Outrageously Horrendous Ordeal

It was time for me to leave my promised land and head to the supposedly "land of opportunities". It all happened in no time, I got my visa stamping done on tuesday the 17th and had to travel to seattle in less than 3 days, the notice was too short for comfort. There was this flurry of activity around me that I felt like I would never be able to catch up with the time which had a huge head start. Something was tying and slowing me down. It was perhaps the trepidation of leaving a place like India, chennai, the promised land that I am so used to and accustomed to live in. Though this was not the first time that I was leaving for the US, the fact that I had to leave the place was so disconcerting for I knew what life has to offer in a place like the US. First time when I travelled to the US, I went into a shock after reaching the place and did not have a problem before travelling because I was unaware of the perils and virtues. It was my choice after all ! does that make me feel any better ? not at all.

Another day passed in office without much ado, treated parul and ramesh at Fruit Shop, there was actually no meaning behind it, I was not exactly celebrating my departure I hope neither did they. These kind of gestures are rather a formality that every guy that leaves for an onsite needs to contend with. I was more than happy to treat them simply because they were the only folks that asked for one :-) With just 2 more days to go, took thursday off and whole of the day didn't feel like doing anything, my pop was not in town with mom struggling in the background trying to get my clothes ready for the travel. I was watching TV....sunTV, SCV, KTV,vijayTV to my heart's content for I knew once I get to the US it will be only NBC,CBS, FOX and a bunch other stupid channels. I had this long list of Items that I had to buy, completed the list and double, triple checked them to make sure that I had not left anything, we had a plan cut out to finish off the shopping that evening. At around 3pm Parul called me and said that I'd have to give him a ride till Landmark to collect the photographs of the contest; yep this was the one: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/vathswrn/www/Pics/landmark/landmark.jpg

I also had to go to TeeSeeYes HP center to collect my tickets. So, I picked up Parul from Tidel and we hit Landmark, collected the pics, Parul was on his own way back and myself and mom we continued with our shopping plan. Went to T-Nagar, I had to wait for nearly 3 hours to get the tickets for as usuall the Forex folks had a tough time with Ultimatix (that's a misnomer, they should have called it screwOmatix). From there we head straight to mylapore did the shopping at Homeopathy drug store, Ambika Appalam, Giri Traders and dinner at Karpagambal Mess, I had some kichaddi and a ghee onion rost dosa, again made sure that I will have fond memories of eating at karpagambal mess for, the next one year or more I will have to tolerate the burgers,pizzas and subs. We came home late after all the shopping, had almost covered all the items in my list by then and with no more energy left to watch TV I crashed.

Friday morning, really felt like the earth was spinning at twice it's regular speed, once again started watching TV, the longing for tamil TV content continued till mid day, that's when my mom shouted... "tv paakartha niruthittu bags'a pack' pannu", reluctantly I started to pack my bags, finished packing and once again watched TV till mindnight, one more day had gone by and the last 3 days felt like 3 hours. Saturday morning, had to make the important phone calls to few important folks. Called my paatti who lives now in sriperambudur and told her that I was leaving that evening, she didn't sound very amused. I had not taken my music classes for nearly 3 weeks before that and she was really upset about the fact that I am having to leave the place without making any kind of progress in this regard. I told her that I'd play the recorded lessons and keep practising regularly, wanted to call my cousin Ranga before leaving but for some reasons didn't happen. Even before I could reallise it was evening, called a cab and we left for the airport, fairly simple process, checked my luguage at the Jet Airways counter insisted on a window seat for the entire travel and the representative obliged me with 3 boarding passes. I came back to meet my mom in the lobby, still had about 2 hours for the departure, so we found a place to sit and talk, I was quitely listening to an array travel tips from my mom...and really didn't feel like talking, I was expecting to see selva but he didn't turn up. It was time to leave, they announced the security check and said goodbye to mom, within about 30 mins I was on board a 747 800 made myself comformtable at the window seat it was like just behind the wings obscuring most of the stuff down below, told myself that next I should ask for a windows seat not next to the wings.

