Plan A Update

Update:

I think Plan A was a success.

Details:

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Blogging: The ultimate Internet based anti-boredom tool.

Oh God! Please give me the strength to do my laundry tomorrow!!!

...Ah! But I digress..

Plan A

Okay, I have a very ambitious plan for tonight. Since I cannot go out (not that I do every saturday night), I decided to cook good food (I am cooking chinese style fried rice. I also have egg nog) for myself, bring my tv and xbox in my bedroom and watch movies while lying in bed. I also plan to clean my bedroom to get a 5 starish room feel.

Let's see how everything goes.

*Wide grin*.

Biding My Time...

I have neglected my Mindstorms NXT robot for a long time now. I paid $222 for it when I was unemployed (yeah, I know I am stupid). Well, the reason for this horrendous mistiming was the fact that it was nowhere available around an year ago - It was absolutely out of stock everywhere. I had checked so many websites and stores, but nobody had it. Finally I found this guy on e-Bay who was selling it for less than its MSRP of 250 bucks (wonder why) and he was also giving away stickers and batteries (yay!) for no additional cost. Of course, there was free shipping too. So thanks to my ultra handy credit card, I bought it. I did build a simple robot out of it (when I was in Baltimore), but within a few days I had to come to Ames, so I disassembled it, and bought it with me. Since then, the robot parts are sulking in their little box, not knowing when they would see daylight again.

I decided to unpack my Mindstorm today and build a nice little robot, but then I remembered that my rechargeable batteries are stuck inside something that is perhaps used more often - my xBox controllers. The only option is/was to go to a store and get some batteries, but then you cannot get what you always want, right? And of course, the almighty God needs to have a chuckle once in a while by totally stopping me from what I plan to do.

It snowed today.

There's snow everywhere, and now I don't feel like going anywhere. Not to mention that I have zero experience driving in the snow, so I really don't want to take chances. I can actually walk to a store that is not far from where I live, but dressing up and getting slapped in the face by the wind while walking to the store and back does not really excite me.

So here I am, sitting at home, drinking my chai, biding my time. [This line kind of rhymes with the line "I sat on a rug, biding my time, drinking her wine" from Norwegian Wood by the Beatles. Sing it!]

One of the joys of living alone - You can crap with the bathroom door open. 

AMF...

I have a knack for building strong relationships with people who are way too different from the rest of us - people who defy the rules of normality, have weird quirks, and are most of the times stubborn (in a very non- annoying way). Initially I thought they were annoying but went on to become my good buddies, and if somebody is my good buddy they know that I will never forget them and would do whatever it takes to keep regular contact with them. Also, all these strange friends of mine have great enthusiasm - they all see life from a different angle, and do what they have always wanted to do.

Vineet Singh was one of them.

I saw him struggle when he lived in Delhi, and I think I was his only companion back in those days. I would go to his house and we would both smoke cigarettes, and drink chai for hours, and Vineet would keep talking tabout how his childhood dream was to join the army and how he plans to fulfill it. He would keep joking all the time - he was very very spontaneous with his one liners, and was a master in the art of making a fool of himself. There were times when he would be sad, but he would just brush the sadness away instantly and get back to his usual self.

After school he decided to get his engineering degree. He left Delhi and went to a school near his home town to pursue his education.

I recently found him online, after 8 odd years, and got to know that with his super dedication and a childhood dream to back him up, he did join the army! He had served the Indian army for a couple of years, and now was back to school because the army wanted him to learn advanced stuff. We talked online for some time a few days ago, and his laughter and zeal made my heart smile. He had not changed, and I told him that. He said the same thing to me. I smiled.

Just today I got to know from Nitin that Vineet met with an accident and is no more with us. I don't know the details - I guess it doesn't matter. What and how it happened is immaterial. What really matters is he is gone, which I still cannot believe. As I type this post, I see Vineet's smiling face right in front of me. I had plans of meeting him during my next India trip. I guess that would never happen now.

I always wanted to tell him what a great guy he was, and that his presence has always been appreciated by me and so many other people. Now I will never be able to tell him that, and that seriously makes me very uncomfortable.

I stole his pictures from orkut. I hope he won't mind.

Here's a salute to a great human being, a true army man, and a great friend! I will miss you.

Supply Chain Gone Wrong Or Just Indifference?

In grad school we read so many case studies and articles about how amazing and powerful Wal-mart's supply chain is, with the real cool satellite links and sophisticated tracking systems and what not. I knew for a fact that the case studies were fairly accurate not because I never found anything missing in a Wal-Mart store, but because I always saw so many Wal-Mart semis on city roads and highways. Of course, there are so many of those always parked in the unloading zone of every store.

But lately, I have seen that they don't have stuff available - stuff that I really want. Last week, whenever I went to the Wal-Mart in my town to get green chillies, they didn't have it. I went there around 3 times. They didn't have it. I once went to the store in the morning to get my breakfast, and the presence of those freshly sprinkled peppers made me smile. I thought to myself that I would buy them on my way back home in the evening. I went to the store in the evening - they didn't have it! )

I wanted ginger yesterday (dry cough sucks!). I went to the store and did not find it. I even asked an associate, and she pointed me to a certain area and said that I would find ginger there. I told her that I have already looked there.

"Then we don't have it".

Seriously?

For two weeks I have been trying to get wheat tortillas at Wal-Mart. I just cannot find them. They have all kinds of tortillas - tomato basil, spinach, four flour, and what not. But wheat - no sir.

