I Am.

All I want to do today is to bring to the notice of anyone willing to notice it, that I have just touched the three figure mark today. Finally.

Very thankful to all my customers for taking the risk and reading the stuff on Noodle House.
I can only speculate about the reasons you would be driven to come here. My first guess would be that you must be really bored. Good. Bored is good.
Some of you seem to be more bored than the others because I have noticed a few who keep coming back. Are you sure you are not suicidal!?
Here let me re-iterate what I have said in my very first post. I am not responsible for the after effects of coming here.
Now, if all you guys out there still want to come in for a dose of arbitrary thoughts that might or might not tickle your funny bone, you are welcome.
Unless you come here because you want to steal my content in which case I have just one piece of advice for you. Go, get your brain replaced!

Precisely on the sixth day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the twenty-first century, I started Noodle House on a whim and a belief that even I can blog.
Racing to a century of posts has only re-confirmed that belief, though, unfortunately, I am not yet sure if my audience agrees.
A lot has happened since the time I started but that has only helped Noodle House thrive, since that is what provides all the fodder I needed for my cannon.
So much more has actually been left unsaid on these pages for the simple reason that I don't have enough memory to remember all the stuff I would like to.
Although what I forgot was probably not worth writing about, that claim can neither be confirmed nor refuted without actually attempting to write about them.
Doing so, though, would have taken up too much of my time, which is another thing I don't have enough of. Ever. Along with stuff like imagination and brains. :)

Pen and Paper

It's been a couple of years since I have put pen to paper to do some meaningful writing. Usually, it has always almost exclusively been only to put my signature on different kinds of papers. But long, meaningful writing seems to be as distant a memory as childhood. Actually it has been much longer than just a couple of years since the last time I was doing silly things, like using a non-electronic stylus on a paper based medium, on a regular basis. That must have been in college though my memory can't really be trusted in this matter. But I do remember that as kids we were taught to write using those primitive implements and I guess my experience today is the justification for that initiation into that ancient art form.

Even as I am sitting here trying to recollect what little I remember of that ancient skill called 'writing on paper', I am wondering at the wisdom that our elders displayed way back in time because they could clearly see that there would come a time when our modern electronics would fail but our need for written communication wouldn't cease and that this manual method would then stand between us and utter despondency. Of course, the fact that they didn't have all these funky electronics back in the day might also have been a factor but I am not inclined to think so. That sort of negative thinking spoils the whole quaint nature of the thought.

What can be more quainter than me sitting in candle light, ball-point pen in hand and furiously writing on a white paper with black lines? Like you might have guessed by the reference to the candle light, I am sitting here in the small oasis of that light because there has been a power failure and because two unrelated incidents, my laptop battery running dry and me getting a thought, happened to happen at the same time, I am writing all this down on paper. And all this while, I thought I was on the vanguard of the paperless era!

Goes to show that, just like world-wide nuclear disarmament, zero green house gas emissions, world peace and the Indian public supporting something other than cricket, the concept of a paperless world is just that, a concept. Something to be bandied about and used to look and sound modern and forward thinking but fated to forever being nothing more than a concept. Anyway, I don't have anything against using paper. And since in this instance it is the only way to make sure that the few and far between thoughts in my mind, which are currently coming out in a rush, still remain my thoughts, I am actually glad that we have this still with us. The surprise, of course, is not that I remembered to use a paper to note all this down but the fact that I still remember how to wield a pen.

Incredible as that may seem, the sad part is that I have to type all this again so that I can put this up on Noodle House. That's a definite drawback.

Huit & Neuf - Where art thou?

There have been many over the years and there will definitely be a boat-load of them in the future. I am talking about inventions and make that boat a few dozen sizes bigger than Noah's Ark. Among all these invented and to-be-invented inventions, there can be only one that can lay claim to being the most important invention that man-kind could invent. Zero. Zip. Zilch. A concept called 'nothing'. That is probably what most people will find in my post today. Nothing that makes sense. :)

It's the first day of the week. I don't understand why Monday should be the first day of the week. In a cyclic pattern that repeats itself every seven days, shouldn't it be possible for any day to be the beginning? I think it should be. What did you say? Oh, you think I should shut up? Ok, will do. Only about this. I do have other inane stuff that I am going to talk about.

Like the fact that we are biped. But the 'bi' is not restricted to just the 'ped' part of us. It's pretty much common to our other parts too. Like our hands, eyes, ears and nose, if you count the nostrils individually. Those are the 'bi' parts that are freely available for public viewer ship whereas the paying public will also be privy to internal 'bi' parts like the lungs, kidneys and the brain. Added to these, these days, some characteristics are also being given the 'bi' prefix.

