I did it!
Finally I did what i've been thinking for so long.I got my self a car when I was 25. (ok, ok it was a close call, another 5 days and I'd be 26. Yes, this is a nudge for all of you to send in expensive birthday gifts.)
I got myself a neat, super sleek Fiat Palio. Its a beautiful car and I'm loving driving it.I got it on 21st August.
Unfortunately Bangalore's traffic does not give enough leeway to really open up the throttle.But not to worry, all in good time.
I'll put in some photos, but right now i'm swamped with work (came back at 10 today!)
But seriously its a strange feeling, I mean grown ups buy cars and stuff. I guess I've grown up ... :)
DELHI MY DELHI!
Just a quick note, i'm visiting Delhi starting tomorrow. I'll be there till 2nd September.
And the weird thing is that I'm not feeling as I excited as I normally do. I guess its the extra work and the excitement, tenderhook-ness before getting the car, excitement and weirdness on getting the car :D
Its all good though, all good..Delhi will be awesome fun again this time as lots and lots of my friends are in Delhi at this point of time...
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Lost my phone...
I've lost my phone, the "how" is too embarrassing for me to elucidate upon here in this open forum. Apart from the actual act of losing the instrument, i've also lost all the contact numbers that kept me in touch with all you lovely people.
Please help me in re-collecting your phone numbers by writing them on the back of the cheques that you'll be sending to express your sympathy.
Or, alternatively you can email your numbers to swapnil.bhatnagar@gmail.com, or leave it in comments here.
Whatever works for you you cheapskates.Can't help a pal in need...grumble grumble...call themselves my friends...grumble grumble...i'll show them, no more happy posts for those who don't send cheques...grumble grumble...
Please help me in re-collecting your phone numbers by writing them on the back of the cheques that you'll be sending to express your sympathy.
Or, alternatively you can email your numbers to swapnil.bhatnagar@gmail.com, or leave it in comments here.
Whatever works for you you cheapskates.Can't help a pal in need...grumble grumble...call themselves my friends...grumble grumble...i'll show them, no more happy posts for those who don't send cheques...grumble grumble...
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
A quickie update...
"sniff...you don't love me anymore"
"We hardly spend any time together anymore. Whats happened?"
"I think we're drifting apart, we were so good together...sniff"
"what went wrong? It was perfect..."
ok, ok I'm sure your thoughts are not as over the top as these reactions. But yeah, if my blog could speak, she'd probably be spewing such senti dialogues by the dozen.
Well a couple of factors have been contributing to this drought of posts. One, blogger has been blocked in my office (If I decide to switch jobs, this'll be a great factor) and second, i've been battling waves and waves of work for the last couple of weeks. I mean, you guys know me, would you've thought that you'd ever see me get up early of my own volition as I could do with a couple of hours extra in office? Or that you'd ever see me gasping and limping in late, LATE from work on a weekday? well, yes, I've been guilty of doing both.
Lots of things I saw over these to weeks made me go Ah! now that just HAS to go into my blog! But then I never got around to doing it, and now when I have time today (The day is off today on account of it being 15th August, the Indian independence day, when we got our freedom back after an amazing and incomprehensible non-violent struggle. Seriously, if you're not from India and have no idea about our freedom struggle, I suggest you read up on it a bit. Its fascinating. As a corollary, normally history is taught in a really pathetic learn-by-rote way in India. However, thank God for the most awesome teacher ever, Aditi Misra ma'am, who made the subject alive for me and all my classmates) I'm not able to recall the initiators of these "aha! this has to be blogged" moments.
So I shall regale you with some highlights of what I've been upto for the last two weeks. I know, I know - you'd rather have my intellectual discourses- but that ain't happenin sista!
Have started on this awesome book by Bill Bryson. It's a travellogue about when he travelled around Australia. The way he's written this is just phenomenal. He's very funny and at the same time has a firm grasp of the history and culture of the place, in addition to being very insightful. I'm looking forward to reading what is considered his masterpiece, a brief history of nearly everything.
Oh and yeah, i'm seriously considering buying a car. It'll be the most expensive purchase of my life till now. And m heart is set on a particular model that is no longer in production. So I have to go the used car route. Now, in my family no one has ever bought anything second-hand. So I have absolutely no idea of how to go about it, whether it'll be good or will it be a lemon, am I making a mistake by being stubborn about that one model I want?
Anyway, we shall see. I'll take it, then whatever happens i'll just live with it. Worst case I may need to borrow some money from you, my readers. I'm sure you guys will contribute to the "swapnil's-on-the-verge-of-collapse-with-starvation-fund". Generously!