It took us an hour and 45 minutes to reach Mumbai. I had to go from the domestic to international terminal to take my next flight to Amsterdam. I never thought it would be so difficult, There were some airport authorities just hastening the transit passengers to board a shuttle that was supposed to take us to the internation terminal. It was totally unorganised, they simple grabbed our baggages and tossed it into the bus. We got into the bus and in about 10 minutes reached the internation terminal. After that it was totall chaos, as usuall all the passengers crowding near the luguage storage of the bus and pushing and panting to claim each one's luguage, they were no trolleys to ease the process, we had to drag the suitcases into the airport to get it on a trolley. Luckily mine had wheells some of them really struggled. Another annoying aspect was that the officials refusing to speak in english, the guy I spoke to repeatedly answered in Hindi and I refused to understand Hindi.

Quickly I reached the KLM counter, I was shocked to see my boarding passes being reissued, the representative at the counter turned a deaf ear as I requested for a window seat. After rechecking my baggage and completing the security check, I looked at the boading pass and it said E23...I had this bad feeling that I would landup in the middle, it was a 777-300 and the seating was 2-5-2 and guess what my seat was right in the center. It was terrible, a huge dutch guy to the left and a golti on my right side both chewing the chicken as if it was the first time they are having it in their life. I was sandwiched between these two hunks and pretty much didn't have an iota of space on the sides. I had the meal that was served and pretty much lived on the orange juices that they served in regular intervals. To add to the woes my RCA mp3 player refused to play, had to struggle with it, it played some cd but not the ones that I wanted, always happens. Then decided to listen to whatever it played. 8 hours of horror wit no room to stretch, the golti started sleeping 10 minutes after the take off and was snoring away to glory. The dutch man beside me was reading some strange book with really graphic images on the cover :-) really couldn't get the name of the book. I pulled out "The HitchHikers guide to the Galaxy" and started reading. Atlast we reached Amsterdam, I knew I had a lot of time(5 hours) to catch the next flight to seattle. So, I got off the plane and within few minutes didn't find any of the indians that were travelling with me in the lobby. Quickly went to the KLM counter and double checked the gate#, and this time I asked her about my seating, she confirmed that it was an ailse seat, phew ! what an air of relief. Went to the rest room and guess what, all the indians on board the previous flight were there ! brushing, cleaning...one guys literally bathed there, I finished of the work that I came in for and walked around the airport. It was a beautiful airport, museums, lots of shop, casino... one thing that was missing was a strip club :-) I was browsing through books at a book shop, particularly this one "Lonely Planet - Amsterdam" I almost ended up reading the entire book, it had real good info. about the place and particularly really really interesting stuff about the night life.

5 hours flew past rather quickly, boarded my next flight to seattle, it was again a 777-300 with the same 2-5-2 seatting. This time though was sorry for all those that happened to get the middle seat, A word of advise, if u happen to fly a 777-300 first thing that you would want to make sure is that are not in the middle seat. There are so many problems, getting in and getting out, there are lots of chances of your stomach going for a toss with the kind of food you take. Also we get to drink a lot which mean frequent visits to the toilet, inturn means you have to disturb atleast two people to get in and out. There is more probability for one in that four to be a snob. Also, the size problem that I had. The captain said that the actuall flight time is 10 hours but depending on the air traffic and clearance from ATC it would be like +/- 30 minutes. Everything was fine until the first meal, it was something like pasta and spinach, after the meal I felt like a ruminant regurgitating some semi-digested food. I was fine for sometime but after about an hour I started shivering and felt feverish, in about 3 hours I was down with a fever. I was running temparature and covering myself with two layers of the blanket that they provided. I was just drinking warm water for the next 1 hour, none of them bothered to ask me if I was alright, I was worried for if I disclose to them that I was having a fever they would quarantine me at the immigration and create more problems. Eventually, I could not take the fever anymore and asked the steward for some tylenol(non aspirin), he got me some; I took a tablet and went off to sleep, when I got up the temperature was down but was still feeling feverish, I was happy that I was able to get back on my foot. It took us 10hrs and 30 minutes to reach seattle. Quickly got off the plane and headed for Immigration/Customs, both went fine without any hickups. Came to the baggage claim section and saw Suresh waiting for me.