On the other hand, this duality (though it's only in physicality) is probably what separates us humans from them Gods. Them Gods seem to have a few characteristics made in triplicate. Like, for example, the God Shiva (in Hinduism) who has three eyes. Or, to take another example, the concept of the Trinity. This second example, I believe, is pan-religion and I have heard about it in connection with at least two religions.

Is this an indication that we also can become Gods if, and only if, we manage to duplicate this triplication? May be. It’s definitely something to think about. But in truth, does anyone of us actually want to be God? I mean, whether they are in the North-east or South-east or North-west or South-west or in any other of the four corners of the globe, who, in their right mind and senses, would want to be in a position where they don't have anyone, higher up, for them to look up to and wish that life were better. Not me for sure.

Talking about senses, this is another area that differentiates us humans. But this time, not from them Gods but from them animals. We, I am referring to the humans, share the sense of sight, smell, hearing and touch with our animal brethren whereas I am not sure about the sense of taste. Those are the five senses every human is supposedly blessed with. Now the differentiation comes in because we can also make use of a sixth sense. No, I am not talking about Night Shyamalan's movie. I am talking about the sense that is known as intuition or, as it is more commonly called, gut feeling. And as if six weren't enough, we have also been given a seventh. Common Sense. However, like the wise-one says, "Common sense is uncommon in common people."

I am one of them common people too, though fortunately for me, the wise-one hasn't yet bothered to let me know that. With that statement of fact, I shall stop talking about inane stuff for today. But somehow, I get the feeling that I missed some inanity that would have fit right in. Hmmm, wonder what I missed!

A Rude Awakening

The harsh sound of the door bell mixed with the shrill ring of the cell-phone! Believe me, there is no worse sound in this world than these two indulging in tandem singing (If there is no such thing, well, imagine some such thing from the words 'tandem' and singing'). Before you disagree and say 'finger nails on blackboard', let me tell you that this is worse. Especially when you are sleeping.

Today is Sunday. Sunday is weekend. A day off. This is my 'laze around the house getting bored' day of the week. There I was, peacefully sleeping in the morning, before being brutally dragged out of bliss and thrown into reality. My reflexes worked faster than the rest of me by reaching out and trying to switch off the alarm. That's when it permeated into my drugged-with-sleep mind that it wasn't the alarm. Rather, it was the above mentioned cacophonous duet. The only way to mute the jangle was to answer both the phone and the door-bell. I reached for the cell phone and at the same time, tried to get out of bed to answer the summons at the door. But that didn't happen exactly that way. During the night, I had somehow managed to expertly wrap myself up in my blanket to resemble a mummy (the old, Egyptian variety) and though I got myself out of bed I couldn't get my legs working the way they were designed to work. Result - Butt met tiled floor. Ouch!

So why did I have to go through with this ordeal first thing on a Sunday morning? Who was at the door? Who had called on the cell-phone?

After I managed to de-mummify myself from the blanket and get back to my feet, I noticed that it was my dad on the cell-phone. And I opened the door to find my mom leaning on the door bell hoping to extract every last ounce of performance from it. With my dad standing behind her! They were just trying all the options they had to wake me up as early as possible because they knew that otherwise they would have to spend half the day standing outside, waiting for me to wake up.

I don't blame them. I am a heavy sleeper, they had to do it. But that still is the worst sound I have ever heard.

Words and Quotes

Indulge me a little. Please. First read through the list of words I have here:

"Gravitation", "Don't", "First", "They", "Worry", "Can", "Not", "About", "Ignore", "The", "You", "Be", "World", "Held", "Then", "Responsible", "Coming", "They", "Laugh", "To" ,"At", "You", "For", "An", "People", "End", "You", "Fight", "Today", "Falling", "You", "Win", "Then", "It's", "In", "Then", "In", "Already", "Australia", "Love", "Tomorrow", "They".

So, do you make any sense out of them apart from seeing them as random words? Let me toss this list up in the air and see if that makes a difference.**Tosses the words and looks up, open mouthed. Ouch!! "Australia" fell on his head. That must have hurt**

Well, well. After that aerial sojourn, the words seem to read less like a list of random words and more like meaningful sentences. Have a look see below:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."

"Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love."

:).

