Living on Caffeine

Recently, I had a cup of hot, strong coffee and promptly fell asleep. I was baffled by the incident: So I decided to put a watch on the situation, and see if, like one of my friends put, become immune to caffeine and coffee.. Some observations over the past few days have startled me. For example, here is how a typical coffee-day when I have work goes:

7 AM: Good Morning coffee!
8:30 AM: Welcome to the office coffee!!
11 AM: Stay awake and keep busy coffee :)
3:00 PM: Post lunch stay awake and keep busy coffee
6:00 PM: Its been a long day coffee
7:30 PM: Come home and relax coffee!
9:30 PM: (Optional and occasional): Cool cold coffee!

I was stunned. How much coffee is that? .. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7! .. 7 cups of coffee a day?? .. well - looking back, a couple of them seem to be optional, but still!.. that's hell lot of coffee .. And my colleagues seemed to be no better either. I was talking to my colleague at work and he was like "Just 7 ??.. that's not too bad! .. I have 7 on my low-coffee days!" ... It is almost as if drinking coffee is part of the job .. We are living on caffeine and stimulants .. If not coffee its some energizer like that cough-syrup like Redbull or something else .... No wonder IBM suddenly got so concerned about coffee in their cost-cutting measures to face this rotten economy!!

Coffee is panacea .. it seems to be the ultimate solution to any problem on earth: coffee for concentration, coffee for relaxing, coffee when you are bored, and finally, lately coffee for sleeping too! ... Its time for another coffee :)

Interesting!

"Interesting!" ... Somehow, more often than not, the word seems to be in paradoxical usage: when I hear people respond to my statements / ideas / lectures with the phrase "Interesting", I almost always get the sense that a) Whatever I'm droning on about is not interesting at all or b) I'm not making any sense in the conversation. Its almost a conversation killer to me ... I'm having to make a conscious effort to stop my irritation appear in my face. What is really interesting is that, it can be used as a filler word for several situations. Sample a few of them:

I go to Tech Support with my problem with a certain operating system and explain my woes ; he tries his hand at what I've been trying, fails, frowns, looks hard at the screen and says in a high-pitched tone: "Interesting!". Of course, what it really means is that he has no idea at the moment what the hell is wrong and he is attempting to convince me that he thrives on solving such problems. I am left wishing that he understands he doesn't need to have a conversation while he solves the damn thing.

I try to explain to a representative at a career fair what I'm trying to do in a project and why it would be great for his company to have me - he keeps nodding his head all the while, makes random notes on my resume, and finally says "Interesting!" .. So I think I've done a great job of impressing the person, thank him for his time, pick up a few goodies the company has brought and I keep waiting for the call-back that never comes ..

I talk to some acquaintance regarding my career plans and stuff, and the guy sizes me up and goes .. "That's an interesting choice! .. You know, most people actually blah blah blah" ... Well, I suppose I should acknowledge the element of politeness the word brings into situations, but all the same, its still annoying.

I suppose English language has these things designed for the purpose. Another couple of them come to my mind ... How about the response "That's a good question!"? .. Most of the times, the reason it is used is because the answer is unknown and it presents a better package than an upfront "I don't know!" .. Here's one I've seen in the movie Donnie Brasco.. Its interesting how many ways they use the filler :)



Hail the English language and Forget about it!! :-)

The Big Apple

A Whirlwind tour of New York City!

I recently got a chance to visit New York City. It was sadly a short visit, but I think I managed to see a fair bit of the city in a very short time ... I was staying right in the center of that concrete jungle - Manhattan! ... It is really a jungle - you have narrow, dimly lit roads amid the foliage of concrete structures all around. I was awed by the look of the place: skyscrapers seemed to be there everywhere! ... so much that the traffic congestion didn't really bother me!

58th Street, New York City

I suddenly discovered that the US is actually populated. You see people everywhere in New York - running around to get to office, to catch their subway train, in great hurry all along .. For a while I felt like I was back in Mumbai ... pedestrians don't care for traffic lights; you can actually hail a cab and run halfway across Broadway Street to get into it while the cab driver stops amidst the traffic, and you have those creaky train stations (only subway) that people literally pour into!! ... Only its streets are cleaner and buildings taller :)

When you are on a short visit to New York, I guess the best place to visit would be the Empire State Building! ... The view from the 86th floor observatory is awesome and it'll be a chance to see everything else in New York as well :-) .. Here are a few pics from atop the Empire State Building ..




And equally stunning were these photos I chanced to take on the streets of New York ... I never imagined I'll see something like these in this country itself .. let alone in the heart of Manhattan!

"Cycle Cab": a rickshaw near Empire State Building

Street Side Shops in Manhattan! ... Never saw one till then in the US :-)

The Hello Post

I don't know why I created this blog. I really don't. Perhaps the free time on my hand. Or perhaps I needed a diversion from trying to decode how the hell my webcam driver manages to capture a video frame with such pathetic lighting .. Or perhaps inspiration from my roommate's use of his blog to share his ideas/feelings with the world. I thought .. let me create a page first, and then let me find a justification.

And so the trouble began - I created the page, chose templates, fonts, colors; filled in my favorite movies, debated about how ethical it would be to subject readers to ads on my blog .. and then waited for the ideas to come .. About 20 min passed - a lot of stuff crossed my mind: movies, technology, cricket, my frustration over the recession, MS-in-US-gyan, recipes (yes, you read correctly!) ... somehow, none of them seemed to be a good enough subject that I can impress my new readers without putting them off to sleep. So, I decided to do some research and see what people usually write on their first blog.

Well, my patience ran out pretty fast. Out of the N blogs I surveyed, 66.67% of the writers seem to be writing some sort of intro about themselves offer some deep justification as to why they named their blog XYZ, and mentally prepare their readers for what is going to assault them :p ... The rest started off with the assault itself! (And slightly off the topic, for those more interested in statistics, in 66.67% cases, the post I read was the only post on the blog) .... These observations disappointed me - neither way seemed to work, since I don't know what I want to throw at my readers, I can't throw it and I can't prepare them for it ... I just dint put that much thought into titling the blog either: I just did it in a fit of emotion - just wanted something positive at the top there, and this positive force of a spell from Harry Potter sounded pompous enough to be a title.

So I am back to square one. Should I change the blog's title? - What should it be now?: should be some intellectual buzzword?? ... something that makes me sound cool? A sober headline that confirms to IEEE standards??? ... I just cudn't decide - So I turned to my roommate for advice - he is a self-confessed guru of blog-titling and has apparently helped many people find their first steps in the world of blogging .. His advice was to keep it simple. write about anything I like ... no man -doesn't help! i don't know what i am supposed to write about.

And then, finally, I hit the solution! ... If you are this point, I must be having some talent in rambling and writing a story without really discussing anything ... I decided to cook up a rambling story of my efforts here and inform my reader(s) that further posts won't be like this "Hello post" and may have a little more purpose. So here's a warm Hello to my reader(s) and for the record, I'm Sandeep, a Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech!

And so - Here .. we .. go!