My achievements in Life
I didnt wrote this in the past because I never thought blogger will be having enough pages for this. But with new blogger its easy ... thanx to google ... read the 'What is new' for more info ... hehe ... As the great Google is connecting all parts like orkut, blogger, webmail it very easy to scrap someone or comment on blogs or spam someone with sure success. Anyone having a gmail id can never hide from you ... you can use you way (blogger/orkut/gmail) to bug him/her ... thats called connected world ... well well i started talking of google's achievements ... but I should talk about mine here ... refresh ...
Well the toughest part is I can't write all my achievements at once ... u know why ... i will write in installments like my driving lessons ... So lets start from the beginning ... I was very small and stupid in the eighties ... I don't remember much but I definitely think my first achievement is crawling in floor in the way people swim but getting nowhere ... definitely a good physical art ... wait! ... previous to that I used to cry a lot and that means I was very emotional in my heart may be ... I don't think we will consider that here because I gently decreased the volume and time of my crying as time went, but I observed others are imitating me, specially those who are smaller than me ... I tried much swimming on the floor but Mom didn't let me do that much ... So I then started walking with ppl around me ... they always used to walking holding me, may be they loved my company ... but later they started letting me go alone ... I did felt lonely but I did learn to walk alone ... Oh I used to sleep a lot which I do now-a-days also ... Actually in my so called child days I didn't have much work to do ... I was a good observer then, I used to watch ppl for long and stare at gals, sometime play with their hair ... it was a nice time then ... I don't know these are achievements or not, but truly I never did those before ... I feel there are many other things which I did during that period, but let wrap up part 1 here ... If something more comes to my mind I will add them in part 2
What you want to be - is a big question in life. Its like choosing heaven-hell, virtue-vices, angel-demon i.e. good-bad.
You can be a good guy .... everybody likes him ... he is on everyone's side ... take extreme care of others ... do things which suit everyones liking ... say good things always ... adapt to the society rules ... serious about everything in life ... knowledgeable , artistic, stylist ... ppl follow him ... girls love him
Or a bad guy ... do whatever he likes ... without caring of others ... lay the road in my own way ... ignoring the rest ... breaking rules ... rebelling every social act ... not emotional ... spoiled ... never takes life n living seriously ... create own values ...
I think every man has good and bad in proportion ... like sweet n sour ... but what is good or bad? who decides ... I really think all depends on situation ... everything is relative ... what if no bad exists, does good will significant then ... but life is never about being good or bad ... there is no heaven or hell ... its all in you ... and this is the life where you experience all ... no after life ... life is like a mirror or sea ... its gives you back what u have given before ... or gives u what u have to give back later ...
These days, You are not interesting if you ....
1) Don't own an iPod
2) Don't know some of Latin-American dances like Salsa, Samba etc
3) Don't have so called 'Vision' in life
4) IT Engineer
A lazy boring Christmas
2006 xmas is a long one ... 25-26 two days official leave ... prepend sat-sun and its become huge ... for the first time in my life I am outside India ... thought xmas will be fun here in USA ... atleast better than what we had in India ... nope its boring ... no ppl ... no jingle bells ... no carol singers ... redmond sucks ... so do seattle ... actually coming out of india didn't insert any non-desis into our lives ... i can say u will enjoy xmas in parkstreet of kolkata ... mg road/fc road of pune ... u can hang around with frnds ... get drunk ... dance in discos ... watch some movies ... but here what to do ... the whole day ... eat, sleep, then eat again and then sleep again ... uff ... it sucks ... totally lazy way to celebrate ... it would have been better if you are out on a trip ... shops, resturants are closed ... if you have a laptop see movies, bad ones, worst ones ... then what happen you can't sleep in night ... i atleast can't sleep without getting tired ... chilling outside ... and in the day it rains ...
