Disconnected thoughts on a rainy saturday

I've become addicted to coffee brewed from freshly ground beans. Bye bye sleep.

Currently topping my list of 'stuff I detest' -  wall to wall carpet.


I am suffering from monochromatic disorder  - beige walls, beige blinds, beige carpet and beige doors are about to drive me to do serious harm to myself.

Oh public transport! Where art thou?
 
Never, ever, ever rent a basement apartment. Ever.

I thought not buying a TV would mean I would waste less time watching mostly nonsensical material on it. I didn't account for Youtube and Netflix.


Die chain stores die! Where is a kirana store when you need one. Free delivery, I miss you. 





















 

Indianisms

Though I'm somewhat of a stickler for grammar and don't really get 'da sms lingo whn u typ lyk dis' (I almost gagged after typing that), I think language becomes very interesting and rich when it's flexible enough to include nuances and quirks of a place or culture that the original language just can't evoke.

Some of my favourite examples

chaddi buddy: because 'childhood friend' just doesn't cut it and neither the more accurate but staid version 'known each other since we were in our diapers'. This phrase suggests more than just  people who've known each other forever. It has a faint tinge of subversive activities carried out together, nefarious schemes participated in and endless thrilling childhood adventures lived through.

whattay: This word combines the frank & genuine appreciation found in the phrase 'what a movie/meal/time/picnic/any appropriate noun being praised' with the kind of fervour  that I personally believe is purely tropical or Indian or desi to be more precise :). It adds a more undefinable hence much more appreciated quality to the object/person in question.


first class: this might qualify as Indian English, because while it's not distorted English, what it means is entirely incomprehensible to someone not familiar with the usage. I'll illustrate with an example - 
person 1 to person 2: "How are you?"
person 2: "First class!!" 
which means person 2 is doing great, feeling like a million bucks and is better than just a lame 'fine' or a 'very well'. 
*Note: I think this usage is more common in the older generation, unlike many terms that have emerged from the supposed mess that the present generation has made of the language.

bucket bath: Totally desi. Totally confusing to anyone who can't figure out that showers  and tubs were both not common features of  bathrooms in Indian houses, till not so very many years ago. Very practical, very eco friendly and makes cardio part of your daily routine!

Please do add, if anyone reads this that is. 

**Update: I found this site http://samosapedia.com and realized there are entries for some terms already which is natural.

You know you work for an IT company when... Part 2

... you start referring to everyone in India as 'offshore', even your family.

De-addiction

I'm an information junkie, internet addict, habitual multi-tasker, which is all to say that I'm mostly distracted, unfocused and have a fairly short attention span. Sure, sometimes all these are helpful in my work life but I have a sneaking suspicion that they're not actually as beneficial as I would like to believe they are. I've recently come across http://zenhabits.net and find some of the ideas in it very appealing!

Minimalism, focus, eating right, decreasing clutter and distraction and thereby achieving much more - all nice concepts. So where do I stand?  A few points come to mind:
1. I'm fairly de-cluttered, I don't like collecting too much stuff. The two things I AM guilty of is hoarding books and clothes I hope I'll fit into someday :)
2. Cutting off the distractions in life - I've managed to reduce my TV viewing to almost zero. The trick being - I didn't renew my TATA Sky subscription! On the flip side, internet & information remain a massive distraction for me. I have already checked my facebook three times from the time I started writing this post.
3.  Multitasking is another problem area. I read while I eat. Hell I even read books while browsing, to fill the waiting time between pages loading due to a lousy connection speed.
4. I'm a perpetual list maker, which apparently is a good habit. But I make them all over the place, I write them down, put them in task manager programs, put them on post-its and invariably I forget about all of them.
5. Eating right - this is at least making some progress. I'm not a huge processed food fan but then I'm also a miserable cook. So the options are either to take up some cooking or to train the cook how to make interesting, healthy food or eating fairly boring, healthy food made by her. I'll take the boring, healthy food anyday :) The danger being, obviously - boredom and therefore a lapse into eating wrong. I'll live with that for now though.



That doesn't add up to a very impressive score overall. But as the author suggests, if I had to pick just one area to work upon - it would be decreasing the internet/info overload I subject myself to. If my next post is sooner than a month, it'll be an indication of some progress at least.

and it was all yellow.....

Well, so finally my principles went crumbling down and for my well being and to get all the good forces of the universes aligned to my energy fields and for generall all around fantastic-ness happening to me - I decided to change my curtains and put in yellow/greenish yellow ones!

What has happened till now is that the only thing the positive forces of the world have succeeded in doing is breaking my curtain rod. So the problem of the blue curtains casting their malacious shadow on me is solved. In fact there is no chance of ANY curtains casting ANY shadow on me since I can't hang any curtains on that window anyway.

Not one to be deterred by all these magnanimous powers that be, I decided to tackle the second window in the room. So what if one window didn't have curtains? ONE window is damn well enough especially armed to the teeth with yellow curtains. Bring it on shani and whichever other planets and cosmic bodies have it in for me.


Normally , this should involve a simple process. Unscrew rod. Take off blue curtains. Put on yellow/greenish yellow ones. Screw rod back on.
This is actually what happened. Unscrew rod. The whole rod + the holding bit breaks. Take off blue curtains off the rod. Throw rod on the floor. Scream.

I have currently two broken curtain rods. Two different coloured curtains in my living room (from where I was trying to effect a smart swap with the blue curtains) and needless to say, a room without any curtains AT ALL.