Suresh dropped me at Phani's place in Bellevue for Ramaseshan and in fact other TeeSeeYes'ers were out having fun at a TeeSeeYes picnic organised on that sunday. I took some more paracethamol and crashed. Later in the day Phani dropped at Ramseshan's place. I was still not back to normalcy, had dinner and went to bed early. Nextday morning was feeling little better, @#$*&^$@ promptly called me in the morning and offered me a ride to office, after all, I am #$^#$*#$ him and he would do all these butt kissing stuff until his job gets done. I realised that my stomach had got screwed big time for I visited the toilet 3 times since morning. I came back home by afternoon for I was close to getting dehydrated. Next 2 days was miserable, until I got some medicines from vasu, it really worked and controlled the loose motion. This was when I was cursing the american toilet habits and the use of toilet papers. Just imagine scratching your bottom with a paper 20 times a day..!! that was what I had to go through ! Though my stomach problem got resolved I had new problems...! guess what I could not sit for the next couple of days :-) my bottom hurt badly !

The next big hurdle was finding a room/roommate. After a lot of contemplation I decided to take an apartment myself, I was insisting on a vegetarian room mate and it's really hard to find one. Setting up an apartment from scratch is yet another pain in the wrong place which is already hurting. Anyways, today Sep 03, I am in my new apartment all setup with minimum paraphernalias needed for survival. And it took me two weeks to complete this post, I am really missing my notebook !

This place sucks big time !

Eventfull Weekend

Indeed! Friday morning I step into my cube and see this "very pleasing" sign on my desktop "PLEASE DO NOT SWITCH THIS MACHINE ON" The IDM had quarantined my PC thinking that it had some really nasty virus on it. This was a side effect of a security incident that was reported by our client earlier in the week. Despite me reassuring the folks here that it was not an attack and looked like some security scanner that was doing it's regular job, people here pressed the panic button and confiscated my machine. The paranoiac upper management also thought that I would obliterate evidence of some malicious activity on my machine and tried this stunt of keeping me away from the machine. I really pity them, In fact they made my day; I literally had the day off :-) I don't think they succeeded to exorcise my machine off whatever they though it had in the end, either.

Later in the day I realised how horrible it is to be in the office without doing anything. I became restless by noon, after lunch hung around ramesh's desk for sometime and fell deep into the knowledge transition activity. Friday evening, wanted to go for a swim so, picked up the recreation pass from ramesh and walked up to my bike. The most awful thing happened!!... I was backing up my bike, didn't realise that the side stand was still on and ripped my left toe nails off. Blame the human mind! I am amazed at how the mind works; I never put the side stand while parking my bike at office, and this sub-conscious registration overrode the real situation and didn't preempt me to check for the condition or probably because it was friday the 13th. First few second there was no pain, after that it felt like I had put my toe into a hot furnace and I could see blood oozing like water out of a broken tap :-) quickly called ramesh and got some rudimentary medication done. The swimming plan went down the drain in minutes. Went home, managed to clean the mess I had done to my toe and sat down to do the last (w)rites using my notebook. Burnt about 5 CDs, and cleaned up the notebook. I'd decided to sell my notebook off for, I was badly in want of money.

So, Saturday, a lazy morning, picked up my notebook, went to my friends place and sold it for 18,000 bucks, it was an excellent deal for the buyer, you cannot get a P3, 1 ghz, CD-RW,DVD R, 256 MB RAM, ethernet, 56k modem, 15" TFT, 20 GB hd, 2USB fully loaded notebook for that kind of money. I had to sell it because I really didn't have a choice :-(

Saturday Evening, Party time ! With folks from alma mater, we hit this beach house off ECR. A party right next to the beach with some heavy duty music from one of my friend's car. This friend of mine has got a mind boggling music system on his car with wooffers, amplifiers and heat sinks that completely occupy the boot. Pumping out something like 8000 watts of music. I was carrying my MP3 collection and we were able to play virtually any song that we could think of.

