Wanted: Energetic & Enthusiastic Ideas

My head was running out of oxygen and I did the only thing any human is programmed to do in that situation. I became a hippo! Ok, don't imagine a 'Transformers' like transformation. I didn't physically morph into that elephantine, pig-looking creature, I just imitated one. Confused? Let me explain. I yawned and in the process I opened my mouth so wide and kept it open for so long that I suddenly knew exactly what it felt like to be a hippo.

On an entirely unrelated note, did you know that the being, formerly and currently known as the whale, is a glorified, modified and vastly blown up version of the hippo? I didn't know this either, till I came to know it just now. (Read here)

Ok, coming back to me now. I knew what it felt like to be a hippo. I was also starting to get a massive ache in my jaw because of the really stretched out and prolonged yawns that I was indulging in. Thankfully one thing I didn't have to contend with was flying tiny-creatures competing to be my crunchy snack of the day because I was doing my hippo impersonation sitting in an air-conditioned, almost-sterile environment. However, given that every time I step into this place I start yawning, me thinks that the overwhelming urge to sterilize the environment here probably makes them get rid of that thing called oxygen alongside other airborne miscreants!

All of this happened because I was sitting, watching a computer, waiting for something to happen on it so that I can make a note of it when something did happen. This intensely intellectual hard work kept me occupied for the better part of the later part of the day today and left me drained of both energy, enthusiasm and oxygen. Having somehow managed to address the oxygen issue in my own 'hippo'esque way, I am now trying to figure out a way to address the energy and enthusiasm issues. Any ideas?

Existential what??

I was looking up the word 'CON' and happened to run into another, big looking, important sounding word called 'CONUNDRUM'. Since I was looking into a dictionary anyway, I took the time to look the big guy up and found out that he was some kind of puzzle or riddle or some such confusing thing. I thought I understood what it was and decided to use it in my writing some time to sound impressive. Good. I should have stopped there. Instead, I hung around 'CONUNDRUM' for some more time and eventually came across a phrase which had me stumped. Only much later, when I undertook some house keeping and cleaning activities in my mailbox, did I understand what that phrase meant.

Now let me give you a little back ground before I come to the point, because if I directly get to it, it wouldn't be me and I will have trouble sleeping tonight.

I take a lot of pride in the fact that I sleep walk my way through life. It's actually more sleep and less walk but for convenience sake I will just call it sleep walk and leave it at that. In spite of doing my bestest zombie impersonation and 'zombie'ing my way through life, there are times when I am forced to acknowledge something happening around me. One of those somethings is the standard stock of mail forwards that people seem to get. I am not talking here about any forward that anyone might get. I am specifically talking about the kind of mail forwards received by folks who fall under a specific category called the fresh-from-college-campus-into-software-company category.

Once upon a time, I belonged to it. Now-a-days I just come across newer specimens of that species and though, with each passing year, they make me feel positively geriatric and so yesterday (mind, I haven’t touched the big three-oh yet), the one thing I share with them is an inanity called the forwarded mail. To my amusement, I found that they get exactly the same forwards that I got all those years back!! The same old stuff about love, friendship, relationships, man vs woman stuff, best photographs of the year (in this one, the photos remain the same, but the year keeps getting updated!) and the same old jokes.

It's one such joke that explained the aforementioned mysterious sounding phrase. I have come across this one more times than I have hair on my head. It has this guy who is relaxing and watching the idiot box (let's call this one the Idiot) and his dad (let's call this one the Dad) walks in and the following dialogue ensues:

Dad: Why are you relaxing in front of the TV? At your age, you must be working hard.
Idiot: Why?
Dad: You work hard so that you will get recognized for your hard work.
Idiot: So?
Dad: So, you will get rewarded and reach a better position.
Idiot: Hmmm. So?
Dad: A better position means better money. The more money you make now, the more money you can save for your future.
Idiot: (Yawns!) So?
Dad: (Showing signs of irritation!) If you save enough, you don't have to struggle. You can relax and enjoy life.
Idiot: That's exactly what I am doing now! What's your point?
Dad: !!?!?

