The Year Gone By

The last post for 2009. Wow....what a year it has been... Again, as I said before, probably one of the most eventful years of my life :) Things happened.... a few left me crying, few left me laughing with tears in my eyes. I am talking to Chandrika right now.. Over phone...Lots to write about.... But will wait for the new year...

On Meghana's Request! :)

This poem......well just read it I would say...

I will always remember
The first time you and I met
Looking back at that day
I knew not, this place where I was to get.

I never thought about us
Even as a passing thought
Now I smile at myself
For this situation, I have myself brought.

So many things have happened
We saw sweet events unfold
Anecdotes kept piling up
Some spoken about, few untold.

All the times that we have shared
Have drawn me closer and closer
I have no grasp of what you think
I wish I could look in to your mind and farther.

I accosted this and maybe its true
I am just another one of your friends
Wish you could take a step further
Understand me and see the changing trends.

Every fight that we have had
Made me realize that I matter
Every time we held the gaze
I felt it was something more than mere flatter.

To this day I do not know
Whether I would tell you or not
After days of familiarity
Is it the lover or the friend that I have got.

I may spend a lifetime
Hoping that you will some day
Look back think and figure out
All the things I wanted to say.

There may come a time
When I will walk away with another
Collecting, crying, leaving behind memories
But my friend, You, I will always remember.

Its been a while now!

It's been so long since I wrote something. I think I just got lethargic or maybe scared. Scared of censure. Have you ever wondered why women are more scared of being judged than men are? Or why it is believed that women cannot be good decision makers? A friend once said, if I see a task...I see only that. But when it comes to her, she sees others things on her way to getting the task accomplished. Its weird but true. Women always think of a lot of things alongside one another. We are biologically programmed to think that way, I feel (though completely not sure what I mean :P).

My last post was written before I started the fall semester. For one, this semester has been the most eventful four months of my life. The learning curve just went up exponentially, for me, in this semester. By learning, I meant those things that you do not get grades for. Ironical as it may seem, there are a few things that are learned, and there is no physical measure of how well one has learned them. I learned that convention (generally accepted survival norms) is the best for almost all things in life.....If you try and step out of the box..be prepared to face cruel consequences.

I read this blog which is mostly driven by the mantra 'comedy of errors'. Its political conceptually, satirical actually. What ever may be its a brilliant blog. There was this one post on that blog which was about how one should blog. The blogger says, strictly, do not make your blog a personal diary. My blog has been so far just that. A personal diary. With all the mundane stuff that I do. And friends actually put up with it! :)

I recently saw this movie called Anything Else.... random.... but it had a few brilliant one liners :)! One went some what like this - "As you go along with life, you'll find no shortage of people who'll tell you how to live!".......re phrasing----as you go along, you'll find no shortage of bloggers who'll blog about how to blog!!!! I decided...what the heck..might as well rave and rant....people who want to read it will do so.....

I believe that relationships you have with each one of your friends or even remote acquaintances are learning experiences. You learn from every person that you know. I hate having to refer any one in a lackadaisical manner and terming them all "a friend of mine". It's generalizing their existence in my life! So from here on I will take the names of all the people I write about on this blog.

First of all let me start off with this guy I call 'Dabba'. We were trying to figure out the notes for this song called Ae Zindagi Gale Lagaale from Sadma. Brilliant Song!!!! Its funny how Dabba can pull out his Guitar any time of the day and start figuring out the notes for different songs. He has hooked me on to a few real good songs and I cant thank him enough for that.

I have another friend called Ramnathan. He was my class mate at RV College of Engineering. This blessed place I got my Civil Engineering BE from. He once said...it does not matter how good a singer or instrumentalist you are...its how good a musician you are that matters. Can you see the difference, while the former two are partial, the latter most is wholesome. Dabba is a musician. I can never get the technical bits right. I guess which is why I feel ill equipped when it comes to music. It will take me a while before I can transition in to a musician.

Its 1.25 AM right now. Its all fogged up out there. Beautiful. There is something beautiful about fog. Something very enigmatic and alluring about the things that you cannot see. The ambiance literally around us this hour is just that! I am still looking for some to have tea with. That's the best part about College Station or maybe for that matter about any student town. Even at 1.30 in the morning (Have you realized that there is NO 1.30 in the night :)??? ) somebody will be up for tea! I bet Anand would be..... Funny enough, he had just finished having tea :)

I havent asked any of them if I could take their names. But I bet they wont mind. Or I assumed so. Assumptions are always good in life. Favorable ones especially :)

I have a crucial day ahead of me tomorrow. I was telling Shwe today how I could have made my life in music, dance and theater. Even in the scariest of my nightmares I was never a Civil Engineer. But then how many people have the spine to stand up to their beliefs. I did not! I wish I had done something out of the box then!!! I again end up at this weird place inside of me. I regret nothing, but I wish I had made more of the time I spent in Bangalore. And some how from the place where I am right now, there will not be a second time.

