What not to get

I have come across a lot of websites which lists the things you can get your friend (girl) or girl friend... But do you know what Not to get? Based on my limited knowledge here is my top 5 what not to get her :)

1. Gym classes or Jenney's meal plan (weight loss plan.. Dont try to hint anything about a woman's body, especially "your body is not so great" aspect)
2. A teddy bear (why do guys think all gals love cute cuddly stuff?)
3. Movie tickets (that is not so creative)
4. A make over session (Hey, how would you feel if you were told you look like a squid?)
5. A knife set (It is for your own good..unless you would like to be the apple in a knife throwing session!!)

I wait and wait and wait

Every time I had to call a service provider be it mobile company, insurance, bank or airlines I always get frustrated waiting on the phone to get to a representative. The IVR systems suck big time and the call center people make sure that the customers are made to wait for as long as possible.. I use this website called gethuman.com which has direct numbers to operators/CSRs. I noticed that some of the numbers are the same as listed on the company website but they have short cuts for e.g. press 2 and say agent etc..

Hopefully you will no longer have to go through the frustrating ever lasting wait on the phone to speak to the Angel at the other end :)

No more speeding :)

Got this in a forward... Interesting! Hopefully people don't get into accidents thinking every pothole or damaged road is just an illusion ;)

Eureka!

This past whole week has been full of discoveries..

• Found out that my dearest friend is getting engaged this summer. Congratulations!
  
• I registered for Jazzercise and realized that I could have immense fun while exercising. - Hurray ;)
  
• A close friend and neighbor of mine is a radio jockey at a local desi radio station in Cincinnati.
• A friend's friend is dating someone and shared it with me and also asked me not to tell my friend :)
• I learnt what relationships are all about.. They are about 3 As : Acceptance, Adjustment and Adoration.
• I am not very patient (oops have known it all my life) - hehe
  
• And that I am the long lost Princess of the land of fortune - Now that's a wish :)

Now all this made me think as to how many things surprise us (happy and sad) every week and how much we learn.. Ever wondered why certain weeks are boring while certain others are a lot of fun? Imagine a week where u do not find anything fascinating or interestingly new.. Imagine a second week like that.. I would feel bored to death! Life is all about learning...Now I am getting philosophical..

Anyways, I did learn something very interesting about relationships from a friend. He told me that it is not about finding the right person, it is about feeling right with that one person.. So far I have never felt right and confident about being with a person in my life.. I have always had the fear of commitment and I never knew what it was about me that made me run away from things I wanted.. I was discussing this with my parents and my mom told me that I am scared to make a commitment.. This got me thinking.. Am I really terrified about loosing my freedom? I guess not.. I know that in relationships, one will loose his/her space to a certain extent.. Then what was it? I racked my brains for more than a day and finally I think I found the answer.. It is about feeling right and the 3 A's. Will I be able to accept, adjust and adore the other person with all my heart? Will I ever feel so right and confident? I guess lIFe is all about the "If" and"?".

I'm awestruck

Picture source: photoseek.com

Another place added to my ever growing list of ‘must visit before I am too old to travel’. Meteora is the second largest and complex monasteries built in Greece. The way to get to the monasteries is by staircases which are cut through the rocks! Although women are not allowed into the monasteries, I at least want to get to a point from where I can witness the majesty of these architectures :)

And the result..

I tried being a 'guy' for a day and I should say I was pretty successful. The day started off by rolling out of the bed at 7.15 am after having a very sound sleep and not doing the bed, ofcourse :). Then got ready to go to work.. Didn't pay too much attention to whether my shoes matched my shirt color or if I looked pretty. I was at work at 8.10 am and logged on to espn.com, yahoo finance and then cricinfo! Then the day went by pretty smoothly, had a couple of meetings, as usual projects were behind schedule and as a guy, I let my manager worry about it ;)

During lunch, I went with my friends to a Thai place. Ordered food and were chatting for a while about company politics and cars. Came back home after work at around 6.00 pm, made my coffee and sat in front of the Tv for 2 hours. Then I realized that I had to cook something for dinner. I did not panic, instead I picked up my phone and ordered pizza with extra cheese! Did not bother to clean the dishes from the previous day.. I continued to watch the idiot box and answered a few phone calls, spoke to my mom for 5 MINS and then put the phone down :) That itself is an achievement coz conversations with my mom last atleast 25 mins everyday! I felt lazy to put my bed and ended up sleeping on the couch!

On the whole, pretty relaxed day, no worries, and did nothing productive ;) Now I realize why guys love the way they lead their lives..

Guy For a Day

Sometimes I wonder why life is so complicated for women. We worry about the most trivial of all things whereas the men seem to be the easy-go-lucky type. Although every time I have asked my guy friends about their not so emotional attitude, they always seem to give me the same reply - “We just don’t show our emotions”. Why is that men seem to feel it is not important to show their emotions? We are not asking you to cry at the drop of a ball, but why not tell us how you feel instead of making us “nag” you for things?

