Honey, Smileys Have Taken Over the Internet!

smiley
Originally uploaded by sjanani.

Yes they really have! I seem to see them wherever I go. Initially they were cute, I remember when I first IMed I was very excited to see my keystrokes get translated automatically to happy yellow faces. And then someone sent me an ecard filled with bouncy faces smiling all over the screen and that made my day.

Now this



stares at me wherever I go and is totally uncute! mwah!

I realise that I stand accused too. I liberally sprinkle :-) and :-( in whatever I write and sometimes with extra braces for added emphasis too. This is how my typical email looks like

Hey ABC! :-) Great to hear from you! :-) So how is blah blah doing? Still ..... for her? ;-) I knew zzzzz zzzzz when yyyy!! :-) Pity about that qwerty asdfgh though! :-((( yada yada yada :-) Gtg now, lotsa work to do! :-(((
Ok take care. :-)

And now that I think about it are they really that bad? How else am I going to get my toothy grin on paper? Agreed I don't want "10000 FREE smileys" doing gyrations that I wouldn't dream of doing in real life, but the occasional emoticon gets my seal of approval! When I read something from someone with smileys in them, I picture them smiling while they type it and hey that's a nice feeling. They can be pretty useful too, you can get away with the most libelous of comments if it's followed by a smiley - that way you get to say what you want to say albeit with the "I was just kidding" tone. :-)

There are emoticons for about everything nowadays, especially with the newest Yahoo messenger. My favourite is this MIB one - no smile, no frown, just a pair of coolers. Another cute one is the praying one. (Nopes, don't know the key strokes of either). Somehow the classy elegance of Yahoo emoticons is missing in other places that support smileys - orkut for instance. Yeah its round, yellow and has a pair of eyes and a mouth, but not the same thing!

Btw, I got this while checking my mail. Quick go and vote now! :-)

Cities and Celebs

Yesterday while stuck in a nasty traffic jam I got to thinking about the various places I've lived in, visited or just heard of. And then I espied Kajol in this huge hoarding for WhirlPool which made me think about celebrities and thats the feed to this post - Which famous personality do cities resemble?

Bombay is Bipasha Basu - racy, seductive with an active night life.

Delhi is perhaps Inzamam ul Haq - huge and powerful, asserting the given leadership.

Hyderabad is just like her own Sania Mirza - not much of a big thing right now, but growing with each day.

Bangalore reminds of SRK - right now the biggest phenomenon in India and here to stay!

Kolkata would be Joel Spolsky - knowledgeable and having a way with words.

Pune is Pulela Gopichand - good stuff with an unpolluted air.

Trivandrum equates to Baichung Bhutia - I know nothing except the name!

And last but not the least, Madras is definitely Rachael Green (aka Jennifer Aniston in her other life) - very hot and close to my heart! :-)

So anything else you have to suggest?

I Don't Like You Any More!

Everyday we touch, and I feel your presence,
But the fondness is somehow absent.

You try to clear things up for me, and widen perspectives,
But I always see through you.

You spend the day with me, every moment of light,
But you never realise that my dreams are fine without you.

Yet you leave a mark on me,
That I try hard to remove.

Negatives seem to increase with time,
And I don't care too much for plusses too.

Looking forward to the day I get rid of you,
And move to contact lenses!

:-)

Of Writing and of Pens

I discovered something very startling today, well not so much startling as lamentable, actually its neither pathetic nor apathetic, anyways I just realised that I hardly ever write or read anything that's written nowadays.

Ok don't get me wrong here - I know I read lots and lots of lines of code and their asociated documentation and I write a little bit of code too and even lesser documentation and I also do this blog thing everyday both reading and (lesser amount of) writing, and then there are newspapers, mags, books yada yada yada. But how much of it is written - written as in "handwritten on a paper with a pen"?