What else, what else, haan, I saw this movie Apocalypse Now. Now don't get me wrong I liked the whole thing, and some scenes were stunning but didn't understand what Kurtz was doing exactly. Or how he got all the vietnamese followers. I think Marlon Brando (Kurtz') role needed to be elongated a bit to get better insight into his actions. Or maybe i'm just a doddering idiot who needs to be explained these "thought provoking" movies slowly, one word at a time :)
Yeah, last to last weekend I also saw a play called "To the death of my whole family". This is a one woman performance about an afghan woman who is an american citizen returning from Afghanistan where she'd gone to fetch her dad. She's detained by the authorities just for coming from Afghanistan. As the plot unravels it explains how her entire family died as a result of the conflict and how its tearing her heart out. I'm not able to put it in words, but it was a phenomenal performance. One of the very few serious plays that i've enjoyed (Maybe enjoyed is not the word to be associated with such a play)
Oh, and I'd gone to an office party in a new suppossedly hot place called Madira (Wine in Hindi). The place wasn't all that great but it was a fun party.
hmm anything else, nope, just test drives, awesome plays, tepid blown out of proportion movies and a hell of a lot of work! Thats all thats been keeping me from y'all...
"We hardly spend any time together anymore. Whats happened?"
"I think we're drifting apart, we were so good together...sniff"
"what went wrong? It was perfect..."
ok, ok I'm sure your thoughts are not as over the top as these reactions. But yeah, if my blog could speak, she'd probably be spewing such senti dialogues by the dozen.
Well a couple of factors have been contributing to this drought of posts. One, blogger has been blocked in my office (If I decide to switch jobs, this'll be a great factor) and second, i've been battling waves and waves of work for the last couple of weeks. I mean, you guys know me, would you've thought that you'd ever see me get up early of my own volition as I could do with a couple of hours extra in office? Or that you'd ever see me gasping and limping in late, LATE from work on a weekday? well, yes, I've been guilty of doing both.
Lots of things I saw over these to weeks made me go Ah! now that just HAS to go into my blog! But then I never got around to doing it, and now when I have time today (The day is off today on account of it being 15th August, the Indian independence day, when we got our freedom back after an amazing and incomprehensible non-violent struggle. Seriously, if you're not from India and have no idea about our freedom struggle, I suggest you read up on it a bit. Its fascinating. As a corollary, normally history is taught in a really pathetic learn-by-rote way in India. However, thank God for the most awesome teacher ever, Aditi Misra ma'am, who made the subject alive for me and all my classmates) I'm not able to recall the initiators of these "aha! this has to be blogged" moments.
So I shall regale you with some highlights of what I've been upto for the last two weeks. I know, I know - you'd rather have my intellectual discourses- but that ain't happenin sista!
Have started on this awesome book by Bill Bryson. It's a travellogue about when he travelled around Australia. The way he's written this is just phenomenal. He's very funny and at the same time has a firm grasp of the history and culture of the place, in addition to being very insightful. I'm looking forward to reading what is considered his masterpiece, a brief history of nearly everything.
Oh and yeah, i'm seriously considering buying a car. It'll be the most expensive purchase of my life till now. And m heart is set on a particular model that is no longer in production. So I have to go the used car route. Now, in my family no one has ever bought anything second-hand. So I have absolutely no idea of how to go about it, whether it'll be good or will it be a lemon, am I making a mistake by being stubborn about that one model I want?
Anyway, we shall see. I'll take it, then whatever happens i'll just live with it. Worst case I may need to borrow some money from you, my readers. I'm sure you guys will contribute to the "swapnil's-on-the-verge-of-collapse-with-starvation-fund". Generously!
What else, what else, haan, I saw this movie Apocalypse Now. Now don't get me wrong I liked the whole thing, and some scenes were stunning but didn't understand what Kurtz was doing exactly. Or how he got all the vietnamese followers. I think Marlon Brando (Kurtz') role needed to be elongated a bit to get better insight into his actions. Or maybe i'm just a doddering idiot who needs to be explained these "thought provoking" movies slowly, one word at a time :)
Yeah, last to last weekend I also saw a play called "To the death of my whole family". This is a one woman performance about an afghan woman who is an american citizen returning from Afghanistan where she'd gone to fetch her dad. She's detained by the authorities just for coming from Afghanistan. As the plot unravels it explains how her entire family died as a result of the conflict and how its tearing her heart out. I'm not able to put it in words, but it was a phenomenal performance. One of the very few serious plays that i've enjoyed (Maybe enjoyed is not the word to be associated with such a play)
Oh, and I'd gone to an office party in a new suppossedly hot place called Madira (Wine in Hindi). The place wasn't all that great but it was a fun party.
hmm anything else, nope, just test drives, awesome plays, tepid blown out of proportion movies and a hell of a lot of work! Thats all thats been keeping me from y'all...