Ok so these are all quotable quotes that I happen to like, made by some supposedly well known people. I just had to find a way to write about them and given my boundless imagination and incomparable writing skills, the toss-the-list-of-words-in-the-air technique is what I came up with. Patent and trade mark are pending, so if anyone wants to use the technique, they better get in touch with me with details about my cut.

Anyway, before I sign off, let me also reveal the identity of the quoters whose quotes I have just quoted. That first one is a piece of wisdom from some freedom fighter it seems. I am a bit fuzzy about his actual identity but I have heard him being called Mohandas or Mahatma or Gandhi or some such. The second one is attributed to one Charles Schultz. This guy seems to have had a thriving business dealing in nuts. Mainly peanuts. And that last one, I knew the guy who is supposed to have said it. They said the guy who said this was the same, slightly eccentric guy who explained the theory of relativity. Well, there can be only one person who fits that description. My high school physics teacher. I never knew he had it in him to say stuff like this!

Ok, hope you like those quotes as much as I do. Me sign off now. Adios.

Forget This

How would you define memory? My favorite dictionary in this ethereal medium, www.dictionary.com, says "Memory is the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, etc., or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences." In human speak, that translates to "being able to remember stuff." I guess I can safely say that this definition, if I may call this that, refers to humans. Now, I very vaguely remember having heard, somewhere in my very distant past, something on the lines of metals remembering their shapes! Yes, I know, it sounds a little 'Terminator-2'ish but the ethereal medium does have an answer to this too. A quick google (verb) then threw up a name for such metals. They are called Shape Memory Alloys or SMA (Duh! Really!) and seem to 'remember' their original shape even after they have been bent out of it. So what 'Memory' are we talking of here? Does this have the same definition as the one I gave above?

If anyone is actually pondering that highly philosophical/intellectual question, please don't. My idea behind all that talk about memory was to just say that I think this memory thing is way overrated! To save you from scratching your heads wondering how and why I am saying this based on the above, let me clarify. This is not based on what I said above. That was just to introduce 'Memory'. The basis for my 'memory is overrated' thought is what is below.

We have a memory that helps in remembering facts, events, experiences and such. So what? The presence of these so called SMAs is proof that leave alone being a unique human trait, it is not even a unique living-being trait. Having memory is like saying I exist. How unique can that be?! Ok, let's leave the fact that it is just another common property for stuff on earth. It's not like our memory is something that leaves a good taste in the mouth either. Yes I remember the good days, the old days and the good old days. At the same time, as if to temper my happy feeling, I also remember facts that I wish weren't, events that I wish hadn't happened and experiences I could have lived without. This is the main reason I think memory is overrated. It's not unique to us and it's just a thought retrieval agent that blindly brings back everything, good or bad.

Instead there is something else that, according to me, deserves far more recognition than it currently gets. It is called 'Forgetfulness'. I wouldn't go so far as to call it the greatest gift man-kind has been given but it definitely is up there with the other contenders like jalapeno peppers, bubble wrap, chocolate chip cookies and certain other things. Without being blessed with this divine gift, imagine the amount of stuff you would be carrying around in your head. We would have started using the other major organs like the liver, pancreas and the colon to store our thoughts. Given what those organs are intended for, I can only imagine the contamination our thoughts will have to go through, literally. And that one reason is enough reason for us to be thankful for being forgetful.

So here is me, doffing my hat to this wonderful ability of ours. And.....................................................................................ok, so I forgot what comes next, but rest assured it wasn't anything important.

Madness and Madras Mainroads

Of course it's not called Madras anymore, at least not officially. It's called Chennai. This change in nomenclature came about some ten years back when the rulers, supposed public representatives supposedly elected to the role by democratic vote, deemed the name 'Madras' to be a hangover of India's colonial past and sought to redress the situation by calling the city 'Chennai', supposedly in chaste Tamil (or 'Tamizh', to be phonetically correct!). Of course, the political mileage that the then rulers got out of this move is in the realms of the regular 'R&I' (i.e., 'Rumor and Innuendo' for those who are not familiar with the short form) and we can just speculate all we want without anyone ever saying that we are wrong or right.

Madras, as I persist to defiantly refer to this city of my birth, is a name I like and as my rant above shows, the change in name hasn't gone down well with me. However, now that I have that out of my system, I think I better get this post back on track before it gets more lost than it already is.

