Monday, March 28, 2011

CENTURY!!!

Here it is… My 100th Post on this blog… a big MILESTONE…

Ever since I can remember, I have never missed the Filmfare awards night and every time after watching it, I would dream of giving a Thank You speech someday. As there is no chance of giving the speech on the Filmfare platform, let me have the honor on my Blog platform (which holds equal importance in my life now)
"First of all, I would like to thank God (look upwards) for giving me enough time to put all junk in my head in words and irritate others. Then, I would like to thank someone who introduced this concept to me. He is none other than my husband's mother-in-law's daughter-in-law's husband. His was the first blog ever that I read and was awestruck to see that he can write such beautifully and then I tried to imitate him and created my own blog (that has been a practice since childhood- imitating him). Unlike me, he is such a sensible person and even more sensible writer. Though, at this moment, I have more number of posts than his but if you want quality and not the quantity, you can refer to his blog (but that does not mean that you have to completely ignore mine).
After him, I would like to thank those people who read my blog and on top of it; they congratulate me on my writing skills. Those who tell me this on my face, I can clearly look into their eyes and tell what's going on in their minds ('how much rubbish this girl can write and when will she stop???!!!'). But still, a big thanks to all of them for being kind enough to me. Then came a time, when I started publishing my every new post on my FB profile and that was the height of irritation caused by me to my FB friends. Still, there are people who take the onus of clicking on that 'Like' button and encourage me to continue with my efforts. They deserve another Thank You from my side. Love you guys.
A partial Thank You to my company. Partial, because, I can open the blogger dashboard but can't view my own blog (actually, I can't view any blog). So, Thank You for enabling the blogger dashboard so that I can atleast post my rumblings without waiting to reach home. And No Thank You for disabling the blogs.
Now, a Thank You to Anjana Ma'am, Dhaam Ma'am and John Sir and other English teachers who taught me this wonderful language and favored me way too much over other students by overlooking my grammatical mistakes which greatly helped me in learning and loving this language, unlike Mathematics, where almost all my teachers pointed out my minute mistakes, which lead me to hate that subject. I mean, I know 2+2 =4 and not 40, but at times, you ought to give a benefit of doubt to the poor child so that she can atleast love the subject. You don't have to point out every mistake committed.
And how could I forget my parents. Thank You mummy for making me cram the complex spellings during my kindergarten days. Thank You papa for subscribing to Reader's Digest (which I never read, except Fun Sections) and buying Champak comic book in English, rather than Hindi.
It was not easy to achieve this milestone. I hope that I would continue entertaining (read: irritating) you guys forever and achieve more milestones. Thanks for being with me and undergoing the torture of this very short Thank You speech (I am going to cry now). Take care"

Friday, March 18, 2011

AKHIR KYUN???

I always wondered what relatives are meant for… No, I know they are "the relatives"… but they are programmed in one specific way (that's what I wonder about) They have standard questions to ask as per the status of the victim. Here is my research report:
1. If A (from here on, A = victim) is in 10th standard:
a)    "When are your board exams starting from?"
b)    "What subjects are you taking in 11th?"
2. If A has appeared in the 10th board exams and is trying to relax for sometime after those grueling exams (the same questions are used when A has got over the 12th board exams):
a)    "When are your results coming",
b)    "Board results are out na, how much did you score?"
3. If A is in 12th standard:
a)    "What are your subjects?" (Point to be noted: they must have already asked this question when A was in 11th standard, but they tend to repeat it to get on to the next question)
b)    "What are you going to do for your graduation? B.Sc. or engineering (for Science section) / B.Com or CA preparation (for Commerce section) /B.A. (for Arts section)?"
c)    "Which college did you get into?"
4. If A is in 3rd/final year of graduation:
a)    "What are you going to do for PG? MBA??" (This time, section does not matter)
5. If A's placement session is about to start in PG course:
a)    "Which company did you get in (??!!)?"
6. If A's placement session is in progress:
a)    "Which company did you get in (??!!)?"
7. If A's placement session has ended:
a)    "Which company did you get in (??!!)?"
(They are more concerned for A to get placed than A's parents or probably A him/herself)
8. If A is in job (this question will be asked irrespective of A being in job before or after PG):
a)    "When are you getting married (wink)?"
b)    "Have you already found someone in office (wink)?"
9. If A has just got married:
a)    "When are you giving us the good news (wink)??"
10. If A has 1 kid and is celebrating his/her first birthday:
a)    "When are we getting the good news next time (?????)??"
Once A has got 2 kids, the relatives' standard question bank runs out of any more questions and they apparently lose any interest in A's life. Still, some relatives do find out random questions based on the personal level of (dis)liking for A.
PS: all my dear relatives please don't take this on dil pe…. That's how relatives are programmed by God… and no one should question HIM (I have already started using the standard question bank on those A's who have reached 3rd level of status and occasionally on those who are on 8th level of status)
PPS: here relatives mean- people generally over 40 years of age…
PPPS: I am not in any mood to work today and so lot of research ideas are wandering in my little mind

Thursday, March 17, 2011

??

