Quksace Agjke

I've been pretty consistent with my blogging. I have one blog post every 6 months or so, not too bad. This time its about quksace agjke, a contemporary madness. Read more about it here.

Till later.

Boredom - Occupational Hazard

Now that I've started earning money by staring at the monitor for hours on end, I decided to put these 20 weekly hours of student worker position to some creative use. Going back to my ebooks and papers was one option, but the lazy part of my character quickly fought back "What! Don't you dare utilize the work hours for your personal objectives!". Another option was to see these boring hours as a break from studies, thus meant for recreational purposes. After all, I was being paid for recreation. Where do you get such an opportunity! Samsung India Software Center sprung back to my mind, and slid itself behind a wall of professional secrecy. Anyway, one form of recreation, I wondered, could be music. But using headphones while at the help desk of a computer lab isn't a good idea, unless its the finals week and your supervisor doesn't let you go, and you're ready to risk your job, though only for a week's study when that job could instead pay your expenses for a couple of years. Ironic, huh? Anyway, I could also get some form of modern recreation, something that youth today resorts to anytime of the day, any place on the earth, in any and every mood, Facebook! I could comment on others' moods, throw my own tantrums upon the rest of the world, or scroll through photos of a friend enjoying a bungee jump, or another one rejoicing at the news of his mother-in-law's hospitalization. None of these solutions seem impressive though. What I seek is a permanent solution to my multilemma. As I write this sentence, its been 2 weeks since I started this exercise of waste. I have so far wasted 40 valuable hours simply staring at the monitor, and am still looking for a way out. Stephen Hawking said in his talk yesterday "If you think you're stuck in a black hole, don't give up. There is a way out!". I'll keep looking...

Good Morning!

It was raining in the morning, So I didn't get my bike.
Its not that I couldn't ride it, Its the weather that I like.
Sometimes to clear your mind, all you need is a walk.
But something that surely helps, is someone with whom to talk.

The sweetest loveliest breeze, cheeking you by.
Like someone from a far far land, kissing you a Hi.
The sun smiling from behind the clouds, the grass covered in dew.
I'm glad I'm starting my day afresh, and I'm thinking of you.

My Roomie and the Garbage Collector

My belief that it is not possible to change people come what may has been strengthened time and again by my roomie's behavior. Leaving his hair on the wash-basin choking it up, eating with intermittent burps, and not attending to regular nature's calls and thereby subjecting us to its horrible repercussions are some of the mentionables. Blightful but delightful as he justifies them to be, I've still tried persistently to rid him of his annoying traits, for his and for his roomies' benefit. But all to no avail. Six years of friendship leaves you with littel options. I finally gave up!

But some people never give up. Like the garbage collector of our building. He dutifully rings the doorbell atleast three times in order to wake me up and collect my share of the baneful plastic. “Stop screwing the doorbell, as**ole!” has been my consistent and now almost subconscious response to his early morning pestering. On weekends it takes the form of a few more abuses and finally an on-his-face door-slamming, expecting that he won't show up the next morning, and knowing at the same time that he will. Its as if he has a firm conviction to bring about a transformation within me, as if he's my Gandhi, preaching the cliche “early to rise”, something that I so despise.

I've heard that life is a game. Every now and then, life brings up a new pitcher, and you're supposed to deal with him (no offense to the other sex, but with baseball, it has to be “him”). I somehow feel that I've been placed against the wrong opponents. You'd agree that my roomie v/s the garbage collector would be a better game to watch. Ufff! I wish my roomie were to change, for good. And I so much wish the garbage collector would stop trying to change me.

2947

The 2947 is a Kia Sportage, a local and popular model in its class. It plys only on the one route that it is made for. Following its daily routine, transporting us Indians from here to there. With the ever-increasing .cpp files in our minds, beautiful Korean women in our hearts and hunger in our bellies, we wait at the gate daily sharp at 12 noon, under the pleasantly hot Korean sun, only to see the 2947 loom into the picture from far off the road, and then to heave a sigh of relief "Aa gayee". Its driver, a tall and broad chinki, with a face as stern as the face of stone, with mannerisms as dry as any pissed off giraffe at a non-Korean zoo (animals at Korean zoos possess an abstruse vitality in that, they always seem waving their hands in circular "Hello"s and smiling the chinki smile), has driven it dutifully to its 50,000th kilometer now. The 2947, with its normal trip lasting a total of only five minutes, give and take a few due to the annoying traffic-signal-following-culture here, with some passengers having their breakfast and spilling their tea, with their Korean bosses in their heads crying "Palli Palli", with some like me singing out Sonu Nigam or Himesh Reshammiya along with the CD, and with most of them either laughing it out on a not-even-a-chuckle-deserving issue, or simply quiet sometimes due to the unwelcome presence of a woman passenger, is a technologically advanced, GPS enabled, automatic transmission sports utility vehicle with a nine-seater capacity, convertible into a six-seater cum 20-Indians-carrying boot space (true, Indians can fit into anything!!!). Each normal trip starts with the giant driver's heavy honking to hurry us up, and ends with his dry but somehow pleasant "HaveANiceDay", the only English word committed to his memory, to please his English-speaking passengers, and succeed he does. Gradually and undeniably, the 2947 with his HaveANiceDay driver, has crept into our daily lives. And with each passing day, as I wait for my visa to expire, every morning when it honks me to absorb me in, and take me to my workplace, I wish that this time atleast, let it have wings. Let it not stop at the gates, let it just fly away, let it take me home. Me, the HaveANiceDay and the 2947...