I am not sure if that caused any muscle in your face to even twitch involuntarily. But it did help me figure out what the phrase - 'EXISTENTIAL CONUNDRUM' - meant.

100

I am not a big fan of waiting around indefinitely for anything. In fact, I am not even a small fan. But I am doing exactly that as I sit here, waiting for the wise one to put in an appearance. I guess I would do it only for the wise one. Anyway, there has actually been one, and exactly only one, benefit that I have got out of this. It has helped me excavate a word from the depths of my memory, one that I have been looking for, for the last four days.

I celebrated writing my 100th post here, a few days back. But more important than that was the fact that from the July 6th to October 13th is exactly 100 days (both days inclusive). Did that make sense? If it did, good. If it didn't, even better because at least now you might be curious to read the rest of this!

Those 100 days actually marked the 100 days of existence of Noodle House. And I am feeling pretty warm about it. No, it's not the 'AC-is-switched-off-and-it-gets-stuffy-in-here-pretty-fast' kind of warm. I am talking about that warm, fuzzy feeling that one gets when one feels warm and fuzzy about something!! Ok may be that didn't come out quiet as well as I wanted it to. What I am talking about is the way you feel when you are feeling good about something. Ah, this is much better! So where was I? Yes, I was feeling pretty good about the 100 day mark because it proves that I actually stuck with Noodle House for a little over 3 months now.

That's huge for me. Definitely celebration worthy. What better way to celebrate than to make yet another totally unnecessary, completely idiotic sounding post here? That's what I set out to do but unfortunately couldn't because I didn't know what to call myself at that time. Pity!

It has taken a combination of four days, indefinite waiting and some mental excavation to finally unearth what I am called. A 'Centenarian' in blog days. That's me.

Function Point Professionalism

They had said it back when I was still in school. That once I step out into the big bad corporate world, I would have to become professional in my approach to anything I do. They had also said that I would start learning many more things much faster than I ever did at any point in my nearly decade and half stay in school. And so it proved to be. Professionalism, estimation, time-sheets, project management, tracking, efficiency, re-engineering, standards, process, automation, customer satisfaction - If I am patient enough to considerably strain my memory, I could probably fill in a couple of hundred standard A4 size sheets with all the corporaty stuff that I have come across, starting some half a dozen years back. Of these, I can honestly say that one page full is how much I actually learnt and understood and another three thirteenth fraction of the second page is what I am familiar with.

I walked into office today and that thing called deja vu hit me immediately like a speeding government bus or water tanker or something similarly big. No, not because I come to the same office everyday but because of the talk that was being talked. I had inadvertently walked bang into FP talk first thing in the morning and suddenly felt six years younger. That was when I used to walk into such talk on a regular basis. Anyway, the big hoo-haa in office today was about FP. And that triggered off a memory of this thingy called Function Point (FP) which I remembered to be somewhere on the ragged edge of that three thirteenth part of that second page. More about it can be found here, but for those of you who are like me and would just as well get on with life, a Function Point is a unit for measuring the usefulness of software. Of course this is a highly and overly simplified version of what it actually means but this is all that I have ever understood about FP and this is all that I can pass on to anyone else.

This renewed introduction to FP sort of forced me to pay a little attention to it once again. At the end of the day, though, no good came out of it because I still don't know anything more than what I already knew about it and what I know is limited to the words 'measuring the usefulness of software'. I understand these words. And because I understand that much, I am currently involved in carrying out a thorough Function Point Analysis (FPA) on my brain. I happen to have a semblance of a brain which definitely doesn't have any identifiable hardware in it and without hardware, the only other way it probably keeps up the appearance of being hard at work always must be because of software. And that's why the FPA, to figure out how useful that software is.

Though I already know that it is useless, my FPA will help me present this fact in a more professional manner. But that, finally, is what being a professional is all about.

Law of Triplicality

I am not sure how old the calendar, as we know it, is and I am too lazy to do the search or research required to find that out. But let's just suppose that we are facing a wall which has all the dates in all the years in our past (and hopefully in our future!) listed down on it. There are different ways in which a random date could be randomly selected from such a horde of dates. My favorite method is the ‘Cowboy Method’.

