The race begins now

We're on buddy! The race begins now Wednesday 956AM, PST.

America the Beautiful

Took my mom out sight seeing yesterday. We went up to Mount Soledad and Point Loma Lighthouse. From the top of Mount Soledad you get the most beautiful view of San Diego, the beach on one side, La Jolla, downtown San Diego on the other, even Mexico! I truly live in 'America's most liveable city'. Quite a change I must say from the other places I've lived at. Starting from Rochester, NY, where we were inundated with six feet of snow, 9 months of the year. I remember the spring break where me and my roomates were stuck in our house (which was ubiqutously called the 'Embassy') for an entire week, and finally had to shovel through the snow in our front yard before we finally got 'free'! And then off to Tennesse, which I suppose was not too bad, if you consider my two year exile in Arkansas...
Anyway, back to San Diego. I have to say one thing, one cannot beat the weather here. We're almost in December, and its still 70 degrees outside, sunny, and beaches are still accessible. My mom totally loves the scenery and weather here. In all the time I've spent here, it has probably rained maybe like 2 days total.
Now if only housing were more affordable!

Blogs

I didn't realize blogs were this addictive, both reading and updating. Ever since I started this blog thingy, everything I do somehow I keep harking back to how I can relate that back to my blog! Does that classify as OCD? So now I got so much subject matter to cover, so many ideas and thoughts stuck in my head, its all forming this huge vortex and engulfing me from all sides. I can't seem to concentrate on anything else, all day long I dream about blog. Like OMG! How do professional writers survive?
The filp side of this is that writing a blog, which is opening myself up to posterity and exposing my thoughts for millions to see, I have to ensure that what I write atleast makes some sense to me. I never realized writing a blog would be so much hard work!!!!

Dil Mein Kuch Hone Laga...

So a good friend of mine is suffering from an issue. He feels that he's somehow immune to heartache. He's the romantic type, looking to meet someone that somehow makes his heart quiver, give him the hibbijibies, and make it such that all he does is think about that person. Up until recently this has not happened to him.
And then, he meets somebody the other day, and now he's saying he feels a pain in his chest, his heart feels heavy and all he can do is day dream! Wait a second, why would you intentionally want to bring about such a calamity upon yourself? Isn't that like the worst feeling you can have when you feel so utterly powerless and helpless, cannot concentrate on anything in particular and all day long all you do is either stare at the phone or constantly checking emails and text messages hoping and waiting?

Work, people and everything else in between

My job entails dealing with people (way too many sometimes). Somehow, everyone seems to think I'm supposed to have all the answers regardless of whether I am directly responsible for something or not. The other day, I had a meeting with the Marketing Director of one my clients, at one of their customer's office. I was supposed to be there as a backup, to kind of walk the customer through any technical issues or glitches but mostly to iron out outstanding problems. For some reason, everytime her customer would as a question, the marketer would just turn directly towards me, and give me that look like "yeah how is this done?" At first it didn't strike me as to why this kept bothering me, then I realized that the marketer is supposed to work with me as a team, and if I don't have the answer immediately, she's not supposed to drill me too in front of her customer. So in the big marketing meeting I had with the customer's entire marketing group, where I had 15 women bitching, complaining and haranguing me practically, I decided it was time to resolve this particular issue. Well first I had to make sure that all the marketers' were sufficiently calmed down (I bs pretty good sometimes, even I make myself proud at those time!). Anyway, I just laid it on the line that in the future if we're at a customer site, and if there is an issue that the marketer doesn't know how to resolve and obviously if I know the answer I will give it to them immediately. However, if I don't they're not to dog me in front of the customer, and moreover they cannot start questioning me publicly with things like ETA etc. I'm not sure this went over all too well with a couple of the marketers', they're those people who always want to look good and take CYA to the extreme! But I got the point across regardless.
A side note though, one of the marketers (the hottest one of the lot at that!) did call me later on and she said she liked the way I stood up for myself. Too bad she's married. :(

The Stigma of Divorce..