My Driving Lessons ... Part 1Well living in USA ... you need to know driving ... nobody walk here in the streets ... not like India, where people also live without cars. Yeah only saw NewYork lively with people in streets, and Time Square is totally crowded. Ok leave that topic for now. What I telling here is how I am trying to learn driving here in Redmond. Well after clearing the written exam at the edge (20-5), I called up a guy who is famous in our locality for giving driving lessons. Oh I tried to fix up a date after my florida trip around 28-29th Nov, but Seattle saw a 3-4 days snowfall where its very risky to drive on the ice all around. So fixed up a date in next week days. This time the guy forget it totally, so got another date in weekends. this way 3 weeks gone. And in the sunday, I am going to learn, the guy's car broke down and he postpone to the day his car gets well ... haha ... forth week gone. Again I got a appointment next weekend. But fortunately again Seattle saw a great blackout day without power just a day before. People are panicked and next day all petrol pumps are empty. The guy came to redmond and didn't got any gas, which he thought will be filling in redmond. He went to his home by bus. Now again tomorrow I got another appointment. Let see what happens. One day I thought of learning driving, but help me its not working for me. Something happens. God knows when I will start ... hang on
A black day in Redmond14th Dec 2006, a storm hit the north west of Seattle by the evening at about 90 miles/hour. And it really hit hard. Rained randomly, very windy. A mail circulated to leave early. I left office by 9 pm. Then 1 am that night suddenly the lights went off. Yes it blinked twice before as a warning. And thats it, the whole Seattle area with no power. And most modern society came to a stop. Haha, everything runs on power, from petrol pump to restaurants, grocery shops, banks i.e. all the things to lead a daily life. All Microsoft's office buildings are empty. Never been prepared for such a situation. And it is seen there is no disaster recovery here. People are so dependent on electric. Your cooking burners run on electric. So you have no way to cook food, thats the least expected. No heating system so chill in near freezing temperature outside. A total 24 hours without power in severe cold and junk food.
Well never mind the power outage in the night, went to sleep by 2 as usual waiting for power to return. Didn't wake up at the first alarm at 9 am. Got up from bed when the second alarm went ringing at 9:30. Well heading for the bathroom, felt the heater is not on, its very cold inside the house. Went out my room and my roomies are all talking about no power, no gas, nothing. Never been in such a situation, never had a nightmare that someday we will not have power in our houses, least expected when you are in USA. So tried to adapt to the morning with chilling temperature, laptop discharged. Quickly had a bath with the remaining hot water and got ready to fetch some food from outside restaurants as we cannot cook. And our car have 1/4th of its gas left. So do postpone grocery, gas filling for the weekend. went out for gas, food. And then what I see, hey the traffic lights are off ... oh my god ... how will the American's who drive with help of traffic lights, signs will drive like third world countries like India. The never used human instincts before, actually didn't had to, driving is so easy with traffic control. Yep all the roads are total mess, crossing are crowded, driving at 10-15 mph ... so boring. Next surprise, the gas stations are closed ... too surprised. So lets have breakfast ... nope all the restaurants are closed because they have no power ... ha ha ... shops ... no no they are also closed. so you are on your own now. Fortunately got a Safeway open and saw people are buying everything they can. This blackout can go for days. So we also joined the panicked line and bout some bananas, wafers, wine, firewood, lighters ... came back home as the gas is going less ... we have to save some for emergency ...
We don't know what we will do whole day without power ... IT life has a curse, we are bound to miss our laptop, network, mails, blogs first. So we really freak out when we have deal with this type of blackouts. So nothing to do, eat some dry food and go to sleep. Slept for another 4-5 hours, chilling temp is good for sleep but not for much long. So wake up at 6:30. In the day there was light so you feel something is there. But after evening it is dark, horrible. Dark and cold, really horrible. But we had some battery operated emergency lights, which came of good use. But still we are very unsure about tomorrow or the day after tomorrow ... our batteries will not live that longer. Only thing is working is the phone but it will also discharge in time. We roomies tried to have some fun with the wine, but what 12% alcohol will do to starving cold people :) ... well then we started to light a fire with the firewoods. After 15-20 minutes of rigorous labor we got it burning ... ooohh its pleasant to be near the fire ... the fire saved us. Now one of my roomie got some chicken soup and we put them near the fire to get hot. The next thing we started a movie to watch and totally forgot about the soup cans. After 30 minutes of watching Clerks II ... booom ... yeah our fireplace burst i.e. the soup can ... that really scared us ... hehe soup all over the place ... fortunately rescued the other can ... that is our dinner ... called home with last phone battery and told that it might not call for next 2-3 days, situation can be worse
by 11:45 pm the power came back ... uff its a relief ... never know what would have happened if the same situation gone for another day or two. In modern life I never realized so much dependency on power. In India power cuts are normal in life so people have alternate power source like generators. A power cut never takes the normal life down. Everything will be open and working with alternate power. And also many daily amenities does not run on power, they are manual. Here in USA, with power life is very sophisticated but if anyway (may it has a probability of .00001%) power goes off the life stops because everything is automated and it needs power. A single bottleneck in most modern society. It is very surprising to think of gas pump, water supply, cooking are handicapped without power. There should be some plan B.
Whatever, this really been a different experience. Because it is a day, I can say its fun to be disconnected :P