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
The more "feelingful" Hampi trip post...
In the second part of "Hampi-ty dampi-ty, what a damp squib!" we will be aiming for a more personal angle to the whole episode that happened enroute Hampi. I have been accused of just jotting down the facts as they happened in the last post with no "human angle" to it. No, I do not work for a bitchy editor, its just that my readers are that discerning.
So I was racking my phenomenal brains to work on this new angle to ensure that my readers continue to subscribe to my blog and feel touched to tear when they hear about the plight that befell us on this weekend trip. I was thinking of writing in a cringy way, describing each moment of black despair that we went through. To talk about each tear that rolled down our cheeks as we contemplated are hopeless situation. Each drop of perspiration that shimmered on our bodies (ok, this is not the kind of suggestive imagery I was aiming for...moving on...) as we walked around like helpless babes in the forest of distraught-ness (I think I just invented a word !).
BUT then, a better idea struck me. If you've read a bit about marketing, you'll know that the best way to identify a customer need is to go out in the market. Talk to the people who are affected and have an opinion about what you want to ask them.
And who is the person most affected in this entire episode? Who would have the strongest opinion (Though I don't recall him ever emphasising his feelings with profanities that I would've used most easily) about what transpired?
Yes, the answer stood staring me in the eye. It has to be the owner of the car that suffered such pains at the hands of the cruel, cruel stone-on-the-road.
You guessed it right, we will make Jibi open his heart and bare all (er..em..his feelings..sheesh you guys!) in this edition of swappinglives.
A small introduction of Jibi is needed here. Jibi or Jibitesh is my batchmate from IIFT. He along with his wife P stay in the same locality as I do. Before his wedding, he was sharing a flat with RB and NK...and yeah, PJ. He had also gone with RB and I on our legendary trip to Goa, circa 2006 Diwali. Subsequently he, along with me, had been unceremoniously kicked out of a second rung club called Mambo's there because we were just guys and it was a couples only club. Now, I'm used to this kind of treatment because of my long standing single status, however, the poor chap was so unused to this that he immediately went and got married upon returning, just to ensure he wouldn't have to suffer the humiliation again (I'm kidding of course. His wedding had nothing to do with this...but think about it, people DO get married for strange reasons. There's a girl in my office who claims she's getting married only because she gets bored on the weekends !! So in a parallel universe some or the other psycho may decide to get married because he was turned out of a couples-only club. But I digress..but this is an interesting point to ponder...moving on).
We caught up with Jibi who was understandably shaken by the turn of events.
1. Jibi, first of all I'd like to express my heartfelt sympathy for what happened to your car. Millions and millions of our readers are very curious about what happened? Could you shed some light on this and describe what happened some 50 kilometres from Hospet at around 1 in the afternoon on Saturday?
I hit a SMALL rock. The car didnt think it was small enough.
2. Now that is one scary incident! What was going through your mind when you heard the noise? And were you in full control of the car after that stone hit the chassis? Or was it just your extra-ordinary driving skills that saved the day?
Was in control till the car hit the rock. Nothing happened. The car stopped with a thud, smoke billowing and the keys automatically in my hand. I dunno if I took out the keys or they came out on impact, locking the steering in the process. Restarted the engine and took the car to the side.
3. When you peeked under the chassis and saw that huge gaping hole looking out insolently from the engine casing, what were the first three swear words that crossed your mind?
Didnt have to wait to peek to understand that the engine was hit. Saw the oil gushing out actually had sprayed all over the place. One of the wheel caps was gone. Swear words that came to my mind... Sorry I was too numb to think anything.
4. Anyway thank God there was a service station in Bellary. But I understand that there were some problems with the jeep that had been sent to "rescue" you?
Find the detailed description in the blog when I write here as a guest blogger.
5. No diesel, and a breakdown in a distance of 50 kilometres? It sounds terribly fishy. Do you think this could be a conspiracy? Do you suspect anyone?
No one. I dont think I even knew the truck wallah who could have kept the rock at the middle of teh road. Nor the Ford guys who "tried" to help. please read the attached doc and let me know if i can pin point the conspiracy angle on anyone.
