Monday, November 28, 2005

I never thought i'd write this post one day !

Have been getting quite a few comments on whether IT is not Like That was written by me, or whether i lifted it from some other source. Well this post should put to rest any such questions, present or future.

well first things first : The post IT is not Like That is MY ORIGINAL WORK. It is not "...yavaag foreign ge ?" that is the title of that post, instead it is "IT is not like that" and it shall remain that way !. It is my experience that is in the post and mine alone, unless i have specifically mentioned otherwise.

The post in question has been doing the rounds for quite sometime now, and quite a few have posted it in their blog as their own work. While some have mentioned that they got it as a forward, a few more though have taken the trouble to find out who the original author is and have got back to me. Bloggers such as Pradeep Kishore, Arjun , Bangloreguy and Jaison are among the few who took the trouble of giving due credits for my post, on their blog.

What pushed me into writing this post on plagiarism was a comment thanks to Ambar, directing me to this site http://vijireflections.blogspot.com/2005/07/eppo-foreign-pore.html which has my post translated in tamil(without my knowledge of course) . The link took me to the copy-cat-blogger who has tried her best to make the post look like it's her original composition. That she has failed pathetically at it is something one does not need a microscope to prove.

For those who do not want to believe that i wrote the post in question, i cannot do much. However, for those who are prepared to see reason, i'd like to show a few obvious flaws in her translated post. Oh by the way, she claims that she wrote this post an year ago and later deleted it to add it back again two weeks after i posted mine !. While she also claims a lot of things in the post as her own experience with people, the above claim is as much a bunch of crap as the ones in her post.

Check this out....

In my post, i write :

"Recently one of my cousins went onsite, and i being the scape goat "

She changes it to :

"Recently one of my friends went onsite, and I being the scape goat "

Oh , yeah i got it, that's because her cousin apparantly didn't go onsite, while mine did and going by what she has claimed my cousin is definitely a friend of hers!

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In my post, i write :

"I was being murdered inch by inch, neat and clean. My reputation in tatters."

In her post, she changes it to :

"Despite the fact that I only finished B.E last year & started to work, I was being murdered inch by inch, neat and clean. My reputation in tatters."

Oh got it, she wants to add some flavor of her own in the post while still conveniently copying what i have written.
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In my post, i write :

"I have been most unfortunate in this case, so much so that if i had got a call to abort the travel 2 seconds later than what i got, i might have had to jump off the plane mid-air."

In her post, she censors it to :

"If I had got a call to abort the travel 2 seconds later than what I got, I might have had to jump off the plane mid-air."

Guess, she didn't like the initial sentence i wrote. how thoughtful. bliss bliss...

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This one nails it ....

In my post, i write :

"well one aunty even had the nerve to ask me "did you have a fight with your manager ?"..well i was kind enough to say "no aunty, project got scrapped "

She changes it to :

"Well, one aunty even had the nerve to ask her son "did you have a fight with your manager?". well he was kind enough to say "no aunty, project got scrapped "

I wonder who that person is who calls his own mother "aunty" !

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this one is a snippet of her post :

"My friend made the blatant suicidal mistake of attending a social gathering full of aunties and uncles, and asked company he worked for, and he answered him hoping he would stop there. however , uncle had no such intention and carried on " endha language ?"...though stunned, i replied back "c sharp uncle"

first she claims her friend made a suicidal mistake, and then she makes a suisidal mistake of eating up one word and just writes "and asked company he worked for". Oh and when uncle asks her friend a question, she answers for her friend instead "i replied back "c sharp uncle"". guess she forgot to change the "i" to "he" here !

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while i go on to write a few more paragraphs later, i guess she was too lazy to copy those, or probably she ran out of friends whom she could claim had had those experience and instead she cuts short the post by not inluding a few paragraphs. phew ! there, what an angel !, she spared me a slice of her non-existant pie !

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That is enough proof i suppose that SHE has not written the post, though i am pretty sure that the blatant mistakes in her post are definitely her own doing. I'd be a fool to say she copied my post, a more better word, to convey what she did to my post, would be a word i cannot print here !
I'll not ask her to delete the post, instead i'll direct those people, who doubt that i didn't write the post on my blog, to her post and let them decide what to believe.

I am sure if she reads this post of mine, she'll be in a position to rectify the humungous mistakes in her post, but is that all ? so that means she'll copy a few more of my posts and claim it as either her's or her friends. In effect she'll have my persona in no time. This probably amounts to identity theft in a weird sort of way. Guess the next time i have an headache, she'll be the one who'll be writing in her blog "Yesterday my friend had a severe headache, and I took aspirin !"

I understand that this has not been very pleasant read, as it has not been for me to write. Though i did restrain myself these many days while quite a few people used my post and claimed it as theirs, this was the last straw....

Like David Spade shouts out on comedy central : "There i said it !"

