. I am really having a hell of a bad time these days.
Cherry on the topping ? Misery knows no company.

Ahh, power's back on . Sweat's drying . Will post this now and try get some sleep again .
4th installment today.

Nightlife

The biggest myth about this place is that it has a nightlife .
Nightlife ?? this place f**king sucks !

There isn't anyone on the roads after 10pm. Even on the main/arterial roads , you will find very few people on the roads.

I stay in jayanagar , I went to HSR layout yesterday and saw the same thing there.
10pm in HSR and the place looks like a ghost town.

I miss my old Bbay ...

Bus Travel

Auto travel was getting really expensive .

Thought I'll go by bus from Jayanagar to Majestic. Conveniently there is a bus stand right opposite my hotel.
Asked a couple of people at the bus stand for the bus number for the route( Routes on buses are printed in Kannada )
After couple of "Goth Illa's" and "Nahin maloom's" , I get the answer.

Waited for a couple of minutes , and here comes a bus with that number.
A couple of people climb before me , ask the driver something and suddenly want to get down.
Meanwhile I am pushed into the narrow entrance of the bus by the crowd behind me .
I managed to get into the bus , but I feel something odd . I check my denim pockets and my cell is missing !
Well , I thought it must have fallen down while climbing into the bus. I get down from the bus and check the bus stand , it isn't there.
I go into the hotel and called my cell , it rings and someone picks up , Yaay!
I tell him that it's my cell and ask him where he is . He tells me he's in the bus and will be getting down at Majestic.

I caught an auto , reach Majestic and call my number . The message says my cell has been switched off. I now realize what had happened , I vaguely try my number many many times .
I come back dejected to my hotel room , and for the next couple of hours retry my number.
It feels like a part of you has been cut off , and an n72 did not come cheap.
I call my sister and tell her about this . She had noted down the IMEI id numbers of all our phones . It is possible to track down the thief with that number , she says.

Happily I went to the police station , told the SI about this and he says that I probably lost the cellphone. He isn't ready to lodge an FIR , says instead of that I can write a signed handwritten note and he will take care of it . I wrote the note and I described the entire incident and then he tells me , it is impossible to catch cellphone thieves ! wow !

This has never happened to me when commuting in extremely crowded local trains or buses in Mumbai .
This was my first week in this city . Since then I have never travelled by local bus , nor plan on doing so in the future and neither will I buy an expensive cell.

Autowallahs

Finding an autowallah ready to go by the meter , is a good way to test the limits of your patience.

This would be my advice :

1> Never get into an auto without telling him to go by meter. Get down if he does not agree to meter and names his price . This can be frustrating at times , but follow this as a matter of principle.
2> Do not catch Autos standing outside Shopping Malls and IT companies . Walk along the road and catch a passing one.
3> Be wary of any "shortcuts" taken by the autowallah , he is lengthening your ride to increase fare.

The Language barrier

Everyone here understands and can speak Hindi or English.
But they choose to speak in one of the local languages when in a group , and not in hindi/english , which would be understood by the entire group.

Imagine this , you are with a group of 3, including yourself. The two are merrily chatting in a local lingo , cracking some jokes and you don't have a bloody clue on what's going on !

This is pretty common here , but can get worse. You can't help wonder ,they could be talking and joking about you !

This has driven me to learn the local lingo , I can already understand and speak some of it.
Very helpful with autowallahs ...

Mordor

Mordor is the hellish place from Tokien's middle earth. The closest resemblance to this in the real world , is a place called Blore. This is the place where I live and work.



For an IT professional , this place offers limitless possibilities . About my specialization (Storage/Virtualization) , they say "Saare storage ke raaste yaahaan se jaate hain ".

If you want to move ahead in your career , this is the place to be. Staying in Mumbai/Pune won't take you there fast enough.

That is the only good thing that I have seen so far about this place .
There may be more , and perhaps I will know later what they are( and keep adding them)

I really don't mean this to be a hate-column . My opinion is purely based on my upbringing and the Mumbai culture that I come from .