A Life Less Ordinary

Its official now, I've spent more time outside college than I did within it. Not that I attended too many classes and all that, but I guess I've been a Corporate Ho longer than I was an undergrad student. Four years have passed since I graduated from being a dorky engineering graduate to a dorky engineer who had to earn his living.

This officially earmarks the longest voluntary relationship I have ever had in my life. Either party could've broken up at will, but both of us have weathered many storms together and have stuck on, for some reasons best known only to the both of us, while most other reasons for aforesaid situation remain significantly inexplicable.

This NaN is going to focus on the memories I have had of September 1st over the past five years, and for sure, it has been quite interesting in more ways than I could have previously imagined.

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2004: First day of work. I was unwell, and I had worn a light green full sleeve shirt my sister had got me as a present. She had overestimated my shoulder width, my height and my girth and in the process purchased a shirt that was two sizes too big for me. I wore it nevertheless, because I thought it was important. My cousin, who's house I was at on the first day I was in Bangalore, dropped me to the office and I walked in through the doors into the room where we had our induction at 0859, one minute before proceedings began.

For the first ever time in my life, I fell asleep in something akin to a class, because the person who was giving us the corporate presentation could as well have been spraying valium through an atomizer four inches away from my nostrils. In addition to my acute somnolence, I had also been, as I had mentioned previously, unwell, and the medicine that I'd been prescribed had given me a light tremor in my right hand, and for one of the first ever times in my life, I was scared as hell about whether I'd ever be normal again.

The doctor's reassurance about it being a reaction to some expectorant tablet did nothing to remedy the situation, and it was only after I got better and I was able to write properly did I heave a huge sigh of relief.

I had been to the office a fortnight prior to my joining date, on 18th August to hunt for accommodation that was close to where I had to work. Seeing the amount of dirt, dust, traffic and the accompanying madness and mayhem was too much of a shock for me, given that Mysore was diametrically opposite insofar as the state of affairs on the roads were concerned.

Three days after the entire rigmarole began, I had called my Mum up and told her that I wanted to quit and open a grocery store in Mysore, or teach in my college and I've had constantly recurring thoughts of quitting work ever since, but the idea has been mulled over so much that its now relegated to that part of me that tends to over-romanticize trivial situations and circumstances.

Its been four years, and, as is quite evident, I still haven't quit.

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2005: I was not doing too well at work, being torn apart between travelling to Mysore on weekends and attempting to work away on the weekdays, while trying to see if I could get a life outside of work, but failing to do so miserably. Whatever remenants of quizzing I had once thrived on in college had now been reduced to nothing, and things didn't seem to be going well.

Music, which was such an important part of my life, had also been relegated to oblivion.

In the last week of August 2005, I contracted bronchopneumonia, and as a consequence spent the first anniversary of my starting life as a working professional in bed with a fever of 104 F, getting more pale and gaunt by the minute, but sleeping like a baby and feeling happy about not having to work during that time.

Not the best of times, but not the worst of times either.

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2006: Oslo. My second visit there in three months. Awesome place, awesomer experiences overall, and with a trip to Copenhagen under my belt, I was having all the fun I could in the available time. Work was also fun because it was challenging and hectic, and I didn't really bother much about anything else apart from calling family on occasion and telling them how I was having a blast all over the place.

On the morning of September 1st, I saw two mails - one of them said I had my august salary credited to my account, and another one congratulated me for two years of work in my company. I said Meh to both, as I had said to some other formerly important stuff at the very start of the trip and continued to work, without those two mails bothering me much until a few days ago when I took a lazy stroll down memory lane.

In retrospect, that second trip changed my life for the better in more ways than I'd have imagined it would.

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2007: It was three years of loyal service to le company, and for some strange reason, it was supposed to be a monumental occasion, given the attrition rates in the industry. I had put NED by that time to want to stay and celebrate at the office, so I instead took a few days off and chilled out at home instead, growing my beard, combing my hair, trying to figure out the best way to remove knots and having my respect for women go up tenfold because of how they were able to manage their long hair all their lives without wanting to stick their heads in a lawn-mower and be rid of it all.

Nevertheless, this was quite a tame and incredibly lazy time for me, and this anniversary passed on without much ado either.

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2008: So far, I've put one post up on my LJ abusing badly behaved kids, been working away as usual, had a good lunch and am about to go watch Rock On with the band. Nothing out of the blue, just another day at work with the usual stuff taking precedence over anniversaries that don't really amount to much.

Even if I end up going home after work and just crashing after watching some arbit stuff on TV, I know that I'll have had fun simlpy because I've reached a stage where I don't give a damn about too many things, and am in a controlled free-fall mode.

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I still get goosebumps when I recall Jeff Daniels' voice in the last episode of The Wonder Years - growing up does happen in a heartbeat, but sometimes, that ain't such a bad thing either. The important thing is to protect one's balls to make the most of what you can when you can.

Its been five months since I returned from Seattle, but somehow something or the other happens that invariably takes my mind back to my trip there. This is a post about some of those memory refreshing incidents that have happened since I got back.