In this method, dart in hand, I get blindfolded, do an about turn, walk ten paces, turn back and throw the dart at the date covered wall. Unless I get disoriented when blindfolded or can't walk straight when blindfolded or can't turn around twice when blindfolded or a combination of all the three, I will have a random date picked at the end of this exercise. (Of course, this is not the only way to get your hands on a date. You can take the straight forward approach and ask her. Ok, now I am digressing!!)

Now, the whole idea behind picking out a random date (the calendar variety) was just to make a statement of fact. Utterly useless and totally moronic but still, a fact which says that irrespective of how dated that date happens to be, it would have been a yesterday, a today and a tomorrow. And if it happens to be a new date then surely it will be a yesterday, a today and a tomorrow.

This is called the Noodle's Law of Triplicality of Dates. This says that there's an innate relationship between the three days - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - because of which they are actually not three different days but the same day in different points in the fourth dimension. To better understand this innate relationship, it can be explained as follows:

"Yesterday was Today yesterday before becoming Yesterday today but it was also Tomorrow day before yesterday. Today is Today today and Today will be Yesterday tomorrow but it was Tomorrow yesterday. Extrapolating the same, we can conclude that Tomorrow is Tomorrow today but Tomorrow will be Today tomorrow and become Yesterday on the day after tomorrow."

That’s all from me for today. See you tomorrow folks!

Astrology and Salesmanship

There are literally thousands of new things coming out everyday and are getting added to the glut of options that consumers can spend their already-earned and yet-to-be-earned money on. But we also know that not all of them make it past the first batch of production. The reason only a handful of products become successful is not always because they are better than the competition but because of the way they are positioned and sold to the consumer.

Communication, whether it is written or verbal, is the key to selling. Any sales pitch has the ability to get people to listen to it but the language, and the manner in which the sales pitch is wrapped in it, is what makes customers out of people. I have picked up this simple but essential truth of making a sales pitch from reading the works of a couple of masters who are as far removed from the sales field as the third rock is from the sun. (I am not naming names here for fear of coming across as biased when in fact I am not.)

These two names are astrologers, famous for selling the future to anyone who cares about that hazy, uncertain thing. But on reading their works, I feel that their talent has been wasted in that field. Take my prospects of foreign travel as an example. At any given point in time, there is as much chance that I might go on an overseas trip as there is a chance that I won't. But when this same thing is presented to me as "From now on, Mars will be in your long-distance travel / foreign people and places sector, so something big seems to be brewing for you in this area", it paints a picture showing me in the airport waiting for my flight! Now if I actually travel, it would mean that the words have come true. Of course, the best part is that the words are still true even if I don't travel because, on reading them a second time, you will notice that they just said "...something big SEEMS to be brewing...". That is what I call an effective sales pitch.

Education, according to popular tee-shirt wisdom, is what we gain from experience and not from a class room. Well, I got my sales education from a couple of top notch astrologers. And my personal opinion is that, given their uncanny ability to express general, day-to-day common sense in creative, positive vibe inducing prose, they could have made it to the very top in the sales and advertising business.

Embarrassed Pig!

I am on board the only ride in the whole world that relentlessly keeps moving forward. You all must have heard of it too. It's called 'Time'. I have given up hoping for it to slow down and am now just resigned to the fact that I can get off of it only when, and if, it eventually decides, on its own, to stop. Instead, I have started paying a little attention to the places that my ride is taking me to. What I have observed is that I am on a journey that seems to be following a very convoluted route. I get that feeling because even though my journey has taken me to lots of new places, some nice and some not so nice, I seem to come across a few, now-familiar places with surprising regularity. One of those familiar places that I have been to so many times in my journey so far is called 'Embarrassment'. Like I have mentioned in an old post (here), I have visited and enjoyed the atmosphere in this place lots of times already. But only when it happens unexpectedly, does the trip become memorable and the experiences stay with you for a long time.

I like dancing. In spite of having a pair of legs that are yet to decide whether they are both right or both left, I manage to convey the impression that I can dance and take pride in my mediocre dancing skill. Ok, 'Skill' might be a little inappropriate to use when referring to my dancing, so I will just say ability. A couple of months back I enrolled myself in a dance class in the hopes that they can take this ability, work on it a little and make it a skill. After the first few classes (two, to be exact) my instructor figured out that he will have to work on it a whole lot just to make it resemble a skill, at least from some angles. Being the patient man that he is, he is still persisting with me and I, for my part, am enjoying developing a new skill.

