tum kaho tau jeena sika doon..tum kaho tau marke dika doon.

so i think i have the curse of bad chick flick movies. i think its been ages, since i saw a decent chick flick movie. the movies i like the best. yes, i am very pathetic. i will only watch "thinking" movies if i am forced to, and not by my own accord. so this week i saw the ugly truth.

and the ugly truth is that it sucks beyond belief. i think you may chuckle once or twice. but otherwise its all super cliched and you can predict the next scene and even like the dialogues (yep sad- but in my defense i did say i am an avid chick flick movie watcher). maybe i have become too cynical god knows. and it takes a lot to make me feel senti. maybe its all of that who knows but i didnt feel anything after i watched the movie.

so the story is gerard butler has this show on tv where he tells people (read women) that guys have a one track mind and are basically jerks. he is the complete jerk on tv dispensing ridiculous advice, but obviously is good with kids and is the best uncle to a 10 year old - who astonishingly seems to have a hell lot of love problems.

katherine heigl, who is playing the lead, is the producer of a news show on tv. she obviously disagrees with his dumb views and thinks there is this perfect guy who reads, likes cats and tap water (yea kill me with the nonsense). so anyway butler comes to work on her show and the ratings skyrocket and so they have to keep him. heigl detests him coz he says the "ugly truth" but butler tells her that if he can help her get the guy she wants ( the typical perfect cliched guy that one will read about in a mills and boons) she should then get off his case and just work with him . blah blah. he helps her and obviously falls in love with her and then she falls in love with him. small misunderstanding occurs. finally the lovers reunite and everything is alrite with the world.

*gag**gag**gag*.

will someone please make a nice romantic comedy that is not cliched and that does not come with special side effects like vomitting and suicidal tendecies

Read more...

Teja: Main kyar Chindi Chor dikhta hoon ? Ye Firauti ke paise hain ki maiyat ka Chanda ??

so for some reason today people in new york have been approaching me for cash. yep, just like that. coming up to me and asking me. apparently im giving off a "vibe".

wrong vibe, though.

i tend to never carry cash with me, since like my dad i cant seem to hold on to it, it invariably it gets spent - mostly on others and even if a regular bum asks me for cash i still help even though people say you shouldnt encourage it - i figure they probably need more help.

so carrying cash is a bad idea since you have to remember what you spent it on. so i just place the middle man in and use plastic. (yep, probably the only useful invention of the financial industry) well some may argue actually its the biggest sin, but whatever, its good for people like me who are disorganized, bad at accounting and avoid opening their mailbox since its all bills. [yes a very bad habit]

so anyway heres what happened to me. i had gone to help a friend move into a new appartment. while i am supervising the movers, an ismail darbar look alike approaches me. in fact i was actually staring at him initially since i was like is it him or not. i figured not since he was wearing those nike backpacks made of cloth. i really doubt ismail darbar would do that. but i wasnt staring him down or anything its not like i am a fan of devdas music, in fact i detest that movie and the music too. so it was pretty random. so heres how the conversation went.

ismail darbar lookalike (thereafter referred to as idl): hello, excuse me miss, do you speak hindi?
me: err, yes i do. *thinking he probably wants directions*
idl: are you punjabi?
me: err
idl: are you marathi? gujurati?
me: kyun, kya baat hai?
idl: ji, mein jotish hoon - mein aapko bata na chahta hoo yei aglei teen meinei aap kei liyei bahot mushkil hogei - mein aapko aur bata sakta hoon.
me: im sorry, mein in cheezon mein vishvwas nahin karti hoon.
idl: aap karei na karei but aapko mein bata sakta hoon
me: *thinking - that makes no sense whatsoever"
idl: acha choryei hum log india mein mandir bana reh hai, aur chanda ikatha kar rahei hai. gareeb bachon kei liyei ashram khol rahei hai
me: *thinking - yea right* sorry kuch bhi paisei nahin hai
idl: ji, kuch toh hoga aap ke paas
me: *what the hell dude*
idl: insaan ko dil se dena chahiyei..blah blah [its all a blur what he said keywords dil insaan chanda]
me: seriously mera paas kuch nahiyei
*he still wouldnt budge so i proceeded to show him my wallet where i had a few dimes and i think a dirham or something not even US money.*
idl: aap paper money dei saktei hai
me: huh? err like monopoloy? [ ok i didnt say that i just thought it]. i guess he meant write a cheque.
so i said "aap yei lei saktei hai" [yei being the chillers]
idl pockets the chillers and walks away.


i am speechless.



two hours later:

random guy with golden teeth: *something in spanish*
me: huh?
rgwgt: you spanish?
me: umm no sorry
rgwgt: speak english?
me: yea
rgwgt: i am from puerto rico - i need 11 bucks to take my train to *somewhere.*.
me: sorry i absolutely have no money
rgwgt: looks at me like im the biggest karka ever and walks away.