Wouldn’t life be simpler if we women are also the carefree type? We not only worry about things related to us, but also why the men (friends, father, bfriend, husband etc.) close to us don’t worry about things.

For one day I am going to try my best not to let things bother me. I am going to be a guy for a day!

A short week

Took off Monday, Tuesday was a holiday and ended up working from home today!! Nice :)

Thanks to my friend who snowboards like a maniac, I was introduced to this amazing stand up comedian!

What now?

Another year has gone by. Every year seems to go faster than the previous... Was speaking to a friend of mine and found out that he retrospects his new year resolutions at the end of each year and evaluates how much of it he actually accomplished.. I have made resolutions, but never actually sat and thought through how did on those resolutions!!

This year, yet again resolutions have been made.. But I am going to remember to do a monthly instead of a year-end evaluation.. Following six sigma :)

Oops almost forgot.. Wish you a Very Happy New Year!

Tamilzh Pasanga (Tamil Boys)

Thanks to my friend who shared this video with moi!

No longer a Virgin

I lost my Snow Virginity last Wednesday! We had 1-3" snow around the Cincy area. When I woke up in the morning, it was all white and beautiful. I sat down near my French window sipping a cup of hot coffee and admiring the beauty of whiteness!

(Apologies for the picture - too cold to go outside to take the pic)

Then came the time when I had to drive to work.. I walked outside and my car was covered in 2" of snow. I started the tedious job of clearing snow, surprisingly it was not half as bad as I thought it would be! The only stupid thing I did was initially when I was pushing snow off my car roof, I stood too close to the car and had a nice snow shower :)

Am I Cynophobic?

For some reason I had an affinity towards animals when I was a kid. Usually kids my age used to be scared of going near them but I used to look forward to meeting my animal friends!

I should have been about 5-6 years and I used to love watching an elephant making its evening rounds on my street. If I remember right, the elephant and its mahout used to come by on weekends for close to a year. They used to stand in front of my house and I used to run to the gate to give the elephant a banana. My sister, being the timid one, used to stand near the door and watch me feed the elephant.

My other friend was the cow which used to come to our house every morning (5 am) with its master to milk. We used to get fresh milk and most of the days I used to get up and used to feed the cow.

Picture source: msnbc.com

Now I go no where near animals. For some reason I have grown to be really scared of dogs (cynophobia). Although as a kid I always wanted to get a dog, now I stay 10 feet away from them! I am not sure if it was a dog chasing incident when I was in 6^th grade which made me fear the species or something else.

Can you udnertsnad?

I funod smoehtnig vrey itnesreitng and shcoknigly ture!

Wnat to konw waht I am tlkanig auobt? Ciclk hree

Through My Eyes

This past couple of weeks, I turned into a complete movie buff! I watched so many new and old movies that it kind of got difficult to keep track!! So here are few of my reviews..

Bourne Ultimatum:

Cast - Matt Damon as Bourne, Julia Stiles as Nicky and others.

An amazing movie with great stunts and cinematography. The movie starts of with Jason Bourne being chased in Russia and someone in Spain trying to get information on the true identity of Bourne. A journalist in London has the information and publishes in the newspaper that he has details on Bourne’s identity. As expected, the journalist is murdered even though Bourne tries to save him. The scene at the Waterloo train station is very engaging! I loved the chase sequence at Morocco. It was very well taken. On the whole this movie is definitely worth the watch!

No Reservations:

Cast - Catherine Zeta-Jones as Kate, Aaron Eckhart as Nick and Abigail Breslin as Zoe

If you have watched Chini Kum starring Amitabh Bachan and Tabu, the role of Catherine (Kate) is almost the same as Big B, the arrogant but excellent chef. Kate is an excellent chef with a bad temper. She has a sister and no friends. One day, her sister and her niece meet with an accident and her sister dies. Kate brings home her niece, Zoe. In the meanwhile, to keep the restaurant running, the owner hires the new chef Nick. The rest of the movie is about how Kate deals with the situation and what happens between Kate and Nick. Not exactly a chick flick but don’t watch it with great expectations.

Sathampodathey:

Cast - Prithviraj as Ravichadran, Padmapriya as Bhanu and Nithin Sathya as Rathnavel

The movie starts of with Bhanu getting married to Rathnavel who works for the Railways in Chennai. Soon the couple discovers that Rathnavel is impotent. Bhanu believes Rathnavel did not know about his disability and decides to give her marriage a second chance by adopting a child in spite of her family asking her to divorce Rathnavel.

One day Bhanu discovers that Rathnavel is a recovering alcoholic and that he was very much aware of his impotency before their marriage. Shocked by the truth, she decides to get divorced and returns home. Bhanu then meets Ravichandran and gets married to him. What happens between Bhanu, Ravichandran and Rathnavel forms the second half of the movie. Worth the watch if you have time to kill!

