Random Thoughts

I just changed the timezone my blog is on... and it changed all my posts. Now, that makes sense in some world, but not mine. I used to live in a GMT - 8 (or 7 depending on the time of year) time zone... and have now moved to a GMT - 5 time zone. I wish it would at least give me the option of keeping my time zone as is and continue on with the rest of the blogs. Or give me the option to display the time zone as well. Now that I think about it, google would have thought of that. Let me go check.

For those of you still following me via the blog, I must let you know that I am alive and busy in DC. I think I have finally found a place I like for a reasonable rent and so on. I have been learning to cook (toast is cooking in my books); I even cleaned my apartment the other day in stages. I have figured it is easier to do laundry when you are right out of clothes... and so on. Anyway, its almost 2am here, laundry is in the dryer in the basement, trying to cook food for tomorrow, life is interesting etc etc. Work has been good to me. I meant to write reams but I am far too tired for that. I am alive, I will get better at this and soon, you will have more to read from me. So long for now.

Since I am leaving for Washington DC, my dear friends got together with me, had a meal and wished me the very best for my future. They also asked me when I will be back next, seeing as I have family here, I don't think it will be too long before I come back again. I had intended to have the event at Joey's in Coquitlam. There were about a dozen or so of us, so I thought it best to make reservations and I called Joey's. They told me that they operate on a first-come basis. We decided to meet there around 7... and that place was packed. We took a while to figure out where to go and finally ended up going to the Earls on Lougheed Highway near Boundary. That place was packed too. We begged, pleaded, smiled etc to get a table for 13... and after much waiting and complaining... we got it. We had the fine plush chairs. Then they went hunting for a server. Allegedly, servers are hard things to find. Oh well. We found one. No one else believes me, but I am certain she has a moustach...

Well, what a week it has been. I can honestly say I miss DC. Not because I have some great love for the American capital... but because of the weather there. When I left DC last week, it was about 23 degrees Celsius, I wore a T-shirt, sat by the canal and had lobster. I came to Vancouver... and the damn rain hasn't stopped. We had so much rain that the water supply in this fair city has become clouded and 2 million of us have been told to boil our water before consuming it! Now... 2 million may not be such a big number in most places, but that is 1 / 15 th of all of Canada! The wind was so bad that trees fell down all over the place, people are STILL without power (4 days after the fact)! We were lucky. We did not lose power. We did lose the ability to use tap water. I am afraid to drink the tap water, brush my teeth etc. I cannot believe that in a country so advanced, 2 million people are forced to use bottled water due to a rain and wind storm. Its not raining right now, thankf...

I watched Borat on Friday. I haven't laughed so much in recent memory.

What have you been upto for the past little while? I have been in Washington DC for the past 2 weeks. As I type this, I am somewhere over the mid-west... but wait, I can pinpoint where, thanks to the tv screen in front of me with real-time flight information. I am just a little South and West of Angora, it is -27 Fahrenheit (-33 Celsius) outside, I have travelled 2800km so far and am about to cross the Denver-Utah border. My destination? Well on this Delta Airlines flight, it is to the capital of Utah, Salt Lake City... the spiritual home of the folks of that famous Church and the place that held the 2002 Winter Olympics. Too bad I won't be able to take in the city, and since it is dark (7:34pm MT right now), I am unlikely to see much on my way into the airport. So what have been upto in the past 2 weeks? I have been working hard like a dog over the past 2 weeks. I worked in the office till about midnight every day that I was there (including Saturday and Sunday) and got some work ...

I feel like I have a new job. Well, I do. I work for a software company based out of Washington DC. I switched departments to the product development team and am part of the performance engineering team. There is so much to learn and so much to do. So, how was the first week? Well, for one, it was interesting. When I got to DC, it was warm. I couldn't find food late at night (I got out of my hotel after 10pm) and had to adjust to the way the folks here speak... they sound rude but I guess they are just like that, they are not really rude people. Since then, I started working in the office, met tonnes of people and made friends. Met my new manager, he's a charming person with a million ideas. I had lunch at a few Mexican type places and am quite impressed. I ate at Baja Fresh and Chipotle. Good stuff there. There are a few places around the office with food around breakfast time... au bon pain, cosi's and corner bakery. Most are not open over the weekend... as I learned toda...