Just now I got confused… My closest friend who is working as an Assistant Director and Creative Director and what not in Bollywood sends me a simple SMS in the morning, just when I was getting down from my office bus to enter the hell, saying: "M in hospital..."
All panicky, I call her up to enquire as to what has happened and there she is calmly narrating how she met with the accident and has a broken wrist and had undergone a surgery yesterday. I know she has broken each part of her body till now atleast once and is unaware of the words like pain and fear but she has a badly broken wrist today. Finally, on a happy note we ended the call… (Happy, 'coz, she hates being sad and since there is no pain and she was happy to 'see' her surgery while the doctors operated on her wrist)
Just now she sends me another SMS informing me that Johnny Lever and Gulshan Grover had come to see her and are taking care of her bills (due to urgency she was admitted to one of  the most popular and thus costly, hospitals). I should ideally not be happy or excited since my friend is in the hospital and have a broken wrist. But here I am replying to her SMS that "WOW... please tell Johnny Lever that I loved him in Baazigar"… As soon as I sent that SMS, I felt so bad [read: guilty]...
Why do Bollywood and people related to this industry always excites me??!!!
I wish my friend gets well very soon…

Unhelpful “Help”

I am talking about the tab Help in a particular computer application or what comes once you press F1 on your computer keyboard. At times, you get such amazing help from this tab that you actually can make a nuclear weapon without any prior knowledge about what is 'nuclear' and what is 'weapon'. But at times, it does NOT help you AT ALL. You keep on keying in all keywords to search for the criteria or run through the entire Index table but it does not respond, apart from "No matching items found". On such occasions, even if you try to search for Nuclear Weapon definition in its very own Help manual, you will end up getting results like "Clean and Clear" L
Now, don't go by the literal example of nuclear weapon and one of the biggest PJ of clean and clear (I am just too furious today with this feature and so you have this example coming in from me)… The day at office started with my boss introducing his idea of giving the front end designed page for all the new services for which we give SRS to our development team, by creating the forms/pages in HTML, thus saving their effort in coding for such forms. He showed me some websites where we can create such HTML pages within five minutes. He also suggested a freeware where we can import such HTML pages and link it to some database, which could be really helpful for our development team in reducing their efforts. He suggested me to do some R&D on that freeware using the HELP to do such linking.
Happily I designed the forms with all my creativity, imported them to this freeware and started playing around with various buttons and options. I was playing around since I assumed that whenever I would get stuck, F1 will help me out. So till then I must put in my genuine efforts to learn this petty freeware. Finally the time came when I had to press F1 and believe me or not, I have spent almost 2.5 hours on that tab and had not got even one single meaningful information out of it….!!!
Have typed the keywords in all permutations and combinations, have gone through the entire Index, Glossary and Content table… have lost my precious forms created almost 5 times… had tediously designed them in this very freeware… have discovered such features which I never intended to BUT not what I was searching for… On top that, I know that whatever I am searching for will turn out to be the simplest feature to be implemented and then I will bang my head on this monitor…
This post could have been much shorter than this but since I don't want to go back to that HELP and I need some break, I am putting in more time and lines in this post…

Monday, March 7, 2011

Long Time, No See....

Appraisal time is here again. Lot of stress on my mind to mention two significant accomplishments during the appraisal period; what were the facilitating factors which helped me perform and what were the limiting factors… what are the comments which I would want to give to my company… This is the third time that I am filling these fields and every time it looks as if I am a fresher. I had repeated the same comments this year as well. I still have not learnt how to mention limiting factors in the professionally subdued language. I have to check it again and again before final submission.
By the way, I was just going through the statistics of my blog and found out something important. As an analyst, I ought to join the dots and get some information out of the loose ends; so please don't mind if you find out my 'analysis' as a complete waste. The most viewed/visited post of mine till now is the Last Day at Office and the second place is held by Self Appraisal post. And this Self Appraisal post has gained its popularity during this time of the year: appraisal time. But the Last Day at Office has been the winner since the day it had been published. I guess people get to this post of mine when they must have been searching for the suitable "last day" mail of theirs in the office on Google (only to find out that the last day mentioned there is absolutely different from what they have been searching for J )
It has been almost a month that I have last written. Had been neck deep buried with work at office, lot and lot of things happening at home and left with absolutely no time to stop and write.
Biggest news to share: my best friends are now parents of a healthy baby boy named as Aiman- meaning Fearless. I regularly take a look at his pictures before I start my work at office. It's like a feel good factor. Newborns- they have so many things at their disposal these days (this statement made me realize that I am growing old and that I belong to such an old generation L). Yesterday, we were searching for some suitable gift for another baby- my cousin also became a dad recently (two more ladies to deliver in coming months- year 2010 and 2011 looks like the most auspicious years I guess). I was surprised to see the kids section. Such pretty small things, but mind you, none of them can be called inexpensive. Bed covers fitted with a jersey, tiny little clothes, shoes, washing machine, bottles, sterilizers, lullaby players, cots, prams and what not. My sister-in-law informed me of a gym for babies this morning!!!! Gosh…. All of them pretty enough to lure any parent to buy them even if they may not need them. At the end, I got confused and decided to revisit the shops to finally buy something suitable later.
Holi is round the corner and this would be the third year in a row without 'playing' holi. But I am expecting my favorite delicacies of Holi from my mom- Gujiya and Papdi. That would help for some time… Till my next post, stay fit and stay happy… CHEERS!!!