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Grey's Anatomy:
My sister follows the serial, although I haven't seen more than ten minutes of it, not counting the constant promos on Star World interspersed with a song by 'The Fray'. Everytime I end up going home, she's called dibs on the remote whenever the damn serial is on air. The rest of the family sulks in other rooms until such time that the serial is finally over.

However, some evening, I was too lazy to go do something else and I ended up watching the first few minutes of the serial, only to see helicopter shots of the Space Needle, the Seattle Center and 3rd Avenue, after which my sister told me that the serial was based in Seattle. It was kinda cool to see an overhead view of the city and visualize myself having walked along those streets for the various arbit activities I'd undertaken.

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A Guy Thing:
Having seen Julia Stiles in 'The Bourne Supremacy' and 'The Bourne Ultimatum' as well as in '10 things I hate about you' (whose DVD is now selling like hotcakes since it starred Heath Ledger), I thought she was a real cutie, and since I was in the mood for a romantic comedy last evening, I picked up A Guy Thing from my friendly neighbourhood DVD store, only to find out that the entire frigging movie was based in Seattle.

Familiar streets, some shops I've walked past, references to Broadway and more shots of the over-rated Space Needle were enough to bring about feelings of nostalgia. The movie itself is something people can watch when they're feeling brain-dead, and still enjoy it all.

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The Hungry Tide:
The Hungry Tide, a book by Amitav Ghosh, and the second book by him that I've received as a birthday present after having been given The Glass Palace as a birthday gift a long time ago has one of its major characters based in Seattle. She's a marine biologist who's here on some research work, and during moments of reflection has her thoughts drift towards the city she's grown to call her own.

I've gone through only about a hundred pages of that book, given my currently pathetic reading speeds, but so far its not been a bad read.

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Gimme S'More:
I'd got enough chocolates from my trip to last me all of five months. I've been on a recent sweet consuming binge which has resulted in me eating ice creams, chocolates, sweets of all kinds and drinking unmeasurable quantities of Tropicana Twister, ensuring that my blood sugar levels have reached all-time highs. It was during one of these instances when I was gorging on a Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar that I was reminded of a S'more.

On my last evening in the city, I had been to a birthday party thrown by some of my 'native' friends (I used to refer to American citizens as natives) and while sitting out in someone's backyard surrounding a fire, sipping slowly on one beer for four hours to as to maintain levels of sobriety necessary to ensure I was at the airport on time the next morning, I was introduced to a S'more, and I can't honestly think of something else I've eaten that's so brilliantly sweet and tasty at the same time. I gave it my own name at that time, I called it a Hershmellow, because I guess I didn't think too much of the Graham cracker that was also part of the S'more.

Never pass upon a S'more if given a chance to consume one. In fact, ask for more.

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Starbucks, endless solo walks along all the streets, hanging out at the CHAC enough to be a regular there, working decently hard on weekdays and being unerringly slothful during the evenings and weekends, phone calls to India, fond memories of my entire trip and the good times I had have remained, and will be counted as one of the nicest travel experiences I've had.

The times they are a-changin, but the memories remain.

Yeah, I decided to take a page out of the livejournal owned by purely_narcotic and let my meandering thoughts be compressed such that different ones could fit into the same post. The only difference is that, my posts, pretty much like all episodes in all seasons of Seinfeld are about nothing.

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Journalistic Forays:
Citizen Matters, I discovered, has its own page for contributing writers and here is mine. The awesome thing is that the 'about me' section can be modified by people that own the page, and unlike in the two social networking sites that I have content on, this 'about me' might actually be read by some people.

As an aside, my piece on the lack of public space for Sunday Jams is on the front page of the newsletter.

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Two Hit Wonder??:
Just this morning, I saw the video of 'Love is Noise' by The Verve on VH1 as I was cleaning up all the nose hair I had trimmed with a jumbo sized vacuum cleaner, and I could think just one more video of theirs that came to mind that everyone has seen and heard of. However, I could think of one other song of theirs that I have heard on the radio - 'lucky man' and I was wondering why VH1 was airing 'Rockstar' by Nickelback about eight hundred times a day and not putting any other videos. Usher's latest song, that I switch off as soon as I see his face, also features on that list.

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Peter has no Principle:
Yes. Woe is me. I am within a ten metre radius of an anomaly that has defied the Peter Princple and risen above to seemingly vertiginous heights and I have no clue why!!! Further elaboration (read whining / bitching) on said matter will be done verbally to people who will ask - 'How's life?'.

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Breakfast at Tifanny's:
I now plan on growing a handlebar mustache and wearing a leather jacket that has a skull and crossbones on it. Additionally, I also plan to cut queues and eyeball everyone in sight. Maybe that will compensate for having received the Rough Guide to Chick Flicks as a birthday present in jest from a certain Simian, although said person will deny the jest bit in no uncertain terms.

To compound my misery further, I rented 'Breakfast at Tifanny's' because I heard Audrey Hepburn was such a babe, and ended up watching it. I think I should not trim my nose hair for all of next year, to compensate. Edit: I must admit, Audrey Hepburn is a real cutie.

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This pretty much concludes the first of my many "Notes about Nothing", although there's few other regular lengthy posts that I do plan on writing once the mood does happen. Maybe NaN will be a one time only venture as well, only time will tell.