**Looks around to see any familiar landmarks leading to the correct path. Scratches head, scratches two-day-old stubble, turns the map a full 180 degrees in all 3 dimensions, looks around once again...aha! Found it. Trudges back and is finally facing the correct direction**

The only other country I have set foot on, apart from the land of my birth, is the US of A (Oh no, I didn't mean 'country' as in 'country-side' but 'country' as in 'nation'. Sorry about the confusion!). I was in Big Apple and its neighboring New Jersey (Small Apple???) for a little over 2 months with a trip to Washington DC and Dallas, Texas thrown into the mix. And the first thing I thought as I was making my way out of the airport was, 'Wow! Look at the wide roads!’ The last thought, as I was making my way to the airport was also more or less on the same lines. And in between these two, I must have thought that thought a few hundred times. Minimum. When you look at the world map, look at the US of A and then take a look over at India. Compare the size of the two. Now compare the 60+ million head count in the US with the 1+ billion head count in India and the contrast between the two is just compounded further. That will probably give you an idea of why I was wowed by the vast stretches of empty space and wide roads.

This combination of a humongous population and a small land mass can only result in one thing. Cramps. Causing further cramps is the on going economic boom in India and its most visible manifestation - the increased car/SUV/truck population on the roads (a majority of which are poorly maintained). As someone who stays a fair distance away from my office, my daily commute is done using my bike. When I started work some six years back, it used to take me around 20 to 25 minutes of maniacal riding to reach office in one piece. If I didn't mind reaching there in more than one piece I could have made it in 15. Six years hence, it takes me upwards of 45 minutes irrespective of how many of my pieces reach office. And this is when I leave home before the peak hours to escape getting caught in traffic!

As if that was not bad enough, the whole time I am on the road, I need to maintain a 360 degree surveillance of my immediate surroundings to avoid coming into intimate contact with other road users. This includes two legged creatures that choose the moment, when the light turns green for the vehicles, to test their faith in God. And God forbid, a non-serious accident happens, the traffic freezes! The warring parties pitch tent right there at the place where one fender brushed against the other and the rest of the traffic gives them company and moral support by stopping and gawking. For most of the on-lookers, that might be the most interesting part of their day but me, I'd rather be home, acting comatose and staring at the TV.

Before I forget, honorable mention to the umpteen traffic light GPs that take place (yours truly is an active participant in these even though he realizes the futility of racing for a mere 100 meters before stopping at the next signal for a minute and half!). If I want to catch that elusive thing called an 'Empty Stretch of Road', the only option for me is to take part in these mini, spontaneous GPs. Further encouragement to take part in these comes in the form of the long, wide lines of traffic jammed around each signal. Get caught in the middle or the back of these and you can be sure to be looking at the same set of lights for a couple of signal cycles before you get to move ahead.

Me thinks this long rant should end here. Two reasons. I don't think I have anything else to rant about this particular subject. Second, I am feeling sort of light in the head, now that I have un-loaded all this. Finally, if you are reading this particular line, I have just one more thing to say to you - "Dude(tte), you are either very patient or very jobless!!" :)

How I Potentially Changed the World

I am elated. And very happy. Ok, they both probably mean the same. But that sort of reflects my state of mind, so I will keep it as it is. The reason for my very happy elation is that, today, I did something that has the potential to change the world as we know it. Well, actually speaking, I helped kick start the process and once the process runs its natural course, we should have a changed world on our hands. I am looking forward to it (As difficult as it might sound, you can imagine a physically grown up man jumping up and down in excitement. That would be me!).

Let me fill you in with some background and some details. I call myself a consultant because that's what they call me in the place I work. But when I look at my job, after peeling off the different layers it is clothed in and washing away the make-up, it's nothing more than a sales job. There is a product our company puts out. I sell it. Simple. Right? Wrong! Actually it's not so simple like I made it sound. I guess no sales job is. To add to the already abundant lack of simplicity, the product I sell is a software product and my potential customers are companies which are trying their hardest to keep their operational costs down. By now, you must be able to see where I am going with this. Unlike my job, the equation here is simple. I have to sell the product to folks who wouldn't want to see even the shadow of it unless it's given to them for free.

Given that scenario, my current state of glee and happiness can be traced to the fact that a not-so-ordinary deal has gone through. Our customer (whom I can't mention here) is handling a huge project (that I can't name here) in a domain (that I can't specify here) for one of their clients (whose identity I am not at liberty to reveal). Since they cater to a percentage (that can't be specified here) of the global market, this end-client (that I should not name) occupies a highly influential position in terms of influencing future world-wide trends. And because the sale I made is going to benefit said project which is going to in turn help said customer in influencing future trends, I am taking a little credit for having changed the world, whenever the change happens.