So, where have I been the last little while? I've been busy with so much stuff. I don't even know where to begin. Where am I right now? I am flying about 37,000 feet in the air on an Airbus A319. I am on my way to the HQ of the office, in Washington DC. How do I know how high I am right now? Well, the pilot announced it when we started. Since then, I watched the Devil wears Prada, listened to Antonio Vivaldi and am updating the blog. How did I get here? Well, it started with me having to go to DC for meetings. I got this laptop last minute on Friday afternoon (the IT manager is a nice fellow when he wants to be) and have been doing very little to get prepared ever since. I went to the Canucks game on Friday, surprise, surprise, against the Washington Capitals team thanks to a good chum of mine. He had tickets and took me along. We had a grand time. He got drunk. I had to drink half a sleeve of beer seeing as I started consuming alcohol in micro amounts. The Canucks won, in case...

I am not one to usually dwell upon this subject a lot... my life is a simple one and I love my freedom. Anyway, that little digression aside, I wanted to mention that I have had a chance to reconnect with the works of Pablo Neruda. Now, for those not familiar with Neruda, he is a Chilean writer, diplomat, Senator and one-time communist. He won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1971 and the citation (from the Nobel foundation website) is as follows: "for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams" I have read many of his translated works, but I came across one of his finest: Cien Sonetos de amor in Spanish. It is beautiful. Pablo Neruda puts in words what I cannot. He expresses Love in so gifted a way, time flies and you forget what you were doing before. Give it a try sometime, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Life will feel better, I assure you, after you read his passionate words. Whether they are in Spanish o...

I saw two beautiful beasts of burden today. The first was a sleek, smooth, eye-catching, attractive car made by this tiny car maker from Stuttgart. You may have heard of them. You may have seen their cars. You will likely never forget how this one looks. She is a GT after all. Gorgeous from the front fender to the rear exhaust and all around... she's just the most beautiful of vehicles on earth. I saw her parked by the Earls on Broadway, by Pine Street. Someday, I would like to drive one and god-willing, own one. And if you're still wondering who the maker is, it is Porsche. The second one was a GM-Allison Diesel-Electric hybrid bus. It has a huge battery pack on the top of the bus, but other than that, the chasis is a regular New Flyer low-floor bus. That's where the resemblance ends though. The Allison bus is gear free... it runs on electricity generated by the diesel engine. The whirring and clicking that the electric engine produces is strange to get used to, but the ri...

I am A-L-I-V-E. Its amazing what life can throw at you every so often. I've been doing a LOT of learning of late and I can't believe how fortunate I have been. Of course... my fears are always at the back of my head; what goes up must come down and I am not looking forward to the crash. Maybe I'll get lucky and the crash won't really be a crash, just a repositioning. I learned about what goals are and of one man's approach to getting there. Fascinating stuff. Though how much of that is absolute tripe is yet to be decided. I'll give it a shot. I have a lot to lose, but I can't afford not to try. Wish me luck!

I officially joined the Performance Engineering team today. Today was possibly the best work day I have had in a VERY long time. Things were calm, quiet (a little too quiet sometimes) and comfortable. I had a list of tasks to do, a few emails to read and even less to respond back to. I was in a blissful trance. Or maybe it is the calm before the storm. Who knows. Anyway, I am living in the moment for now. I did go back to check on the old co-workers (seeing as they are a floor above and have the better toilet amongst other things), or rather, what is left of my decimated pride if you will. It was eerie to say the least. The area, so devoid of life, so devoid of noise, of those bright (and sometimes cursing) faces, so devoid of laughter. I felt like I was in a tragic play with no lead and no director to help the cast arrive at the finale... at least in plays, the cast go home happy. I guess it all changed the day they announced the merger, and we all knew this would happen somewhere in ...

I think I got hit by a freight train today. Maybe not. But for whatever reason, I feel like an unmotivated bastard, sulking in my little corner with every little thing around me driving me to the brink of insanity. Life is usually a pretty decent bed of roses for me... I have a job, I have a car, I live in a beautiful country, my family and friends are safe and sound... no real reason to be unhappy. But fickle is the mind, and fickle is the game it plays on its host. It makes one feel like the world is about to end... when in reality, one ought to be thankful for everything. I think of little Nkosi when I feel that way. Everyone has heroes. Plato looked up to Socrates, Tendulkar no doubt looked up to Sir Donald George Bradman. Little Nkosi Johnson is one of my heroes. While I was out there living a relatively comfortable life, this 'half the size of bloody nothing' little 11 year old changed the world for me. His message to the 13th International AIDS conference was a simple on...