This profound thought struck me today morning when I got off the auto and I needed change to pay the auto guy. The nearest shop was a stationery shop and I bought the cheapest thing possible to get change(I figured they won't take too kindly to buying an envelope and then demanding change for 100 bucks). Thats when it happened bammm! - Thats the noise that realization made when it struck me that it was ages since I had bought a pen!

I had always had this fascination for pens since the time I was a kid. As a kid I awaited for the graduation from pencil to pen with great excitement. Unfortunately for me, my school permitted us to use pens only at a significantly higher age than other schools. I remember getting all worried 'coz some of my younger cousins were usings pens at school while I was still the kiddo with pencils. And then the pen shopping - I went with an army of cousins each with their expert opinion on how the nib should be and what kind of ink to buy(yes, it was still the age of fountain pens). Ball point pens were taboo. And then gradually the experimentation with ball point pens and finding out they are snazzier, less messier and a whole lot easier. During my days at college I had this thing for a particular kind of PaperMate pens that were available in very select shops in Chennai and totally unavailable in Pilani. During the holidays I would stock on them to last me for a whole semester. In the middle, I also developed a fancy for gel pens and during my whole second year I used nothing else. Over all these years I held on to my Parker fountain pen though - refusing to buy notebooks from Nutan 'coz they would blot when I used it!

And now pens don't interest me anymore! :-( I dutifully carry a scribble pad and pen to all the meetings I go to, but I don't do anything with my pen except to chew on the end or to occasionally doodle in order to stay awake. And I don't even know where my beloved Parker is.

I miss the age of notebooks, pens and the like. I want to write something on paper regularly. Maybe I should write my blog on paper everyday and "actually" post it to the few people who read it. :-) And I want to read what other people write on paper - letters would be nice, love letters would be nicer still! ;-)

Weekends

Hyderabad treats me well, specially during the weekends! My roomie K and I live for weekends alone, literally starting the countdown from Monday itself. My weekend begins at 11 on Saturday. Coffee in one hand, the Hindu on the other and the remote squeezed in the middle (defying all laws of Physics) I triple task for a while lazily. The movie section of the paper is scanned thoroughly, taking into consideration all kinds of theatres across the whole city and after much delibration, debate and analysis, we ALWAYS mutually come to the conclusion to go to some movie in Prasads(for which we would have booked tickets via the Net on the previous week itself). Then we hurry to take bath, get ready, throw together something for lunch and then set out for the movie. After the movie the obvious destination is Eat Street(an open air Food Court kinda thing overlooking the lake). There we always take a table closest to the lake, enjoying the cool breeze and the wonderful view(it has to be seen to be believed!) - aaah, contentment! We stay there for as much time possible and after a dinner in such wonderful conditions we trudge home unwilligly(well not exactly trudge, we take an auto, but you get the point right!). And Saturday nite there is always some movie like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai that keeps K occupied and I curl with some book that I haven't had time to read earlier.

Sunday dawns bright, clear and lazier than ever. Again coffee, Hindu(the Sunday magazine is an extra treat) and the umpteen countdown shows on various channels, with argument aplenty as to whether xyz movie deserves the first place its been assigned or not. Then there is this "week that was" extra long marathon show of Will & Grace, which I watch religiously, despite them being re-re-reruns and despite having watched them all the previous week. And then Hidden Hills and then "week that was" F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Bath and lunch are squeezed in between and sometimes an afternoon siesta too. Of course after a tiring day we can't be expected to cook dinner and off we go to one of the many restaurants we have "discovered" in the city.

Another glorious weekend come to an end! :-(

And in case you are wondering which movie I saw this weekend - nopes, we spent Saturday "family shopping"(that means shopping for gifts for your family back at home you pervert! ;-)). And did we go to Eat Street - yes we did, but left in less than half an hour due to crowd and other associated and non-associated reasons. And Will & Grace and Friends on Sunday - haha, I am in office right now. "Dinner outside?" you might ask - K is attending a colleague's wedding reception today! :-(

Well, as they say, "You win some, you lose some!"

A hot Cuppa Coffee...