In case you had any difficulty understanding the 'details' that I had provided above, you are free to blame the various confidentiality agreements I am working under!

The Helpful Scars

Sometimes it just happens. I don't know why but it happens. I get hit with a bout of 'BrainBlankitis'. One second I have the idea and half the post written in my head and the next second I am groping in the dark recesses of my brain to figure out what topic I was thinking about. Not sure if this is a regular, normal, human affliction or old age though I personally think it must be old age. Anyway, it happened again today. I had this idea and it was time to switch on the machinery upstairs in the hope that a half-way decent, funny blog post will churn itself out. But as I sat staring at the computer screen showing an all white page, I couldn't, for the life of me, remember what the big idea was.

There are a lot of techniques I have read about, aimed at helping people in exactly this kind of situation. I tried both of them but with no success. My memory was in serious trouble and the blank screen remained just as white as before. By this time my elbows were on the table, my head was in my hands and it was starting to fill with crazy ideas like upgrading my RAM and getting a bigger hard disk. Thankfully I wasn't so far gone yet to actually act on those ideas!

At this juncture, my fingers ran over a small bump on the side of my head. That small bump was what still remains of a head injury from over a decade back. Even as I was feeling the familiar contours of the bump with one hand, my other hand started homing in on a similar scar on the other side of my head. And found it. This one was the result of a meeting between my head and the wall in my school which got a little too intimate for my comfort. And running my hands over these two, old scars, I got thinking about all the other scars and memories spread across my length and breadth.

I had decided that my face was too unremarkable and took the help of the tea table to split the tip of my right eyebrow into two strands. That was a little after I was a baby and a little before I could call myself a toddler. After that, I have done or tried my best to do a few other alterations to my mug. I found that my chin was jutting out a little too much and took the help of the floor to push it back in. I tried to compress my huge head by keeping my head between the door and the doorway frame. Apart from all these in-house aids that I had used over time, the road has been my best and most often used aid. I have attempted to change the appearance and alignment of both my legs and both my hands using the road, on more than one occasion. Unfortunately I haven't been successful in doing that. A fracture in my leg, a shoulder getting dislocated and sundry other scratches, bruises and cuts did give me the illusion that I was getting somewhere in my endeavor only to realize that they had all flattered to deceive.

Now, given the number of times I attempted to make some physical changes to myself, I am not surprised that I have such a list of scars to reminisce about. But the best part is that this reminiscence solved my problem of not having anything to write about. Whether they helped with altering my looks or not, the scars were at least helpful now.

Abnormal, Unmemorable Monday

If anybody has the patience and the mental fortitude to sit and go through my previous 90 odd posts, they will realize one thing. At an average of nearly once every 5 posts I would have mentioned the fact that I am employed in a 9-to-6 job. Now I can attribute that kind of frequency to the fact that I spend something like 26 hours of my 24 hour day at work and that my work and work place provide the maximum fodder for me to come up with something to write. But the truth is that the paucity of ideas in the empty shell, that plays the part of my head, forces me to go back and use the same old, over-used things I have used before.

Ok. All that rambling was just to prepare you for yet another reference to the same. :).

Today started. With a bright, clear blue shining through the fog of my sleep and dreams. That woke me up. The first thought in my head was that the blue that had woken me up was the famous Monday Morning Blue! As I sat up in bed, half asleep and yawning, I looked at myself in the mirror and realized, with some surprise, that I could do a very good imitation of an underfed, malnourished hippo. Big head, bigger mid section and a huge mouth - Yep, definite hippo territory. With my thoughts threatening to head to the jungle, I turned to see the time. Another surprise! Seeing the clock read 8.30 got my derrière out of bed faster than I could erase the word 'Hippopotamus' from my head. I forgot about the Monday morning blue and the hippo and any other thought that I might have wanted to think about sitting in bed. I was already late and the only thought in my head was to get ready as fast as I could and head for work.

To cut a long winding story short, before leaving home and finding myself lending the human touch to an otherwise furniture filled office, I fortunately remembered that this Monday was supposed to be a 'work from home' day. Phew! If everything had been normal, 8.30 in the morning would have found me sitting at my desk in office, not sitting in bed thinking about hippos! However, the ‘Bandh’ made sure that today wouldn't be a normal Monday. But after a full day of working from home, I haven't had anything more interesting happen to me than what had happened first thing in the morning.

As abnormal Mondays go, this wasn't such a memorable one.