Whenever I don't find anything in a Wal-Mart store, I think of the articles I read in school, and then I go - "No, this can't be really happening". But the only problem is that it really is. Are the satellites hibernating? Is the tracking system malfunctioning? Or am I just over reacting to the absence of veggies in the store?

If I go tell one of them authors from HBR or Business Week or whatever about my experiences, would they believe me? I am sure I will be a tiny little dot on the graph far far away from the others, and they would outlie me. Perhaps, they would not even believe me in the first place.

But it's just sad to see things not available in my favorite store.

*sigh*

I like, I hate..

I hate:

- Doing my laundry.

- Folding/hanging my clothes in the closet after I do my laundry.

- Ironing my clothes.

- Vacuuming the floor.

- Doing the dishes.

- Getting up in the morning.

- Shaving in the morning.

- The feeling of going to work and spending eight hours there pretending to be productive.

- The fact that good clothes are so ridiculuously expensive.

- My non - existent sex life.

- Crazy people.

- Loud people.

- Drunk people going/gone berserk.

- The fact that Art Wolfe's pictures are so expensive.

- Assholes.

- Rapes/Sexual assault.

- Bombs.

- The fact that I cannot afford a DSLR.

---------

I like:

- Lying in bed, watching tv/playing video games.

- Doing nothing at all.

- Eating food cooked by someone else.

- Music.

- The Office.

- Driving around without knowing where I am really going.

- Hayao Miyazaki.

- My friends.

- Barack Obama.

- Myself.

- R.E.M.

- Art Wolfe.

Ajit Ninan..

Just by chance I found out that Ajit Ninan's cartoons are published in the Times of India under the cartoon section. It's just amazing to see how these cartoonists maintain their style over the years. Nothing about their cartoons change. In case of Ajit Ninan, every politician has a huge moustache, wears a kurta, dhoti, and often a Nehru topi. Cops are usually stupid, and usually have a beer belly. His jokes are very very simple - not too much intellect required. If you know a little bit about what's going on around you, you would have no problems understanding his cartoons.

I really liked his cartoons when I was a teenager. His cartoons were printed in my favorite magazine that time - Target, in a section called "Funny World". Another comic strip called "Detective Moochwala" by Ajit Ninan was printed in Target. Too bad Target was discontinued, but I am just thrilled to find Ajit Ninan cartoons again!

See his cartoons here.

Oh Gawd!!

This post may gross you out a bit.

After so many years, I puked like crazy. Yes sir, friday night. I went to a bar friday night with a couple of friends, got totally hammered and did not even realize it. I was totally okay when I was inside the bar. But once we got out and sat in the car, my head started spinning. I still could not anticipate catastrophe, because I end up with a spinning head almost every friday and saturday anyway. But deep down inside I knew something was not right, that is why I did not even bother to go take my car which was parked at my friend's place. I got back home, took my shoes and pants off, and crashed out. Within minutes I could feel stuff coming out. Usually I try to hold it in my mouth and swallow it back, but only this time the volume and pressure of the stuff was way too much for me to handle.

So I let the stuff come out. And hence, I technically puked.

Of course, once this process starts, it goes through multiple cycles. So I puked again. But only this time, I rushed to the bathroom. What I did not realize was that my room was a dirty mess, with my stuff (read clothes) lying around everywhere. So I pretty much puked on my clothes before I downloaded the remaining puke in the wash basin.

When I got up the next morning, I almost cried. My eyes could not see and believe the mass destruction I had caused the previous night. The entire episode flashed in front of my eyes in a few seconds. And oh yeah, my head was screaming with pain and disgust. I followed the "bread crumbs" to my bathroom and saw that there was puke around the wash basin too. Then the thought of what I did (that I always do when I go get drunk at a bar) grossed me out. I have a tendency of overtipping the bartender whenever I go to a bar, and I realized that I had tipped the guy 50% . Like always, it hurt. But the sight of puke lying everywhere hurt me more.

My friend picked me up soon so that I could go to his place and take my car. Take my car I did, and went to Hy-vee to buy a carpet cleaner and some food. I came back home, watched a movie, and ate my food, my head still spinning like a crazy catherine wheel. After a while, I started scrubbing my carpet. Scrubbed like crazy and got the stains to "kind of" disappear. Did my laundry too.

I sulked the entire day - I did not really know what was happening and did not really know what to do. In the evening I went to the only Indian restaurant in town, got me some food, came back, ate it, and slept. At 10, which is totally bizarre.

I got up this morning and felt so much better, and the fact that I gained an hour made me jump with joy :D.

The last time I went on a puking rampage was in 2001.

Cooking..

I have noticed that I have started procrastinating when it comes to cooking. I think I am slowly losing interest. The thought of just cooking food for myself tires me. There was a time when I used to start cooking food for myself at 7PM sharp. Now I don't cook for days, and when I do, I just prepare something and eat it. I am actually cooking right now, and I see that my partially cooked food has something missing - genuine efforts I guess.

Another indication of me losing interest in cooking is the fact that I have stopped using onions, because I feel that chopping onions require too much time and energy. I just heat up a little oil and dump whatever I have in it. I of course add spices and all that jazz, but still the final outcome is not what I expect it to be.

I have sometimes also wished that I had someone who would cook food for me. A robot, perhaps.

I just hope I gain my interest back.