Read more...

dhan te na..te na

so i have been listening to the kaminey soundtrack. and im pretty much hooked on the dhan te na song. i was reading bhardwaj's interview and he's like its like when you are telling a kid a story and you are building it up.. you say that for effect. that's very true. and that never really gets old. one still does that. [ or maybe its just me].

oh and yea my pet parrot used to whistle that too. pretty much the only tune he knew. i had no hand in that. khair, its very much a song that you would play on full volume and drive listening to on empty roads at full speed.

anyway speaking of pets, i was walking past brookstone and it is now selling this aquatic frogs aquarium which is supposedly a self contained ecosystem. [ ok i am not sure why i am using the word supposedly..hmm.. maybe coz i dont believe them]

anyway so you feed them twice a week these pellets. they are the diet version of the regular frogs meal, i suppose. who knows. the model diet, if you will. coz the usp is that they wont ever grow.

seriously, how low maintenance is that? ill still end up botching it, i should start with cacti first.

oh, and you clean their aquarium twice a year only! [apparently the tiny snail that lives with the frogs is the maid]

thus validating my theorem that you need three people in a perfect marriage: the couple and the maid.

Read more...

all i really want is a wavelength

ok so today is a weird day. by weird i dont mean that it was hot as hell all day and is now pouring like there is no tommorow. no, not that kind of weird.

so here is what happened at work today (names and all have been changed. this is however a true, albeit slightly boring, but true story)

the assistant to head boss comes up to me and says head boss wants to see me.

now the only reason why the head boss wants to see anyone is that if they are either a director and above (which i am not) or they want to fire them.

so since im pretty shitty at hiding emotion when im shocked, i went white or like in semi cardiac arrest mode. so the assistant is like to me relax its good news oh and yea you better go now and stop eating your food.... but then im thinking really how would she know.....but apparently she does know.

so the good news is that i got a raise of .....wait for it.. 5%.

so for the split second before i sat down in front of the head boss, i was thinking shit maybe they are actually giving me a promotion. woohoo. for someone who has never ever gotten a promotion (ok granted i havent been working for long - but whatever the point is i haven't ever so yes it is a big deal for me).

so anyway that never happened, instead i got a whole spiel on how they are trying to make everything on par with other colleagues in the bank (what the hell, have i been underpaid the whole time!), and oh how well i am doing (which i thought she said very sweetly so i think i believe it - but then she really is a sweet person so maybe thats just part of their drill)

so anyway thats the obama phase of the news. now the post obama phase. its actually not retroactive. so technically its applied to half a year. so its 2.5% technically. and considering the amount of tax i pay to live in this beloved city (50% goes to the bottomless vortex of tax money). so we are looking at 1.25%. 0.25% for medical insurance, dental etc. leaving me with a grand total of 1%.

and that is the reality of it. and that is precisely how the whole financial industry survives. on the notion of good tidings.

but not to be ungrateful, an increase is still an increase and with the recession and all - so thank you god. but, i really hope this isnt my consolation prize for not being promoted at the end of the year.


****************************************

so in other weird news another MD comes up to me (ok some background this MD never talks to me, i mean we occasionally will have the wierd awkward conversations while waiting for the elevator, oh yea and he once asked me where did i get my baskin robbins icecream from). and honestly im a little scared of him, and usually when he is sitting through my meetings i am messing up big time (nothing to do with him just in general). either i forget to number my pages in gigantic research document or i stutter (sharukh khan style) [ ok gross exaggeration ] or i just blank out.

anyway so he goes to me you have a minute to talk. in my head i am like what IS happening today, why does everyone want to talk to me? so anyway, i go in and he is like you are a mathematician right? at that moment im like err.. thinking is this a trick question...so he moves ahead and asks me a pretty basic question. and im like err... so is this a new performance measurement process testing people on the basics or did he really not know this. both cases result in the same outcome. weirdness. so anyway i think i explained it well, but who knows.

Read more...

i used to say the more tragic the better - morisette

its so easy to fall into - what if
had it been, it would be - what now
for better or for worse
i choose
what will be.

Read more...

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” - Beecher






please do ignore the mess on my desk and my pet elephant. thanks. all in all a great weekend.
this is the original painting, which i have heavily been "inspired" from. i just wanted to paint something that would match my comforter.

Read more...

nayan barse.

i think you and i are so alike
almost too alike
it could be a good thing
or just a really bad thing

you remind me of an onion
each layer different from the next
each layer leading to potentially
copious amount of emotion
in another onion's heart.

Read more...

Dilgeer garzama labela taana [you have captured my heart and i wander aimlessly without you] - Paimona

so this has been a chilled weekend of sorts. part of my plan this weekend other than to unwind and relax was to actually do something productive - creatively. ie paint a picture for my bare and empty wall. i have been totally inspired by my trip last week to ikea. so much so that i want to move to a new appartment so i can start all over again, new furniture, new settings , new design ecetra ecetra. anyway so its been a process to get all the stuff that i want. considering i have decided to go paint in the park and not at home where i can actually be as messy and as disorganized as i want to be. to paint in the park, i need obviously canvas, paints, water, water in a cup, a palette, blanket to sit on, rug to wipe dirty hands and brushes on. and this is only coz im using acrylic paints and not oil paints which is a whole new mess altogether. anway so tommorow i plan to get up early clean my little studio and then start painting and hopefully finish it one day-or it will forever be unfinished.

