Sister's stress-filled sojourns

My sister visited me for the whole of last week. We were discussing her travel exploits one evening.Trust me, they are amusing. Very. For one, she has never packed her stuff by herself. Ever. She would always find someone who helps her to pack. Mom, I, roommate and now her husband.And she always leaves back something or the other. A toothbrush, a pair of trousers, a lipstick, earrings... or even a packed suitcase.Yes ...a suitcase.In one of her travels she realized a little short of reaching the airport that she forgot to put the suitcase in the trunk.

And of course she loves the last minute action that happens when one is late for a train or flight.To jot down a few,

- missed flights
- reached just on time for a train but had no clue whether her reservation was confirmed from the waiting list or not
-paid 500 rupees extra so as to reach on time for a flight [the flight was delayed by an hour which she found out later].

This time I decided to make it a no-mistake travel. I booked the cab on time. Cross-checked with her everything that came to my mind -- tickets, boarding pass, cellphone charger, toothpaste, luggage ... everything. I dropped her to the airport.

I returned to my empty house and crashed on my sofa, a little saddened by her departure. Just then I spotted her Joseph Heller novel staring at me and I laughed.

Unbelievable.

De ja vu

I am in California these days. A place with over abundance of sunshine. Today it was cloudy. They call it June gloom. Not that I don't enjoy sunshine, but the weather today brought very fond memories of my stay in the UK. I have a lot of remnant songs in my ipod from the UK days. Many of them have become obsolete with the situation. "Cloudy"
by Simon & Garfunkel definitely does not go with a bright shining and smiling sun.Staying awake in such a weather is quite some work. A hot cup of coffee and a few peppy numbers help. So I started the day with a cuppa steaming coffee and some old forgotten numbers.

Until tomorrow when the sun shines bright again.

'Reflection' of Murphy's law

Today, I cancelled the alarm instead of putting it on snooze. Goes without saying that I overslept and was late for office.On reaching office, I couldnt find my ID card.I guessed I had left it at home. Got a temporary card made , but all this caused even more delay.Had a code to demonstrate in the afternoon.the previous day had kept everything ready. All data prepared etc.Yes you guessed it! The code would not work during the demonstration. Thankfully there were other people who had to demonstrate their code. I just said, let the others go ahead while I check whats wrong. I was shocked to see that someone had deleted the data I had prepared #@!#$%#$. I quickly fixed it and domonstrated the code. It went well.


On telling a friend about it, he said , "Well Murphy's law at work'. Yeah, all of us have faced it so many times. I wonder how Murphy could point out so certainly about somethings so uncertain. And that so, why does it work only in a negative way. Murphy's law says "Anthing that can go wrong, will go wrong". Now my point is, this 'Anything' can also go right, right? Er dont think I am making sense. What I mean to say is, an event has a possibility of succeeding or failing. What Murphy is trying to say is :- if an event has these two chances, it will fail.But why?? Why isnt the law "Anything that can go right, will go right?"

After much pondering over a "tall iced-tea lemonade, passion flavoured, less ice and extra sugar" at Starbucks, I deduced the following - Just like things go wrong, things also go right in our lives. Lets take the example of the demonstration above.I have had many office presentations/demonstrations where I had goofed up but no-body noticed.That means the alternate also happens. Just that it looks too normal to us and we dont keep a note of it. The wrong ones hit us more and we remember them for life. So a day in our lives where everything went wrong stays in our memory. We try to explain so many things going wrong by taking help of a law.

I also feel that when a series of things go wrong, the root cause can in most cases be attributed to the first thing which went wrong. Let me explain how.
When the first thing goes wrong, it makes one nervous, specially if there are other things in line which one cant afford to go wrong. And the knowledge of the 'Murphy's law' adds to it. One is already nervous - "Oh its happening ...now everything is going to be messed up". And so we mess up.

I guess we soon need to coin the Anti-Murphy's law, for those days when everything goes right.

ps:- I found my ID card in my purse at lunch.

Common problem

I have a fairly uncommon name and in fact an even more uncommon surname, therefore I never understood what troubles a person with a common name has to go through.This blog is an attempt to empathize with such a community.

I have this friend, lets call him 'Santa XYZ' - who has an extremely common combination of name and surname.At work, I pinged him once or twice with a 'hi' for some work, but he never responded. I was kinda foxed, and then in a bout of humour wrote "Santanaaa...tana nana... :D "[mimicking the very popular song from the bollywood movie 'Kaminey']. I still did not receive any response. After two or three such attempts, I was furious.

Next time I met him I gave him a piece of my mind.He immediately knew the problem and told me to add name2.surname for receiving a response from him.

Well,at office we can add contacts into Messenger by searching user id[the quicker way- the advanced search has more options]. The general trend of user ids is name.surname. However if they have duplicate names the system generates ids like name1.surname or name1.firstInitialOfSurname etc.I searched for the friend's name.surname and the application added it.

Santa also informed, that the name.surname id belongs to xyz who holds some very nice and scary sounding position in the company.

:-/

ps:- The name.surname person definitely has received worse messages.That's the only way I can explain my not losing my job.

Deafening silence...

A very long time back I had an argument with two close buddies on which of the following is a correct idiom "Deafening silence.." or "Deafening noise..". [I said both are correct with different meanings. They were against the first one arguing how can silence be deafening, asking me to explain what I meant].

The other day I was in a place which actually described what I meant to say and reminded me of that day in the hostel.These days my workplace is on the 13th floor of a building bang in the center of the IT hub in Kolkata.A very crowded place down below. But there is a corner on the 13th floor, on the way to the vending machine, away from the hustle bustle of the cubicles. Here you can only hear the mild hum of the AC vent. At night the view stretches far far away into the dazzling lights of this city.This place is my favourite when the head starts to pound from the everyday happenings around.

Deafening silence:-
A silence or lack of response that reveals something significant, such as disapproval or a lack of enthusiasm.

Blessed

Today I got a blessing from my housemate's mother. I heard that I am a wonderful person from someone (other than my family ofcourse) after a very long time.

A year filled with dissapointments, neck breaking work, throbbing headaches, nightmares and yearning for dear ones, almost convinced me of my existence being worthless.

Yesterday, my housemate fell from the stairs. I just did what is expected of a human being staying with another one(trust me I am not trying to be modest). Today her mother called up to say "I dont know what would have happened, had you not been there."

Thank god, in today's world of profits,savinngs, recession, dollar value dips and job security, some one thinks that one human being needs to exist just to be around the other.

Sunshine on a cloudy day

I remember a similar scene in some movie, but cant remember which one.

Today was a very cloudy and grey day.And it very much reflected my mood. Was walking through a lane, when a man got out of his car. As is the custom here, I smiled at him when our eyes met. He said 'Cheer up lady !'. I gave a wide smile and walked away. Suddenly, I realized I was really smiling, I walked back to him and said .. "You know that really helped.Thanks.". He replied.."Really? I am glad it did."

I guess, despite what mom says, sometimes talking to strangers is not that bad :)