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Feeling Gid(d)ish

Dear GIDISH,

This letter is to inform you that your application for residential electric service has been denied.
Please complete the enclosed affidavit, and get it signed by a notary, and provide proof for name and age.... blah blah blah

Thank you
----------------------------------------------

Got this mail from the power department yesterday.

apparently my ssn number didn't match the name i had given, and going by GIDISH standards i am probably an imposter in their records by now!

oh damn this problem ..... even after spelling each letter and giving out names of dogs and cats for each of them, nothing seems to have helped. Now they have resorted to deleting the letters they have a confusion about !

May be i should ask someone here who speaks in american accent to record my name for me, letter by letter, so that i can play that back and forth, whenever i need, over the phone !

Yesterday i had to call up the alitalia office in New York to confirm my tickets to India.

"apriete uno para italiano...glub glub glub"....followed by the english one... "please press thoo for eenglish"...after trying to follow the instructions i went blank for a few seconds, when a lady on the other side spoke in thick italian accent :
"ali-thalia airlines, whath can i do for you ?"

thalia thalia ... !!! i got the connection !

Me : "I need to confirm my ticket to bangalore, india, flying from newark"
lady : "Sorrie sir...can you repeath ith ?"
Me: " confirm tickets from newark to bangalore,india"

...another boring saga of thrying to explain !....2 mintues layther, ith became verry annoying !

Lady: "verrie sorrie sir, i could nath geth you..."
Me:" me neither !"
Lady : "sorry ?"
Me : PHUTAAK and cut the call...what else could i do, an indian speaking in indian accent to an ithalian speaking in ithalian accent, and both trying to decipher english spoken in pseudo american accent !! somewhere queen of england is having a roll laughing at us !

These automated phones which ask for verbal confirmation too call for a kick. Hopeless as the idea is, its by no means less irritating than the normal customer service agent.

automated voice : "Please say 'My Service' for service related enquiries...."
Me : "My service"
automated voice : "I am sorry, i could not get you!"

Damn it .....even the automated voice !!

automated voice : "Please say 'My service' for ......" and another hour of lecture on the services offered....

Me : "My Service"

automated voice : silent for a second ( probably it thought what i had just said was optic fibre disturbance, or was just biding time so that i'd just give up !

automated voice : "Please press 1 if you want "My Service", 2 for ...."

Me : Stunned !

bloody automated ragger...why couldn't it give this option earlier !

after another 5 minutes of going through all the leftover options the automated teller decided that a manual intervention was required, and hence transfered me to an agent. That it went to the voice mail is a different story alltogether, and i left my voice message which i was sure no one would return.

I wonder what's with my name, huh ? .....my parents did have the option of naming 'shiva', if they were so touchy, but why jagadish ?, and make it look like yagabish....who knows shiva could have become shy-vah ...better yagabish than shy-vah !

yesterday my client mails me saying :

--------------------
Hi Jagadish

Please check the blah blah blah...blah blah...

Thanks vinay,

Tony
---------------------

My name got completely transformed into another name !
Apparently my client confuses my name to another person who used work here 6 eons ago and went by the name vinay !

May be instead of beating the system i should just surrender to it...change my name to yagabish. May be then everyone will start calling me "yaggi" !.

I can't just think of a good idea, damn !...

oh boy need to go and get that electric connection soon, otherwise gidish will get into trouble !

Feeling very Gid(d)ish right now :(....Grrrr..

Monday, November 14, 2005

Through the Lens....

...is my new Blog on photography. Hit on the idea to avoid posting pics in this blog.

They now sit at Through the Lens

Feel free to post comments on the pics :)

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Say Cheese !

Thanksgiving's nearing, and the excitement is running high, and so are my expectations. Haven't bought as much as a door nail since my stay here, all energy and resource concentrated on the four day deal many promised i would get.

Moved to a new apartment yesterday, and hopefully it'll bring in some moderate savings which i could use to fufill my cherished dream of owning a camera. When karthik bought his first camera, a Sony DSC-F828, i was astounded by what it could do. A near SLR, it had mind boggling features. While it got me interested in photography, it was way too annoying for my friends to see me fiddling with it, when our gang met :D. quite a few of my friends later bought cameras which i would pester and snatch from them...pothnis's nikon was a good bet, and it gave me the option of coaxing him or karthik...one would agree sooner or later and part with it :). while many started pestering me to buy one for myself, i was happy using theirs and instead ask them to check out good deals for me :D

I have a camera which i consider a family heirloom; that's how old it is. Well the camera must be as shocked that it can take photos, as i was when i first saw it.

for months i have been eyeing the Canon S2-IS, but rats !, the cost hardly comes down. one popular camera that one ! The other day vivek mailed me all excited saying :

"Oi...check out this deal on laptops on this website"

Me : " Oh no man, i'll need to buy a camera, waiting for a deal"

Guess i pulled the wrong nerve this time around, and got a reply back saying :

"You'll keep waiting for a good deal, and sure enough if you ever buy a camera, pigs will fly"

hehehe, while my mind chose to spend its time imagining pigs flying, vivek was all fuming in the texas heat :D..

well i don't get this habit of mine of saving money for a camera, but then failing to use it to buy one. the inner loud voice saying in my mother-tongue : "dubba camera aadre ?" (what if the camera is a total dud ?) and another thought rising : "what if the prizes drop dead just after i buy the camera for a fortune ?"

it's always the case, and i end up buying stuff, the prizes of which would fall rock bottom 2 minutes later. It however did not stop me from pestering people into buying a camera though :).