Patterns of life are unfathomable. I like it that way. All fogged up :) Sometimes even the sunshine does not do the cleaning.... And sometimes it's better not to hope for more sun shine. The ice berg can just come melting down on you when you least expect it... Oh by the way...Did the captain of the Titanic cry?...Someday we'll know......

Going back in time

Today is the 15th of August...So here is wishing the Indians and the South Koreans a happy Independence day. So that is as far as patriotism will go in this post.

As for going back in time...its been 7 years since my Rangapravesham...I will get in to the details of what that is later sometime. 14th of August 2002 was when it happened...It was my first full length solo Bharatnatyam dance performance...Again, I will get in to the description a little later.

I am writing this from Connecticut. I am visiting an aunt and uncle of mine. Last night I met her at the New York Penn Station and had many first times in NYC last night.

Though I had been to NYC in the winter of 2008, I had not seen the Grand Central Station. Well I did last night for the first time and fell in love with it. I had my first NY-cab ride. I had Ethiopian food for the first time. Many of you out there would think why I am obsessed with the city and like the feeling! :)

I went kayak-ing today for the first time :) I did not grow up as a very outdoorsy person..but turns out I sorta am!!! :) I wasn't too bad on the kayak either :) I did not flip over to say the least and kayak-ed for about an hour or so!! Phew...Was amazing fun!

I spoke about my take on gtalk messages in the last post... So, think about it...status messages are just another way of drawing attention....It takes a status message for a long lost friend to ping you most of the times....and status messages can start off a good conversation! Humans find newer ways to accost....Gone are days when people used a conventional line...This seems to be the in-thing.. :)

I have a lot of things to say and share...by most of you reading it..would have heard it from me already..though I started writing the blog assuming I would have a lot of things to write about..indeed its more difficult than I thought it would be!

So I would like to listen from the very limited number of readers...should I continue blogging????

A mid-summer night's dream

I am almost sounding shakespeare like ain't I!

Another one of those days at office....I wanted to find out what exactly Shakespeare had penned....I must admit I have not read any of his works, but I will make an attempt to do so.

So ya..I was searching online for his quotes. I needed a quote for my status message on gtalk.(I have a take on status messages but more about that later)

I came across a few interesting lines from A mid-summer night's dream, a romantic comedy. I cannot recollect exactly what those lines were but they were good nevertheless.The above explanation sums up why the title is so..

Now coming to the actual incident...this again would require an extensive explanation of WHAT's been UP with me for the past few days...brace yourself

The other day I was chatting with an incredibly brilliant aunt of mine. She suggested that I watch a political drama series called the The West Wing. This series is about all the things that go on in the White House (the abode of the Presidency of the United States of America). Since I started reading Jeffrey Archer during my teens, the Presidency and the politics of the United States have fascinated me. Being the most powerful country in the world (lets discount the less popular facts for now) is not easy. Every word the white house utters is news. Its glamorous(the system wont let me use the 'u' again...almost metaphorically saying 'u' is insignificant!!!! ) and most of the times outrageous. For the sheer control politics can exercise and for all the attention it gets...its addictive!

So ya I have been hooked to this show for the last one month...Its been a great savior during solitude. In one of the episodes a special intelligence agent gets shot and dies....I like that guy a lot..The US Press Secretary and the agent were about to go out on a date and he gets shot because of local criminals in NYC, and that too, while buying flowers for her.. :( :(...So I went to sleep that night with a very heavy heart and guess what I had my mid-summer night's dream...

I am in the airport taking a flight to some random place that I dont remember.....As I am talking to some stranger...I get shot....I see blood all over...and surprisingly I am able to withstand the pain (I guess thats why its called dreaming!)...and yes after that I woke up....it was 5.30 in the morning....I was a little fuzzy...but ya...it was scary :)

I know this post conveys nothing really.....But it is a lazy Sunday afternoon...New Jersey weather God has cast a curse on us....Its extremely humid and its raining... I decided to take a break from knitting.....I started learning how to knit..and I must say....I have a special respect for all women who can knit..I have seen the works of one such person and wow!!! I cant stop appreciating it.... My mother (whom I will refer to as ma) is coming to NJ on the 16th of Aug from Bangalore..more on that later....