anyway so today i was walking aimlessly today in 5th ave, major touristic hub. this is really bad for my bank balance, i inadvertently buy something. i am a clothes addict. and now after my niece i have this urge to make her a little fashionista. so i can never go out and not buy anything. but anyway i mainly like walking there since there are so many pple and i can always pretend to take pictures of buildings when im actually taking some random person's picture (you have been warned). what can i say people are more entertaining than buildings. most of the time hte pictures are blurry since i still am developing this skill of street photography and learning to surpress my you-caught-me-im-guilty-look. so anyway i was passing by this church and there was a lot of commotion there and like all desis i have to know kya hora hai. there was a couple getting married (well in the church) and i guess the ceremony was over and the bride was getting in the car that time and just taking last moment pictures or something. basically in new york you cannot even get married in shanti se. a big crowd of tourists had gathered and were all taking pictures of this randomn bride, who was so unfazed by the whole thing.

alrite fine im guilty of the picture taking too.

only coz i have never been to a christian wedding and i really want to go to one. so anyway we are all like paperazzi type clicking photos and another tourist asks me so who is it, whats happening? i go, i dont know someones just getting married. the tourist looks over and starts tkaing pictures too. and im just chuckling from inside. it reminds me of when my friend got married in the city, desi style with pheras and all, and her dulha had made a grand entrance in the middle of new york on a gohra. it was totally surreal and cool. there was a dhol bajana wala also and like typical larkei walei were all dancing in front of the gohra, who btw had come from new jersey and was well accustomed to mad desipanna of dancing in your best finery in front of an animal who is well capable of kicking you. so anyway a lot of random pple from the street joined the baraat and started dancing, the whole thing was so sitcom comedy like and so funny.
ok maybe not so funny in print, definetly a have to be there moment.


i would say this is reason 439 why i absolutely love new york.

Read more...

my big fat desi family

the issue with desi familes is that everyone and their mother is in your business. and you can never tell anyone anything, expecting them to keep a secret. and what follows is this convoluted chinese whispers, where someone will tell another something and they will tell something else to another someone and you end up hearing it from the fourth person and you are like what the hell when did i EVER say that. and coz families thrive on gossip, its great if you are on the receiving end of the gossip but if you are the gossip its the worst, coz then everyone and again their mother wants to know each and every detail of your oh-so happening life. will everyone please just let me be.

Read more...

your body is a wonderland

one of my favouritest things to do (when im in a good mood) is to dance in an elevator (empty of course!) with my ipod blasting the current flavour of the season. and then just when it stops at my floor or the ground floor i stop dancing and have a straight face but my eyes are still twinkling. sometimes i do that in the work elevator and only recently did i find out they have cameras installed in the elevator and im sure the security guards are probably having a good laugh. i dont care. great big of a deal :)

Read more...

remember the time

so yesterday i saw a bit of the mj memorial and like most people i thought the last part where his daughter spoke was touching and extremely sad. i dont know of any worse feeling than losing a parent. and i cannot comment too much about whether mj was a good person or not. i dont know that. and since i was always taught never to speak ill about the dead (well alive too), i will avoid the shady aspects of his life and speak about the good. was the memorial too elaborate? yes i think so. it was a media and public frenzy.

i read many articles in his tribute, but there was really only one article which made sense to me ( i dont remember where i read it sadly) . but what the author was saying basically is people are not mourning so much a celebrity (who they didnt know and after a while after all the controversies we were beginning to ignore) but instead they are mourning their passing/passed childhood.

a lot of us associate our first taste of pop music to michael jackson. when i was growing up my sisters would record his and madonnas songs directly from the radio, the era before ipods, mp3s and affordable cds. in school i vividly remember i used to sit in front of a girl who had this mj binder with all the lyrics of his song, his posters and we would all peer over it during breaks. so for many of us its a passing of time, a time that we loved and felt comforted in and just like memories where we remember only the good and we try to block out the bad. we continue do the same with the memory of mj.

Read more...

say what you need to say

for the long weekend i went to the carribean with my best friends. it was a much needed vacation. and despite all the work i had, despite my comp crashing an hour before i was leaving, despite colleagues not letting me leave, despite the fact that i was stuck in 40 mins of traffic in a part that would take me 2 mins to walk, despite the fact that i had to run across the gates to catch my plane (desi filmy style) with only 5 mins for the gates to close, despite the fact that i broke out in a gazillion zits coz of the stress only to find out that my flight was delayed, despite the fact that there were signs that it would rain the whole trip (it didnt), despite the fact that old san juan was quite a dead city and no one knows where all the tourists are gone, despite the fact that i hadnt swum in years let alone ever in the sea ( i finally did and completely enjoyed it), despite the fact that i had never ever gone kayaking, let alone in pitch darkness after sunset and when the tide is high and the scene looks right out of a scary movie like anaconda. despite the guide mentioning that 'hey there maybe little sharks in the water'. despite the fact that i got bitten ferociously (on my face!) by mosquites in the mangroves. despite all of this and more, this will probably go down as one of the best vacations of my life.

Read more...