Goodbyes are interesting to me. I have had to say goodbye many times; to my dearest friends, to my family, to my dear dogs... I reckon we've all said goodbye very many times but I can't recall any significant one being an easy one. I spent 12 years around some of my friends back home before I left. I had to say goodbye to them when I left for Canada. I also had to say goodbye to my grandmother, my dog, my house... my world. I hate goodbyes. There is never a good time to say goodbye. I have yet to come across the right words that can say goodbye for you. My way of coping with this wretched ritual of life is to bugger off as quietly as I said hello. I came into this world silently and god-willing, I shall leave in silence and peace. Why the obsession to goodbyes at this ungodly of hours? Well, my world is about to change soon. The folks who have been part of my work world are for the most part, going their own way. Not by choice mind you, but by necessity and circumstance. I hav...

As with all things in life, over time, we as humans have to get maintenance done on us. In marine nature one of these functions is conducted by fish such as the Labroides dimidiatus ; they work tirelessly to keep their customers happy. I have something similar; he's called a barber and his name is Nick. Well, that's his Canadianised name anyway. I suspect there are very few fellows from Shia Iraq called Nick. Anyway, I had the opportunity to get my hair cut yesterday at Nick's place. He has a whole legion of customers who are loyal to him and he knows them well. About the only thing that annoys him is if you shave your head. I did so because the Italians won the Football World Cup over France. He picked up on that right away. He reminds me a bit of Enzo Manganaro from the Seinfeld episode when Jerry gets his hair cut by someone else. Enzo was not too happy. As it so happens, Nick is leaving for his home in Southern Iraq with his entire family for 2 months. I won't see h...

The time is fast approaching for goodbyes. The first set of goodbyes at work has started. On the 29th of September, most of our development organisation in Vancouver closed shop and left. They did release a fairly major application update as well, with 'Rock Solid' as part of the title. We also lost our beloved manager to Amsterdam. You may recall his lame goodbye party from a couple of weeks back. And he forgot to play foosball with me like he promised. That rascal. I will miss these folks. They have been part of my work world for the past 2 years or so. I have learned a lot from them and have a lot of respect for them. I am sad to see them leave. But I guess all good things do have to come to an end. Au revoir folks. But before they left, in true fashion, we had a celebration. Well, the whole week was one big celebration. Waffles on Wednesday, a film on Thursday, beer every day etc. Its the geek equivalent of Woodstock. Now, beer is a rather interesting thing. I have inhe...

One of my friends from back home sent me an email with a presentation that went along the lines of... you have a choice. You can choose to be unhappy or happy today. Or so it went. I woke up today and thought about it. I decided I would have a good time today. It was a sunny Monday, the weather was nice, I had done my research on beer over the weekend and was ready to stock the beer fridge at work etc. I get to work early and am bombarded by all sorts of requests from people relating to work. That gets to me and I get frustrated. I've been rather unhappy of late with my effort at work and my performance. All the extra stuff that came my way was just adding to it. I remembered the forward and thought about the good day bit. I took a walk and decided I would have a good day. So far, so good. I left at a reasonable time to get the beer fridge filled. I went to the store, got most of what I wanted and left in peace. Drove back to the office, went to park the car in the underground park...

I said in my earlier post that I had switched to Blogger beta. Since this has become more popular on account of the richer media available, a lot of blogs I follow have switched. I use the live bookmarks feature of Firefox to index and read the blogs... but sad to say, when I try to load the atom.xml file... I now get some crap from Yahoo!. I hate change. I embrace it willingly when I have to (as I do with beta software etc) but when something works the way I like it... I like it. If someone knows how to fix this so the live bookmarks work again in Firefox, do let me know.

I read this on Big Eves' MSN nickname thingie. It says: Girls are like domain names, all the good ones are taken . Sadly, it is true. And I am still trying to find that decent domain name. It has been a while since I have written anything on the old blog. I switched the Blogger beta today and finally got around to fiddling with some of the settings. So far, while I am not fully unsatisfied with the whole setup, there are still things in there that I am not so happy with. I had a pretty lame and tame weekend. I went to a farewell thing for a co-worker. That poor bastard is going to Amsterdam. Allegedly, he will be working hard there on setting things up. I shall believe it when I see it. Usually, he's a good source of entertainment and a decent source of camera fodder. But I must say that despite staying there till about midnight, I did not get any good photographs. I went downtown instead. But here are the ones I managed to take. Sadly, I don't have even one of his. My mo...