It might be tough for me to figure out how my legs and hands and the rest of my body are supposed to move for me to look like I am doing what my instructor wants me to but what I do pick up very fast in class is how NOT to treat my dance partner. Partner courtesy and etiquette is what I seem to be picking up faster than dancing and I usually take elaborate measures to see that my partner doesn't have anything to complain about except my non-existent twinkle toes.

Today we were practicing a routine which required us to walk towards each other, twirl on the spot, get into the ball-room stance and continue from there. The music started. I walked, twirled, got into the stance and went ahead and I was happy I didn't make a joke out of myself. The next time we tried it, though, my partner stopped after the twirl and I could see she was trying hard to control her laughter. I was a little confused and also, since I was sure she was laughing at me, taken aback. All we had done till that point was to walk and twirl and I don't think even I am capable of messing those things up. She probably read my mind because she stopped laughing and with a smile on her face and the mirth still in her voice, she gave the reason behind her laughing fit for the whole class to hear.

Now I really wish that she hadn't voiced out her reason! I was sweating like a pig and during the twirl it seems I had sent down a shower of sweat raining down on her!! (I am not sure if 'eewww' would be an appropriate sound to make here.) That's what had happened and to her credit, instead of treating me like an uncouth bum she just laughed it off and continued dancing with me (She did make me wipe my face and hair before continuing!).

That made today's journey memorable. Yet another unexpected stop at 'Embarrassment'.

Scared Me.

Imagine you are 1 year old, just about getting comfortable standing on your own two legs and discovering the joys and pains of being mobile. Now imagine yourself ambling unsteadily along when someone unexpectedly pops in behind you and goes 'BOO'. I don't know about you but I lost balance, landed with a 'thlop' (that's 'thump' and 'flop' thrown against each other) and started crying. Actually I am not sure if I starting crying before I 'thlop'ed or after. Anyway, I have felt scared multiple times through the years but carbon dating that memory has shown that the above mentioned was my earliest introduction to being scared. Unlike that first time, though, I don't really remember the details about all the other times.

Except for just one other time.

I must have been around 11 or 12 or 13 or somewhere in that vicinity. I was discovering songs and bathroom singing and music and rhythm and dance and left feet and other, similar, important, life altering stuff. I guess that's also the same vicinity where that funny thing called 'Voice Breaking' happens because my voice was breaking at that time though I immediately had no clue as to why I sounded like I had a throat infection. It took me a few days to wrap my head around the whole breaking thing but after that, I started waiting to see how I would sound after it broke completely.

It was during one of those waiting days. As was usual for me then, I went in to take a bath. After a few moments of alternating between being scalded and being frozen, I got the temperature of the water just right. With the shower thus set, I relaxed and started humming some song, enjoying the water on my head. A few minutes into this serenity, I began to hear a strange, spooky, grating noise mixed with the sound of water from the shower. It just seemed to grow more prominent the more I concentrated on it. That shower, I used it everyday, was not supposed to make any sound, leave alone anything that was particularly that eerie.

Now, having entered the realm of double digits as far as my age was concerned, I didn't repeat the 'lose balance, thlop down and cry' routine from my baby days. But I believe I was just as scared as I was then. Even as I went stock still, held my breath and continued listening, the strange noise disappeared. All I could now hear was the water hitting the ground. The absence of the noise was even more unnerving and I was half expecting something to materialize out of the shower spout. I got ready to get at least one full-blooded scream out before being gobbled by said 'something'. But nothing happened. Other than me wasting water by letting the shower run.

Slowly I started relaxing again and cautiously turned my attention back to enjoying my shower and my song. And the noise started again! That is when the proverbial bulb got switched on bright and remembering my scared self from a few moments back, I couldn't but laugh at myself. That strange, spooky, grating noise was in fact coming from the shower. But not from the spout like I had imagined, it was coming from under the shower. It was coming from me!