We played volley ball, couple of games of cards after which we lost interest. We talked, talked and talked for about 3 hours sharing our nostalgic school memories. We caught up each other for, I was meeting some guys after about 8 years ! Dinner at "westpark" or something sounding like that, this place is like 2 KM from VGP towards Chennai on the ECR. Food was not so good, surprisingly they served beer though it was not an authorized BAR. After food, all of us headed back home, this time we played some spectacular Illaraja hits like the Agninatchathram #s and mike mohan's best hits. Came home and was watching DD sports-Olympics live, weightlifting was being shown. I just waited to see if Kunjarani devi created some kind of history. She was actually struggling amidst all her young adversaries. She managed an 82.5 Kg in snatch and 107.5 Kg in clean and jerk. Nurcan Taylan from turkey gave others a run for their money by lifting 210 kg (97.5 snatch, 112.5 Clean & Jerk). I think kunjarani finished 6th in the end.

Sunday morning, I had to do all the mundane stuff that was originally scheduled for Saturday, so was little busy Sunday morning. I was about to have my lunch and happened to notice parul's SMS about the Landmark Quiz, called him and confirmed my participation. It started raining as soon as I stepped out of my house. So, decided to go by car. Reached Music Academy at around 3:30 and there was Parul and Mohanraj waiting. We waited outside for about 15 minutes before our number was called. We were asked to occupy the smaller hall within the music academy complex, we couldn't find any place to sit so we went on stage. The quiz master appeared on screen from nowhere and started reading out the formalities. Answer papers were distributed and the organisers were kind enough to distribute some snacks for the participants, I am unable to recall the name but it tasted like chocolate chips :-) We crashed through a set of interesting 40 questions. We managed to crack some of them very easily, some of our guesses turned out to be right and some went wrong and for some we absolutely had no clue what the answer was.

After submitting the answer sheets we tried to get into the main hall. There was this maddening crowd in the brink of a virtual stampede. I had to be doubly careful for my toe was already in a bad shape. We made our way into the mail hall and found a safe space to stand and breath. We waited for the results, the guy started to read out the results I was not even listening for, I was quite sure that we wouldn't make it, I was told that there were around 1000 teams participating in the prelims. Suddenly, the guy on stage read out, "Best Corporate Team"..."Quizbots"...! even at that point I was a little skeptical about what I was hearing, by which time we had walked up to the stage and I had hurt my toe in the process :-) It all happened in about 2/3 minutes. Once we went back stage the organisers wanted to see some kind of ID, luckily Parul was carrying his ID and mohanraj had his card. Our names were called once again on stage, we proudly marched on to the stage and collected the trophy,a gift voucher for 3000 bucks and posed for the photograph :-) We watched through the rest of the quiz programme. It was fun and in all a wonderful weekend.

They are now Plethoric !

OK, This was on BBC the other day, the program was Click Online with host Stephen Cole.

In one of their featured segment, they were showing all old antique pieces of computer systems.
It was part of a virtual tour around the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The Computer History Museum boasts to be the world's largest and most significant history museum for preserving and presenting the computing revolution and its impact on the human experience.

And not to my surprise they had the classic Atari 800XL on display. It just took me back to the early 90s, when I first laid my hands one such piece of computing marvel. While I call it a marvel now,I still remember I simply had no clue as to what I should do with it, it took me quite some time to realise that it was a home computer apart from a gaming system.

There is a big story behind it actually, we did not own this piece but my dad had borrowed it from one of his friend. Well, it was the ultimate gizmo that one could possess in those days. This was well during the time when the Intel PC AT/XT machines were in their proverbial infancy. If I recall right, the only use that I made out of it was to play the "Invaders" game. Figuring out the connections were pretty straight forward. The thing had one RF connector to the TV, a joystick slot and power. Plug the Invaders catridge into a 8 bit catridge slot on top and switch it on. Poof! you are ready with the game. Surprisingly, we had couple of more catridges but only invaders worked. All this while I had not even attempted to make use of the home computer aspect of it. There was this rougly a 100 page manual, with some intimidating jargons and explanations that I could barely follow.