I am back to doing the grind again. I keep time when I do the grind. I can't find my watch. Who took my watch? If I ever find you... I will politely ask for it back. And I expect it back. Don't hold it for ransom. It is but a simple Timex. With tons of scratches. But it is _my_ watch. So, find it in your heart to return it to me. Then I can find out how long it takes me to climb the grind.

It is something of a tradition amongst the lads to go to the Oakanagan for a long-weekend in the Summer. I missed out on EVERY long weekend last year on account of being the new guy in my role. I was on call for all those long weekends. It just so happened to line up that way. This year, I travelled a lot more during the summer and so was n ot around when the lads went. I fully intended to make it to the Oakanagan at least once this Summer and so I decided to go the next long weekend I was in Vancouver. That weekend was Labour Day. So with the trusty bottle of sunscreen, the good old straw hat and the usual travel stuff, a trio of us embarked early on Saturday morning. We were aiming to go to the smaller of the towns on the shore of Lake Okanagan, Penticton. It was a really nice day . The roads were relatively clea r. We did not come across any major traffic related issues until w e got to close to Manning Park. There was a LOT of smoke in the area, probably because of the wild fire...

Dim Sum. You hear that a lot in Vancouver. Seeing as I am interested in food, I paid attention. I never did try it though. It was always one of those things that you intend to do but never quite got around to it. Well, that changed. I am moving away from Vancouver. So, I am in catch-up mode right now. I have to do all sorts of things before I leave. Dim Sum is one such thing. So I went with a bunch of far more knowledgeable Dim Sum eaters to a place called Sun Sui Wah in Richmond. Before I get to the food, let me side track and tell you about why I am afraid of Richmond. The only times I ever go to Richmond are to a) take a plane out of the airport b) to pick someone up at the airport Otherwise, I avoid Richmond. I have a predisposition to getting lost in the myriad of highways and other such evil devices they have there. Seriously. I was late for a funeral once because I took the wrong exit from the Knight Street Bridge. If you go the wrong way, you have to pretty much go to Delta be...

I get quizzed every so often about women and my dealings with them. I am honest most of the time. Every so often though, people go on asking questions and don't quite stop. So here's my explanation. One: I don't bat for the other team. Two: I don't get women as in I haven't a clue what the hell makes them tick. I mean, I know the biochemical pathways that make them tick, but I don't know what really makes them tick . Three: I suspect women don't get me. Four: I would rather spend time on things I understood or on things that were a worthwhile academic pursuit. Five: Its way past my bed time and I am writing a rant really tired. Why the rant? I was asked what the deal was with me and this girl I was seen with. My answer was a simple one (and the honest one by the way): she's a friend. Of course, in this Universe of weirdness, that answer doesn't seem to cut it. I don't understand these creatures. I mean, they make no sense. They willingly fly of...

I disappeared for a few days to Washington DC. I went to the head quarters of the company and lived life on the company dime. I met some really interesting people, got a lot of good feedback on a job I applied for and in general the trip made me decide... that I want to move there and continue working! That is scary. I never intended to like DC. I never intended to work in the US despite having a green card. I never thought I would like the place. The old adage of, you need to try it before you say you don't like it comes true; yet again. I genuinely had a grand time. The people in the office were just as much fun as the folks in Vancouver. The work was exciting, interesting. There seemed to be way more girls in DC in general and the ones I saw were, well, they were hot. The food was great (especially the sea food and the steak houses), the city was clean and beautiful. My cousin lives close by (well, 4 hour drives are supposed to be close). I have friends who are moving there. I g...

I am heading off to Europe. No, not the romantic Europe of Canaletto or someone of that calibre. I am going to Scotland; where whisky and haggis are king. I will be there for 2 weeks hopefully seeing the place and getting immersed in the culture. Why Scotland? Why not? The reason I am going to Scotland is because I have a fascination with bagpipes mostly. There is this _tiny_ show held in Edinburgh every Summer called the Edinburgh Tattoo . No one gets tattooed for this. But the bands of the Scottish regiments (usually from the Commonwealth) end up putting a spectacular show every time. I have seen pictures and videos of it. I want to be there for the real deal. I fly out of Vancouver on a British Airways flight (one of 2 daily direct ones) for London Heathrow. I'll be in the air for about 8 hours and then I will be in the United Kingdom. I've heard great things about BA. I usually fly Singapore Airlines. BA better deliver. My MEC backpack is packed. I hope I survive this tri...