6. Anyway, I guess alls well that ends well! Thank you so much for taking out time to speak to the edit team at swappinglives. it was wonderful speaking to you and I really admire the steely grit with which you've managed to come out of this traumatic experience. You, sir, are an inspiration.
Alls not over yet. The insurance decision pending, I would need lots of motivation from all you guys to take my car out again, if it ever comes back.
So I was racking my phenomenal brains to work on this new angle to ensure that my readers continue to subscribe to my blog and feel touched to tear when they hear about the plight that befell us on this weekend trip. I was thinking of writing in a cringy way, describing each moment of black despair that we went through. To talk about each tear that rolled down our cheeks as we contemplated are hopeless situation. Each drop of perspiration that shimmered on our bodies (ok, this is not the kind of suggestive imagery I was aiming for...moving on...) as we walked around like helpless babes in the forest of distraught-ness (I think I just invented a word !).
BUT then, a better idea struck me. If you've read a bit about marketing, you'll know that the best way to identify a customer need is to go out in the market. Talk to the people who are affected and have an opinion about what you want to ask them.
And who is the person most affected in this entire episode? Who would have the strongest opinion (Though I don't recall him ever emphasising his feelings with profanities that I would've used most easily) about what transpired?
Yes, the answer stood staring me in the eye. It has to be the owner of the car that suffered such pains at the hands of the cruel, cruel stone-on-the-road.
You guessed it right, we will make Jibi open his heart and bare all (er..em..his feelings..sheesh you guys!) in this edition of swappinglives.
A small introduction of Jibi is needed here. Jibi or Jibitesh is my batchmate from IIFT. He along with his wife P stay in the same locality as I do. Before his wedding, he was sharing a flat with RB and NK...and yeah, PJ. He had also gone with RB and I on our legendary trip to Goa, circa 2006 Diwali. Subsequently he, along with me, had been unceremoniously kicked out of a second rung club called Mambo's there because we were just guys and it was a couples only club. Now, I'm used to this kind of treatment because of my long standing single status, however, the poor chap was so unused to this that he immediately went and got married upon returning, just to ensure he wouldn't have to suffer the humiliation again (I'm kidding of course. His wedding had nothing to do with this...but think about it, people DO get married for strange reasons. There's a girl in my office who claims she's getting married only because she gets bored on the weekends !! So in a parallel universe some or the other psycho may decide to get married because he was turned out of a couples-only club. But I digress..but this is an interesting point to ponder...moving on).
We caught up with Jibi who was understandably shaken by the turn of events.
1. Jibi, first of all I'd like to express my heartfelt sympathy for what happened to your car. Millions and millions of our readers are very curious about what happened? Could you shed some light on this and describe what happened some 50 kilometres from Hospet at around 1 in the afternoon on Saturday?
I hit a SMALL rock. The car didnt think it was small enough.
2. Now that is one scary incident! What was going through your mind when you heard the noise? And were you in full control of the car after that stone hit the chassis? Or was it just your extra-ordinary driving skills that saved the day?
Was in control till the car hit the rock. Nothing happened. The car stopped with a thud, smoke billowing and the keys automatically in my hand. I dunno if I took out the keys or they came out on impact, locking the steering in the process. Restarted the engine and took the car to the side.
3. When you peeked under the chassis and saw that huge gaping hole looking out insolently from the engine casing, what were the first three swear words that crossed your mind?
Didnt have to wait to peek to understand that the engine was hit. Saw the oil gushing out actually had sprayed all over the place. One of the wheel caps was gone. Swear words that came to my mind... Sorry I was too numb to think anything.
4. Anyway thank God there was a service station in Bellary. But I understand that there were some problems with the jeep that had been sent to "rescue" you?
Find the detailed description in the blog when I write here as a guest blogger.
5. No diesel, and a breakdown in a distance of 50 kilometres? It sounds terribly fishy. Do you think this could be a conspiracy? Do you suspect anyone?
No one. I dont think I even knew the truck wallah who could have kept the rock at the middle of teh road. Nor the Ford guys who "tried" to help. please read the attached doc and let me know if i can pin point the conspiracy angle on anyone.
6. Anyway, I guess alls well that ends well! Thank you so much for taking out time to speak to the edit team at swappinglives. it was wonderful speaking to you and I really admire the steely grit with which you've managed to come out of this traumatic experience. You, sir, are an inspiration.
Alls not over yet. The insurance decision pending, I would need lots of motivation from all you guys to take my car out again, if it ever comes back.
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