I am sorry for putting y'all through this extremely long and dull post....but hey blame the weather!!

5.04 PM

If you are wondering what the title is, its four minutes past 5 o clock now. Somewhere during my writing...ah yes... its 5 minutes past 5 now. Just to make a point that time and tide wait for none. It also made me notice another thing, it took me one minute to complete one sentence!! I am slow as a snail. It might also be because of the fact that my boss walked past and I had to minimize the window to obscure my activity (OK am not sure the sentence makes much sense, if its not......you could comment and we can settle the matter amicably. Again in my defense I not here to hurt your sentiments on the English language!)

To give a brief background, I am at office trying to kill the penultimate and the ultimate hours. To make is sound simple(trust me ...its not as simple as it sounds!!!), the last two hours at office. Its when the productivity has hit an all time lull. Its the time period after the last tea break for the day and one has run out of reasons to leave the seat (of course the rest room visit before treading the blissful road back home is pretty much the only savior. (the damn Fire fox does not let me spell the words the right way..and there I was apologizing! :))

5.14 PM

Today was rather a weird day at office....I spent almost the entire day working on this extremely convoluted software called Primavera. Its one of the best products available in the market to handle construction projects (any kind of project for that matter) of mountainous magnitudes. Nevertheless it has failed to appeal to me in all ways. I was asked to work on a project using this software today. Though i fail to appreciate its potential, I will offer my reverence to all those people who worked on its development and all the people who have mastered its application. This tool is a classic example of the evolution of man and machines and the intricate ties that exist between these two entities. (Personifying the machines in this context would not seem so out of line!). The scope of Primavera is so larger than life, that having a complete understanding of the tool has become impossible! A few may argue that this line of thought does not make much sense given the fact that I am a neophyte and lack the expertise to comment on it.

I agree. This is merely from a neophyte's perspective. But at this moment all I can think of is this, its a tool, created by men to ease things out. Some how its becoming an addiction and the importance being given to it is almost absurdly redundant!!

I asked Pa if they used Primavera in his company. He said no. For a moment I thought how they managed to run a big firm without using the software, but ultimately I was relieved...Some tools are being developed to make things easy and this is taking us away from the basics...from the hard facts and the right ways of learning things.

Wish one could learn how to have the best of both worlds....come to think of it...today it would be.... the best of how many ever worlds there are!

5.30 PM
Treading the blissful road back home (with a certain boss who has been ever so kind to me :) )

First Impression- Part 2

As I said before, there are a number of reasons due to which I decided to start writing this blog. In the hope that some day I will do a Phd, I decided to hone my writing skills. A lot of good things in life go unaccounted and it is a crime to do so. This is a free forum, using up a small fragment of the colossal space that the internet offers. So I decided to use this as a scribbling pad. This will also spare the readers the difficulty of deciphering an abstruse writing.(I have a handwriting worse than most of the worst things on earth). The last year as I was saying has been so eventful and fast moving. My father(whom I call Pa and will refer to him that way in my future posts) and I were discussing yesterday that I celebrated my first Non Resident Indian (NRI) anniversary. He sounded excited and gleeful. I think he had a couple of mixed emotions flooding him at that moment. When such milestones are discussed, one talks about all the things that one did right to achieve something. But introspection also made me realize that all the excitement in life is merely a result of the amount of calculated risks one takes. Sometimes a lose cannon also ends up hitting the Bulls Eye.

So yeah...for all those reasons I decided to start blogging! A friend of mine told me that the title was a cliche! I will change it as soon as I can find something out of the box....

Ya a certain person inspired me to start writing. More about that later.

Oh yes...in ten years when I become world famous....Barkha Dutt will be telling her viewers that 'krithika govind known for (whatever i am going to be famous for) wrote a blog and also knew then itself where she was going to get!! :P '. If that is a little pompous....so be it! A few castles built in the air is not going to choke anyone right......

First Impression- Part 1

There are a number of reasons because of which I finally decided to start blogging. Today is a milestone- meaning a point in time- according to project management gurus. Yes, today the 29th of July, 2009 - 'a Wednesday' (a great movie by the way)- is just a point in time.

This milestone is a significant one. It has been a year since I set foot in the US soils. Technically the IAH vestibule actually, but a tinge of sardonic comedy is always welcome is it not!

The eventful year that this has been started unfolding itself soon after I checked in at the Bangalore International Airport and I got to know that the Lufthansa Airline(the blessed airline I decided to fly with) was having a ground staff strike.

More in part-2.