It was the sound of me singing in my not-yet-fully broken voice.

Stereotypes and Concessions!

There aren't many guy friends of mine who would remember when we first met. Or where. Or the first time we fought and came to blows. Or other seemingly transient stuff that don't hold much significance in the context of our friendship. Like birthdays and anniversaries. These things happen, we live that moment and then we are off, to live the next moment. And as we move from one moment to the next, all we carry forward is a light backpack called friendship instead of packing king-sized bags rightly referred to as 'baggage'!!

Now, the case is diametrically opposite with my female friends (I am spelling this out for the benefit of those for whom I haven't been obvious enough already). Birthdays, first meetings, anniversaries and any other daily life event which takes their fancy - all these are memorable occasions to be remembered and regurgitated whenever the opportunity presents itself. Fights and arguments deserve a special mention here because these are stored in a special hi-speed memory bank with quick access technology so that at the first faint visible sign of any skirmish, the contents of this memory bank are used to hit you on the head.

for any female happening to read this and happening to be my friend, please don't take it personally. I don't mind you hitting me on my head. And please read on. I have nice things to say about you.........I think.

What I mentioned above is nothing but the stereotypical male and female. I accept I am probably as stereotypical as a stereotype can be. So is probably everyone in the rest of the world. We might make a few concessions to all the people or concede all to a few people. But all of us do make some concessions. Once such concession I make is trying to remember birthdays. At least for those people that I know would hit me the hardest if I don't.

Yesterday was one such concession day and I promptly did everything expected of me. I remembered, hunted down the phone number and made the overseas call. Only to hear a gruff voice say, "There is no one at home to take your call. Please leave a message and your phone number and we will get back to you." Back I went hunting, this time for the mobile number. And this time I heard a different voice - "Your call is being transferred to the voice mail box. Please..." - you get the picture, don't you?

There I was, acting out of character, just to bring some cheer and happiness to someone I know would be cheered and happy by my out of character acting and all I get is the answering machine! Talk about life being unfair! Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Damn!

Publicity

I never once saw myself in the mold of a proper writer. More than anything, I think I resemble a prolific scribbler than a halfway decent writer by any standards. Assuming scribblers also have some standards, I would seriously be offending them too by calling myself one. Anyway, so I am not a writer in the traditional sense of the word. My grammar is iffy, my vocabulary on the blog owes a lot to the different thesauruses that I have come across on the internet (and that in itself was a stroke of luck because I found an online dictionary that helped me figure out that a thesaurus was not a dinosaur!) and my spelling depends on the spell-check feature in MS-Word and the web-browser much like a patient on life-support depends on the ventilator.

All that is not to say that I haven't ever tried to write or that I haven't tried to improve. I have done both. All those writings I have done on paper are now lost or have been taken by people who probably intend to use them as examples of how not to waste paper and on the improvement front, there hasn't been much. So, given such abysmal standards, it's not such a surprise that the internet is the only place where I could easily publish my writing for public consumption. That and the fact that I figured out how to go about setting up a blog for myself. Ever since I started this exercise, I have known that I was exposing my unsuspecting visitors to the risk of losing what little mental health they might have had coming in.

So I knew that I was a 'dangerous' writer in the above sense but what I didn't set out to be was a 'murderous' blog-layout-color designer. On the color front Noodle House has, over the last 3 months, been plain black, black and gray, black and gray and blue, and now it is black and blue and orange. Agreed, it sort of presents a picture of clashing colors. But what I didn't imagine is the full extent of damage this palette is capable of. According to one person (I don't have a name to go with this person) here, Noodle House has colors capable of man-slaughter! The exact words (entry number 15 on the site): "If colors could kill, this site could have committed manslaughter."

I had a good laugh at that one. Can't say if I agree or disagree with that person because our opinions of what constitutes good looks, color-wise, are obviously not the same. But I would nevertheless be thankful to that person because by picking me out and putting me on his site, he has driven a considerable amount of people my way. I usually have around 10 people a day reading this stuff so a total of 7 people because of this one referral, all from Vancouver, is a whopping 70%.

Like they say, "There is no such thing as bad publicity." Thank you. ;)