That's history..now after reading about it and having used its predecessor, the S1-IS ( another friendly gesture from suneel who owns one :D ), i can hardly wait to get my hands on it.

Have been getting stories that we'd need to stand at 3:00 am in the night on thanksgiving day; that's how long the queue would get if we went in late. I just hope its an absurd lie ! cold as it gets, its not the best of time to say 'cheese'.

Keeping my fingers crossed, and hopefully i'll finally have a camera i can call my own !

Click.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Random Two


Golden Mean

Random One

Paddling duck

lake lustre

Bank of the river...hmm river or lake...

Green Touch


Lake side greenery- forgot the lake's name; minnesota apparently has 10000 lakes.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

City City Bang Bang - One Dollar Dilemma

After a great holiday in minneapolis with friends, the weekend before last, i had to catch a flight to NY early monday morning. The plane would land at JFK airport at 10:30am, and from there i had decided to take a subway to the bus stop, and eventually catch a bus to New Jersey to reach office directly by around 1pm.

well everything had to work with clock like precision for that, with my plan being :

10:30am land at JFK
10:40am catch air-train to subway.
10:50am buy tickets to subway.
11:00am catch a subway train to the bus depot.
11:45am reach Port Authority Bus Stop.
12:00 catch Bus to NJ and reach office by 1pm....

hmmm, sleek as my plan was, i could not miss the 12:00 bus to NJ at any cost, which kept me on tenterhooks throughout the journey. while i landed at JFK on time, it took longer to get down the plane, and subsequently my plan showed signs of falling apart. The subway kept me in good stead, but i ended up reaching 5 minutes late for the bus, which unluckily left on time for me to miss it just in time ! While i used to curse buses in bangalore for being late, i didn't realize that it had given me as much flexibility as it had for the BMTC bus driver :D

Realizing i had no choice but to wait for the next bus at 1:00pm, i decided to catch up on some food and lose myself in the make-shift mall nearby.

Port Authority is a huge place in NY city, and though it isn't very difficult to find directions to places there, some of the areas there isn't where one would like to find him/her self alone. Huge as it comes, some of its alleys are dingy and secluded.

I loitered around with my backpack, looking like a cave dweller lost in a city when a lady came in from behind me. She spoke good english, and was probably in her late 20s.

Lady : "Excuse me sir, you look like a good man to me"

pleasantly surprised, i knew she was speaking the truth :)

Lady : " I was here early in the morning, when i was robbed off my belongings, now i can't stay here alone !"

it looked like she was trying to drive my attention to her soggy eyes, while i was busy munching pretzels.

Me : "oh i am sorry... contact the police, they'll be able to help you" ...pretzels still stuffed in my mouth.

Lady : "i contacted them and they say it'll take 24 hours to catch the goons and i'll need to stay here till then..."

Me : "but..."

before i could complete, she thrusted upon me a sheet of crushed paper, with obscure markings that looked like some calculation...

Lady : "I have calculated how much i need to go back home, i need 67$, and i have collected 50$ already, can you help me ?"

The Pretzels seemed to have stuck in my throat, after the difference in amount dawned on me. I had a ticket to NJ, and 5 1$ notes, and a bug bear key chain i bought as a souvenir from minnesota and of course a sack full of clothes. I could part with the bug bear if she insisted, but then it was a wrong time to exchange souvenirs, i concluded.

Having never been in such a position before, i could not tell if she was trying to trick me or not, and 17$ is a lot of money if one is getting cheated. So i decided to play safe taking out the 1$ notes out of my pocket. I had to lie fast and soon. picking 2 notes, i said :

Me : "See i have 2$ with me, and i need 1$ to go back home, so i can spare you 1$"

Darn ! what was i thinking !...if she was a crook, she must have laughed her head out. Not only what i had just said, a stinking lie, it was so apparent that it almost looked illegal.

Lady : "I'll take that, and if you give me your address, i'll probably send you a cheque"

Hehehe, now she must be thinking she is talking to a postbox. i can't look so dumb, whichever angle !

after a pause, she started off again...this time trying to wipe off her non-existant tears...

Lady : "Do i look like i have cried a lot ? "... now almost smiling !

Lady, i am the one who's lost a dollar here, if anyone it's me who should be crying ! One more dollar loss for me and i might as well join you and go around telling people that i got robbed !

Me : "No, i don't think so"...i answered meekly, shaking my head like i was struck by a gong.

it was 12:45pm by then, and without looking back i hurried towards the bus stop again !

I will never know if she was lying or indeed needed the money...

....and so stays the one dollar dilemma !