Small things

I remember the times when I was a kid, my parents, sis and I used to sit and watch Just for Laughs on TV.. Those simple times are memories to cherish!




Never get bored of them - even now :)

Don't forget your muscles at work!

Picture source: fitness.com

How many times have you felt really tired and worn out at work? An easy solution to that is to do some simple stretches.. Don’t worry these stretches are not going to look odd to your co-workers!

If your work involves sitting in front of a computer screen, the first thing which you should do every 2-3 hours is eye relaxation exercise. Close your eyes and move your eye balls up and down (3 times) then side to side (3 times). Once you do that, rotate the eye balls in clockwise direction (5 times) and then in anti-clockwise direction (5 times).

To relax your shoulder, hold one arm straight in front of you. Then use your other hand to bring the stretched arm to the opposite shoulder.

To loosen your chest, top of shoulder and lower arms, try this:

Make circles (clockwise and anti-clockwise) with your ankles and wrists.

Stand up, bend forward and try to touch your toes without bending your knees. If that is difficult for you, give a slight bend at your knees.

You can also do the same stretch seated.

To relax your neck muscles, move your neck very slowly up and down (3 times) and side to side (3 times). Then very carefully rotate your neck clockwise and then anticlockwise 3 times each.

This 10 minutes that you spend on relaxing your muscles will help you loosen up and feel better!

How many times a month?

Off late I have been super lazy to do anything.. When I come back from work, I watch TV, speak on the phone, eat and then sleep. This has been my weekday schedule for more than a month.. Probably the fact that I cannot access Gmail or blogger from work is one of the reasons for my sabbatical!!

Picture source: cartoonstock.com

Anyways, I got to thinking as to how many times in a month do we buy something online? I buy a minimum of 5 items online each month from electronics to chocolates! So on an average I spend about $150 on online purchases. There are a lot of websites which offer deals and discount coupons. But couponsChief is one which I use the most. You can find most of the coupons from fatwallet.com and slickdeals.com here. The main reason I like to use CouponChief is because unlike the other deals website, the coupons here are classified and categorized. So it is easy to find coupons without getting frustrated!

Some of the good deals going on now:

29% off on Adidas products
Savings on digital cameras from Circuit City
2 DVDs for $15 at BestBuy
The Body shop discount

Something which I have learnt after coming to the US.. Never buy something without googling for discount coupons.. whether it is car rental or some purchase. You can always find something!

Men, Women and Marriage!

I got this forward from my friend and just couldn't resist the temptation of blogging about it.. Here is fodder for 5 mins of laughter!!

• "When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her" - Sacha Guitry

• "Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them." - Dumas

• "I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me." - Anonymous

• "Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays." - Henry Youngman

• "There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage." - James Holt McGavran"

• "The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once..." - Anonymous

• "My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met." - Rodney Dangerfield

• "Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy. " - Anonymous

• First Guy (proudly): "My wife's an angel!" Second Guy "You're lucky, mine's still alive."
  

All that said and done, you cannot force yourself to love someone but it just happens! When that happens, marriage happens and the way your life is shaped after that is completely in your hands!

Amazing Amazon

Picture source: amazon.com

For me, Amazon has always been a great place to find books, electronics and DVDs at a very competitive/low price. One month back I got a memory stick for my then brand new Digital Camera! Since I had just moved to OH, I gave the hotel address where I was staying temporarily as the shipping address. I waited for about 3 weeks and then contacted the seller stating that I hadn't received the shipment. The seller sent me an email with the shipping details and told me that the item was delivered to my Florida address. When I looked at the address, I found out that it was not delivered to my previous home address but to the address where I was staying 1.5 years back! When I told the seller about the mistake in the shipping address, he simply told me that he cannot do anything about it..

As a last resort, I decided to try my luck with Amazon and wrote to them about the situation. Yesterday I got an email from Amazon.com telling me that they have credited the entire $$ I spent on my purchase to my account. I was amazed at their customer service. Amazon for sure knows what customer service is all about :)

Whom to blame this time?

Phew.. It has been exactly one month since I blogged! The past 40 days has been so crazy that I even forgot the feeling (contentment) of sleeping for 12 hours a day ;) Slowly I have begun to realize what 40 hours/week means.. It actually means that even though they pay you only for 40 hours per week, you must work a minimum of 50-60 hours/week just to make sure that you get your next pay check!! If your team or group has fellow desies, you will not only have to be careful about your work hours but also watch your back!! Competition in every aspect gets tougher with them around!! On the whole work has been a jumbo roller coaster ride, but only with twists and turns and no fall-outs so far.

Now that I have pretty much settled down at work and in my new home, I will definitely try to blog regularly and try not to blame time and/or work!