ATARI 800xl

Invaders

I still remember one of my valliant attempts to type in a program with the help of the manual. One summer afternoon, I decided to read the manual and figure out other features of the system. My first program was "How to make tea", I had no clue as what would happen when the program is run, I had this crazy thought that when the program is run it would show some fancy graphics on how to make tea.

The think the program was in Basic, and I started typing whatever was given in the manual, beleive me it was quite a task typing the whole program. Half way through I hit this character ":" and I had no clue how to make it appear on screen :-) was a complete googly. I struggled for about an hour and gave up, just could not complete my first program. Later, I asked my cousin who was into software then, and the answer happened to be very simple, it was "shift"+":" ahhh... yeah that simple, but the point is I didn't know that I had to hold them down simultaneously :-)

This was the time when I was in 8th standard. Later, the thing stopped working becaused of some loose contact with the power supply. Moreover, invaders was like dog poo when, my neighbour got himself a nintendo video game. The next infatuation was "Super Mario Bros.", I was so obsessed with the game that I used wait outside his house just for them to open the doors. I couldn't ring the bell without a reason, and my friend's mom certainly wouldn't let me in for this reason :-)

Then it was my friend's Spectrum home computer during my 10th standard. But this time around I was no novice and was pretty comfortably with writing programs in Basic. All programs were stored on a regular audio cassette, funny isn't it ! And experienced all sorts of nightmare when we tried to read the programs back from those tapes.

zx Spectrum

The next big thing was the i286s and IBM PC clones(XTs) during my 11th and 12th in our school. Myself and couple of other friends we were the real pain for the system administrator then. We always messed with the autoexec.bat. Sometimes, added a simple program to the autoexec.bat which would claim itself to be a virus and start a TSR which key logs, we had total control over the systems. Other cool tricks included cleaning the boot record :-) and often the machines wouldn't boot and show up the famous "No system or system disk error". Our computer science teacher was totally fed up with our shenanigans gave up on us. It was real fun, and I can vividly remember, it was the first time I was introduced to some pornography on comps. remember the old "Alice in worderland" movie? we had a small piece of that movie on our school comp. as an executable. It was nothing but 10 frames in a contnuous loop :-) and you can pretty much guess what kind of content I am talking here. We were crazy about 3 games then, Prince of persia, Dangerous Dave and Prehistorik2.
This game Prehistorik 2 had such brilliant graphics that I still have a copy and play it at times, though they don't seem to work on Pentium 4 and above, throws some general protection error, damn INTEL ! so much for backward compatibility.

After that, it was studies studies and studies with no respite, From then on, till now I have come across a myriad of systems from the 386s to Pentium IV to SUN Sparc to PowerPC(Macintosh), once even saw a SGI workstation. The one thing that I've not laid my hands on are the cockroaches a.k.a. Mainframes ! :-)
Gaming just got better, we were in the age of Quake ! and networked gaming. While I was doing my master with UIUC, we were about 6 people in the lab slogging right through the night, cracking problem sets, assigments, writing project reports, listening to lecture etc. And we sharpened our swords(Minds actually! this was after a story that we read, which said that we have to sharpen our swords every while for it to be efficient) every now and then by playing multiplayer Quake 2 and later Quake 3 arena.

Coming to the current state of affairs, no gaming no fun, just work work and work. I just don't find time to sit on my comp.(one in my home) Though, I spend some time with my notebook mostly to watch movies. I have a few personal projects in my mind but just am unable to find the time for them. Yeah... there are more personal ramblings, but let me save it for future posts :-)

I would love to own a iBook G4 but you don't get any for less than $1200, sexiest of all notebooks: the fully loaded IBM t42 and a Zaurus PDA... but, for the time being I must be contented with my modest PIII notebook.

iBook G4

IBM T42