Vivek Paul resigns

My company's Vice Chairman has resigned. He's got a position on the advisory board of EA Sports & is now a co-promoter of the Texas Pacific Group.

You've got to admire the drive in this guy. He was taking home 5.7 c.p.a.(!) when he decided to quit. Maybe he knew I was coming....... ;-)

Lotsa happenings

Finally managed to download a fantastic quality MP3 of 'Boys of Summer' from emp3world.com.

Had a haircut at 'Beauty Hair Cutting Saloon'. It'll be a long time before I'm back for another one. I'll miss Rajender & Hero. In fact, Rajender seemed to have sensed it & gave me an extra long head massage........probably a parting gift.

Anupam's job in SAP Labs is confirmed. The dude is definitely destined for big things.

A runaway chassis driven by a drunk driver rammed through the chicken shop behind the house. Miraculously, no one was hurt....not even the chickens!

It's been raining cats & dogs since 2 days. There are floods in Gujarat.....first time I've heard of that happening.

The opening track of Black Eyed Peas' 'Don't Phunk With My Heart' sounds suspiciously close to that of 'Ye Mera Dil' from Amitabh's 1970s flick Don. The westerners are definitely lifting from us these days.

Dus Bahane.......

Downloaded all the wallpapers of Dus available on SantaBanta. First time I've ever done so for any movie. Looks like it's gonna be my first movie in Bangalore after joining WIPRO. PVR, here I come!

Registered Online

WIPRO sent the user id & password & my online registration happened just fine. I'm relieved considering Amit Seth got somebody else's id & password whereas Prateek's user id wouldn't fit in the textbox!

Bank Guarantee

Got the WIPRO-SBI bank guarantee wrapped up after worrying about it for days. The manager at the Telco branch was helpfulness & humility personified. May his tribe increase!

Monsoon!

The monsoon has set in & how........seems like it's making up for the 2 week delay in coming.

Reporting Date: July 8, 2005

Got this email today......

Reporting Date: July 8, 2005
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 10:29:51 +0530
From: manager.campus@wipro.com
To:

Hi,
Congratulations on being selected to join Wipro Technologies!

Based on the information that we have recently received from your institute regarding the issue of your provisional certificate, we are happy to inform you that your date of joining has been fixed for July 11, 2005.

You will be required to report on July 8, 2005 to complete all your joining formalities so that you can report directly on July 11, 2005 for your training program.

Your training will be at Bangalore and your location of posting after the training will be Bangalore.


To Bangalore, then......... all of us BIT MCA WIPROites. Sittu is the happiest.......should be, considering his 1st choice had been Hyderabad.

The first rains

The mets had said it would be on the 22nd or later, but JSR had it's first proper rains today. I was walking back from the net cafe when they started, & not for one moment did I think of hiding someplace or running home, the rains came as such welcome relief. Hopefully they'll continue so that the mets can somehow have their prophecy of a 'normal' monsoon fulfilled. The whole country is waiting for the monsoons & I hope their wait is shortlived. The power of nature........how small we humans are before it!

Anupam is celebrating his b'day today. Happy b'day dude!

Today is the Summer Solistice. Life & it's cycles......time marches on unabated.

A Drunk's Poem

Starkle, starkle, little twink,
Who the hell you are I think.
I'm not under what they call
The alcofluence of incohol.

I'm not drunk as thinkle peep,
I'm just a little slort of sheep.
Tee martoonis make a guy
Fool so feelish, don't know why.

Rally don't know who's me yet
The drunker I stay the longer I get
So just one more to full my cup,
I've all day sober to Sunday up!

Provisional travails

Am in Ranchi with Sid, Arni & Arni's bro Arpan (who's facing an interview for B.C.A. at BIT). Met Prashant, possibly for the last time for a long time to come.

We sign in for receiving the provisional at 9:30 a.m. Finally lay hands on it at 4:30 p.m. BIT cares a damn about these colossal wastes of time. On top of that, the 2 bit office assistants have the nerve to throw attitude at the very people who pay for their salaries. It's enough that I'm back at home with my sanity intact.

The sun reigns supreme

An unprecedented heat wave is sweeping through eastern India & JSR is caught smack in the middle. The temperature is hovering around 45 (degrees celsius) & the humidity around 90%. Double whammy never sounded more apt. It's sapped all my energy. Can't even blog with a straight mind.

Advani unresigns

Advani takes back his resignation after requests from the very people who were baying for his blood 3 days ago. What else can I say but.......told ya. Indian politicians & their canards!

Advani resigns

L.K. Advani (fresh from his trip to Pakistan) has resigned following the brouhaha his own party people created after Advani lauded Jinnah's 'secularism'. Although the context in which he made the comments was totally correct (Jinnah had conveniently proclaimed religious freedom for all AFTER Pakistan had been created), the torchbearers of India's far right saw red when one of their own 'praised' the sworn enemy.

I think Advani bears the millstone of December 6, 1992 around his neck & shall do so all his life. His rath yatra, the Babri demolition & the the blood of the hundreds (from both communities) who died in the subsequent riots were his & his party's doing. It may have made the BJP the creditable political outfit it is today, but sooner or later the chickens would have come home to roost.

Isn't it ironical that somebody who was so closely identified with the right wing nationalist movement had to pay after he extolled somebody's brand of secularism. It's not that I've got something personal against the BJP & its members (if it hadn't been for them, we'd never have gone openly nuclear, for one). All the same, I wouldn't count Advani out at the moment. Indian politicians have remarkable longevity, & it would be at your own peril if you thought they were done & over with before they are actually dead & buried.......or cremated as the case may be.

Into a groove

Staying in the house is becoming boring.

Rosy got married today. She used to be the most chaloo girl on the school bus (in the mid 90s). God help her husband!

In the words of Neeral

Days are passing like water.

The Honda City arriveth

Vini & family came over in their new (silver) Honda City. It was delivered just today & the first place they decided to take it to was ol' D4-13. It's even got a Sony DVD with a pull down screen for those seated at the rear. Cool!

Divij seems to have calmed down. He isn't the rude mischief maker he used to be, although he did show sparks of his former self. Deepak is well on his way to getting a commercial pilot's licence. Vandana's gonna be playing around with lotsa moolah real soon.

Heat & War

The summer is becoming unbearably hot. So much so, that its robbing me of sleep in the night. Most cities in the country, including Delhi, are reeling under the triple threats of the summer heat, power cuts & water shortages. Thankfully, Jamshedpur has absolutely no water or electricity crises. All credit goes to JUSCO. They mey be expensive but boy, do they provide peace of mind!

Gauhar Ayub Khan s/o the Paki General Ayub Khan says his father bought ALL Indian offence & defence plans for the 1965 Indo-Pak war from an Indian Brigadier for just Rs. 20,000/-. It's stirred up a hornet's nest in our mountain-out-of-a-molehill-making-specialist media. The fact that this information was 'bought' in 1957, 8 years before the war in question took place, seems to have escaped them. Still, some interesting facts such as the surrender of an IAF pilot after flying his machine to Pakistan are coming to light. I'm sure there are more such infamous incidents that the Indian Army would like to keep under wraps.

Whatever the case may be, the Pakis got walloped & they would do well to keep that in mind. Only goes to show how incompetent they are......losing a battle for which they already knew the enemy's moves.