Sometimes I feel that coffee is the elixir of life, especially while@work. Many a time I have pondered over ponderous problems unsuccessfully, only to have realization strike me whilst on my coffee break. I usually take my coffee breaks with G and though sometimes we discuss work related stuff, I never bring my coffee to my desk. We have this tiny balcony in our office, conveniently near the vending machine and the best part is that - it overlooks Hussain Sagar lake(the Hussain Sagar lake shall henceforth be referred to on my blog as just "the lake"). It has quite the picture postcard view - with a long road, and then a train track and then the stretching lake. And when it's raining - what could be better than watching the rain on the lake while sipping a hot cuppa coffee?

South Indians, particularly the Thamizh, are famous for their filter coffee(or as people like to call it - kaapi, though I always feel it should be kaaphi or kaafi). My parents can't get through for even a day without their daily dose. In fact, when my aunt went to US, one of her biggest complaints was that there was no filter coffee available there! Dark, thick, foamy and in the traditional dabara-tumbler combi, it's the first thing you are offered when you visit someone. God save you if you don't drink coffee - Moi has had lots of experiences in this arena. I like my coffee "just so" and in the whole world only Amma know knows how it make it, not even me and so I try to refuse coffee wherever I go. Their first expression is of disbelief and after they are convinced I am not kidding, there's the usual entreaty of having "just half a cup" - as though the only thing I am concerned about is having a full cup of coffee!

I don't care much for its American counterpart espresso too! Cappuchino and the rest of the gang are alright. And I absolutely love cold coffee - cool and ivigorating at the same time. If it has ice cream too, mmmmmmm! :-)

There are a lot of these "coffee pubs" that have sprung up all over and I love this kind of pub-hopping! :-) (Not that I do the other kind of pub hopping, but anyways...) They are a great place for meeting friends - the ambience is good, no noise, cheap(how expensive could coffee get?) and most importantly they don't kick out after you finish! For the same reasons, it is a very ideal place to meet your bf if you are a gal or your girl if you are a guy or for that matter your bf if you are guy and your gf if you are a girl too! ;-) (Yeah I am watching a lot of Will & Grace! :-))

Wokay, its time for me to get high on a cuppa coffee right now and finish this kutti but irritating work so that I don't have to work during the weekend! "To me, everybody"! :-)

Wheee! :-)

The reason I am going "wheee" is 'coz outgoing in my mobile has atlastttt been restored! :-) I was going "noooooooo! :-(" a week back when it was barred (for lack of submitting a document not for the reason that jumps to your mind!). After daily phone calls to Airtel Customer Care, lots of misdirections, some amount of haggling, lots of threatening, many mails to my HR, 3 visits to the Airtel showroom nearby, more haggling and threats face-to-face and a final call to Customer Care, my outgoing was restored! I feel like I have really earned it. Watch out world, I am connected now!!!

The last week was terrible - I had to rely on incoming calls totally for my quota of phone calls. And realization dawned that I made more calls than receiving! The worst part was I wasn't even able to give missed calls to people and trick them into calling me back. I wallowed in self pity the whole time, but now that I am back into the game, I don't care! :-)

A lot of people used this opportunity to make snide remarks at my mobile(yeah right, it was some fault in the mobile that kept me disconnected, duh!) and asked in a even "snidier" tone about when I am trading it in for a snazzier one. Granted, I own a lowly Nokia 3315, but I really like my phone. Been through a lot with it - in Bangalore, Pilani, Chennai and now in Hyderabad. Senti stuff apart, I have no complaints with my phone. Very sturdy and suited for butterfingers me - only recently I managed to get a crack on its pane! And I like the clear display on the panel so that I know by just looking whether the phone is switched on, do I have missed calls etc.

So for all you people out there who armed with "cell sengal" jokes - pbbbtttt!!!

"I've got the power hey yeah heh
I've got the power
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh yeah-eah-eah-eah-eah-eah
I've got the power"

:-)