So I was a bit apprehensive regarding whether to put my life out there in the public domain for all to see, but I figured while taking a shower this morning what the hell, this is the whole point of a blog in the first place. I have always been pretty upfront about my personal life, but I'm beginning to realize that our culture is kind of subversive and everything you might say or do is couched in innuendos and nuances. And I realized that it is not always that easy to be as open as one might want to be. Till now, I've treated the idea of my divorce as sort of a joke, whenever someone has brought out the topic of marriage or asked me why I'm not married, I'd point to something I'd notice about a married couple around me and say "... and that is why I am no longer married". This way I got to get the point across that I'm divorced and I'd then couch it with some statement like well how many times do people get to test drive something like this. I realize it makes me sound kinda callous but it helped divert the topic away from questions that more curious people might ask as to the why's and how's.
So anyway, this past week someone tried to hook me up. At the time, I don't think they were aware of my marital status and it was nice to know that people were looking out for me. However, once the stealth initial introduction was completed, pressure started mounting on the go-between person to figure out what my initial reaction was. I kept putting off giving him a direct answer by keeping on repeating the mantra that there was something I needed to tell him. Suddenly, I found myself feeling overly self conscious, as if I had committed this grand felony and I just didn't know how I could relay this information back to all the parties involved. On the other hand, I felt that I did need to get the girls' family know before we proceeded any futher that I'd been married previously.
So last night at a dinner, once again, I was asked the same question, what did I think and did I feel sufficiently interested in getting to know the girl better etc. And I had to resort to the best way I could think of at that moment, I told him talk to my mom! Anyway, my mom did talk to them and let them know the issue. I think that chapter will now be closed.
Two things arose from this whole situation. One, the fact that I'd suddenly been downgraded to the level of a second hand used good, since surely now that the girl's family is aware of the fact that I am divorced they will no longer be willing to proceed where just a few minutes prior they'd been very much interested. The second more important issue was how when it really mattered, I found myself so reluctant and found it so difficult to just say what I knew must be told.

Bollywood...

Since my move to San Diego, I've been watching a lot of Hindi Movies. Perhaps this has been exacerbated by the fact that during my two year hiatus down in Arkansas, I rarely got to watch any. Maybe its just me getting older and suddenly feeling all 'desified'. I've been noticing that I can somehow identify with some of these desi emotions too. Strange!!! I guess one can take the boy out of the country but can't take the country out of the boy. One other interesting thing to note here is that the quality of Hindi movies have dramatically improved too, okay maybe not dramatically but it has definitely shown an upward trend. Most noticable about these movies these days is the cinematography. They also seem to have become less predictable. A few years back you could start watching a movie anywhere in the middle and still catchup and also figure out the basic storyline and the ending. That is not always the case these days. The other thing was the way these movies are picking up subject matter from various Hollywood movies, incorporating them into a the hindi movie, masalafying it a little bit, and then to top it off, not even giving credit to the original! Well done Bollywood directors, for a great work of stealth(?!) plagiarism. Well I guess Indian audiences need their staple of westernized stories broken down to them bollywood style. I read somewhere that a few years back when India opened up its film industry so that Hollywood movies could be seen in theaters, Jurassic Park was a great hit. And Schindler's list just bombed! The explanation for this was that desi audiences could not relate to Schindler's list as it didn't fit into any of the regular genres (ok there was drama!) but no songs!
A typical Hindi movie of course will have to include all the basic genres and pay heed to every possible human emotion. Perhaps that is why they're so long. I remember my first ever Hollywood movie that I watched on video, of course sans commercials. The movie was over in like 90 minutes, and I was like ok what do I do now for the next 90 minutes, because I'd budgeted 3 hours for the movie! And I was only 5 at that time! I thought my goodness what a ripoff!!!!

Today

So I went to meet my shrink today. Okay time to backup a little bit here...
I've been seeing this shrink at the recommendation of my Primary Care Physician. The Primary care said that I needed to talk to a therapist to work out my situational depression issues (at least thats what she termed it as), caused by my frequent moves etc. Anyway, so I have been talking to the shrink. It was therapeutic to the extent that I got to just talk non-stop about myself with someone just listening and not questioning me or judging. Ok maybe judging but who cares about that, she gets paid to listen. So today I go there, and the shrink goes, well I thought we were done. And I'm like what'd you mean? And she goes, well from our previous session it seemed like you'd worked out your issues. And I was like yeah I realize that, and its what I told you, what the heck did I pay you all this money for if you're gonna just regurgitate my own diagnosis back to me. So once again I ranted for an hour and then I asked her for her suggestions as to what I need to do. And she gave me a whole set of suggestions, which were so generalized I was like okay whatever. So I came out of it and cancelled the remainder of my sessions with her. Actually the main reason I ended up going today was because I had tried cancelling my session yesterday and when I called in, the receptionist said since I hadn't given 24 hours notice, I would have to pay $50. So I was like wait if I go, I only pay my $20 co-pay and so I decided to just go to the meeting. Bottom line, I guess I'm back to being mentally healthy again!!!!!

First Entry

So everyone's been trying this blog thingy lately... I guess I better get on with the times and start one of my own. Therefore here goes...