Luckynumber13_Chai

           It has been long since i penned down incidents in my life. The reason behind which is NOT because nothing fascinating is happening in my life. There have been too many good memories to jot down in the past one month. TOUCH WOOD. ( I have always wondered why we use the term "TOUCH WOOD". Basically, i am a lazy bone who does not want to go to the Google website to fulfill my everlasting doubts, unless i am in the mood for it !) . I am not going to brag about wonderful things in my life and bore the world. This should be good reason to continue reading this post without yawning your head off.  It is so true when they say that every journey in life would involve us learning something new and teaching someone else a new thing. Similar was the journey i had last evening with my bestest ( its an invented word- so do not waste time by grabbing the Oxford dictionary and looking for it !) pals.  Things that i learnt : 1. ...

The probability of my uncle sending me a sms is very rare. So the sms came as a surprise, one fine day, when I was working late in office and was frustrated. He wanted to let me know that there is a guest at his home and the guest was longing to meet me. I begged him to tell me who it was, but he did not budge. I requested him to give me a clue and found that it was a special person. When I asked where the person was from, he replied ‘Persia’. Many things were going through my head. I even wondered if it were my parents giving me a surprise visit, which was far too much to hope for. I gave up and thought that it might be one of my relatives who must have travelled down from the Middle East. The next day was my off and I decided to go visit this special person. I called my aunt to let her know (Uncle was away at work). The conversation went like this: Me : Hi Aunty, I am coming over at 11 am. Aunt: Oh yeah, I was expecting your call. Uncle had told me that you would be here to me...

Boston 2007: New England Aquarium The New England aquarium is a treat for all animal lovers! We were surrounded by beautiful creatures in water. My favorite spot in the aquarium was the Penguin habitat. There were these cute penguins- a few swimming in water, a few stretching on the rocks and some lazying around. It was an incredible feeling to be so close to them.  One incident which caught my attention was that of an instrument that was placed on the rails, for the spectators to use. It was shaped like a telescope and the end of its mouth was shaped like a fish. When it is switched on, it would act like a torch and will light up in the form of a fish under water (where the penguins were swimming. Don’t know how many of u can visualize such a thing!  This torch was basically used to fool the poor creatures. Whenever someone lighted the torch, all the penguins would swim fast to the light, assuming it to be a fish. The torch could be moved up and down, left and rig...

We celebrated New Year ( Malayalam New year called Vishu ) yesterday April 15, 2010. At 5:00 AM IST, mom woke up everybody and took us to the ‘kani’ ( kani is an idol of lord Krishna along with a plate filled with raw rice, fruits, money, gold, coconut) . The ritual is to go till the kani with our eyes closed so that the first thing we see for New Year is the lord. As I had a project delivery, I was working from home. It felt good multi-tasking with work and cooking. There were many cooks involved in preparing the ‘sadya’, but contrary to the saying, many cooks did not spoil the broth ;-) We ate from banana leaves in the true spirit of Vishu. I would like to share one of the recipes of a special dish we had. It was mom’s experiment for New Year. Nutty Chicken :- Ingredients : Chicken (cut into tiny pieces) - 1 Grated coconut -1 cup Cashew nuts – 1/2 cup Onion- 4 Tomato- 1 Ginger Garlic paste – 2-3 teaspoons Chilly powder- 2 teaspoons Turmeric powder- 2 pinches ...

It was a lovely sunny day, on the morning of August 21, 2008. The day I will never forget. The day everyone would dread to live through. The day which gave me memories for life. The day which gifted me my permanent tattoo. I was travelling with my favourite aunt with whom I have had fun times together. We luv each other’s company. We don’t leave a chance to meet each other. That fine morning, we had travelled to a place, which was 80 km from home, by bus. After we were done with our work, we found an auto to go to the bus stand. We were surprised at how huge and spacious the auto was, never realizing that we wouldn’t reach home that day. At a turn, our auto hit a Honda city (driven by a lady without a license) and it tumbled and fell sideways onto the side of the road. It all happened in less than a minute and the next thing I knew was that my whole right leg had turned numb and my aunt was lying on the ground outside. Then I saw the sight, which anyone would dread. There was a ho...

Who thought that in 2010 I would get lucky and be able to fool a few friends on April 1 ( which is not my lucky number )……Let me give a few instances which will prove how good I was at it! Episode number 1:   I find Vi, my best pal’s husband, on chat and I tell him that the petrol prices in India have risen to 68 Rs/litre and that I suspect the UN had something to do with it…..He works for the UN…..He was surprised with the fact that we are at par w.r.t the petrol price in India and Europe and empathized with me- which establishes the fact that he bought my story :-P Episode number 2: Another friend K is in training and has access ONLY to the training network ( which means that he cannot browse the internet ). Me: Hey, why didn’t u tell me that u had a movie named after u? K : What r u talking about? Me: Dint u watch the trailers? K ( totally stunned now ): Which movie? Me: I m surprised dude. Jolie is in the star cast and u dint notice it! K ( about to d...

                                2 days prior to joining my present company, I received a call from the HR Operations manager requesting me for a reason as to why I did not report on my first day. I tried explaining that my DOJ was set for so and so date and that he had made a mistake. He did not budge an inch and told me that the records have been updated with that day’s date. I was confused and said that I will confirm the same from my offer letter and asked him to hold on for a few minutes. I was a little panicky and after pulling down the contents of one shelf, I finally managed to get hold of the file where my important documents were kept. I was happy to see that I was right and I conveyed the same to him. That is when he broke into peals of laughter and wished me Fools day, even though it was NOT April 1. I dedicate this mont...

I remember those initial days which I had spent in my first company. I had no clue that a bachelors degree in engineering could land me in one of the hottest domains in the IT industry. My dad, who is a master degree holder in Economics, and my mom, who chose to provide service to her fellow human beings on earth, by practicing as a doctor, had absolutely no clue either. Since I knew that it would be difficult for me to explain the concept of ‘domain’ in the IT field and to let them know exactly how I serve my employer with the level of knowledge I have, I did not bother revealing the exact nature of my work. Instead I conveniently chose to inform them that my work revolves around S.T.O.R.A.G.E (which was the name of the domain I was in). When I went to pay them a visit, a few months later, i came to realize that I had made a terrible mistake. Our relatives and family friends seemed to know everything regarding my work! After the initial round of “vishesham parachil”, like we call it...

It is interesting to think about how the silliest of things go unnoticed by homo-sapiens. The “eat-out’ in my office is one of the quickly-filled spots during the noon hours between 12 - 2. Due to the scarcity of seats( which are essential in order to sit and have food comfortably and also do the most important task of Time Pass ), me and my gang decided to go at 12:30 instead of our usual 1:30. We were bewildered to find the same amount of crowd, which made us realize that, everyone in the building, chose to come a little earlier hoping to find a peaceful place to feed themselves. Well, we did not get lucky in our venture, but then something ironical hit me while we were busy with the mechanical effort of feeding food into our body. Every human in the building were entering the canteen from one door and to my surprise the door was labeled “ EXIT ”. It was funny realizing that no one, including me, never managed to notice the purpose of the door which we normally pass through. Come t...