TV Nostalgia

I used to be (still am?) suckers for TV when I was a kid. My parents used the term TV Mania often in their conversations with other parents during their "look-how-spoilt-is-my-kid" conversations. Anyways, the other day, I saw this ad for Comedy Central coming to India. Needless to say, I was excited. I used to watch this channel when I was in the US and it was fun! Since today was a holiday, I got a chance to check it out. Well, it doesn't have many new shows as yet but yeah..they have a pretty cool collection of re-runs :D. I caught up with The Wonder Years after sooooo long! And it was soo much fun. I used to watch it when I was in school and simply adored it. It got me reminiscing about the good times! Then there was That 70's Show and Kumar's at Number 42 both of which I used to watch. All I need more are the Saturday Morning cartoons! I could die for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or GI JOE or Drack Pack!!!...ohh man! how I used to love those Saturday mornings!! *sigh*

The Dilemma

I've been having one rough week after the next these days. However, thanks to Republic Day, I was forced to leave home early relatively early (read: 10 pm) yesterday and stay home today. I realized yesterday after 2 pegs of Old Monk with Dad how much I needed this holiday. Its funny how alcohol induces such crisp revelations. But soon after, I was faced with this dilemma of sorts. Should I hit the sack early and get some much needed sleep or do I catch up with everything that I had missed during the week?  

Crazy Night

We had the CMMI L3 final findings on Friday. Something which we were anxiously waiting for! I swear the entire process was nerve wracking. I actually had dreams of my interview, the day before my actual interview. The last time such a thing happened was before an exam in college. Psshhh!..after the 2 hour one-on-8 interview and the endless cycle of finding and showing documentary evidences for various process areas, it finally came down to this moment. When the Lead Appraiser showed the Ratings  slide and everything there was in Green...I heaved a deep sigh of relief! Thankfully, we got the certification! It was an awesome moment indeed. Needless to say, there were a lotta reasons to party. Firstly the certification, plus it was also my friend Mustafa's b'day and to top it all...it was friday....so we just *had* to celebrate. We headed towards EOD for some bowling action and then to Superstars to drink away the night. We stayed up there till 12:30 or so...long after the bar closed. 

I had to drop a few ppl off in Noida after that. We started from Sec. 18, went to New Ashok Nagar, Sec. 52, Sec. 29 and finally Sec. 55. On the way, one of my friends (who was dropped the last) dozed off..and boy did he doze off! I reached his place and he just wouldn't wake up. I screamed out his name..shook him..even gave him a slap or two! (the first one was to wake him up..the second one was just for kicks :D ). But he would just open up his eyes for a sec and close 'em again. Poor guy..the alcohol must have really kicked in! I took out his phone and called his roomies. One had his phone switched off and the other was out someplace else. I decided to drop him off at one of my friend's place. Thankfully he picked up his phone. He told me to come to C-19 Sec. 20. From Sec. 55, I reached Sec. 20 to find almost every gate closed. I finally found an entry after roaming about a bit; but it was the A block. After randomly driving in and out I figured out where C-19 was. I called my other friend and told him that I was outside C-19. That's when he told me that it was NOT C-19 but E-19!! E-for-elephant! (I  still remember this line). F***Ck!! I swear I was sooo pissed at myself! Nevertheless, after circling around a bit more, I saw a guy waiting on the road...and it was indeed him. We finally got my friend out of the car and carried him to his place. It was 2:00 am by that time and the Delhi winter cold had really kicked in! It was finally time for me to drive back home...and sadly I was fully sober after the ordeal. I was praying for zero cops on the way. Thankfully, I reached back in less than 10 minutes thanks to the empty roads and DevilDriver blaring out of my speakers. Jeez..talk about having an eventful evening!

The Routine

My life's in a rutt. It starts at 9:00 am when I frantically get up and check my office mails to see if I have something important to be done right away. There's this CMMI SCAMPI A appraisal going on where my project is a Category 1 project. To make matters worse, my role is of a Project Manager. I had my interview last Friday and ever since, I get some mail or the other, at any frickin' time of the day to validate some "finding" through an "evidence". Needless to say its something which has to be done/sent right away. So my day is usually spent suddenly switching gears between my usual work and anxiously going though all my project artifacts, desperately trying to prove that we are indeed doing the things the way they are supposed to be.

Apart from all that, my project is also in a very critical-now-or-never stage. Its literally a war going on. Its one of the most hectic times I have faced. These days, I come back at like 3 or 4 in the morning almost everyday. Mom screamed at me the other day when I spent the entire night at the office and came back at midnight the next (to next?) day. But I cant help it. 

I finally came back at 8:30 today after an important release yesterday. Dad was super surprised when he opened the door.....so much soo that we ended up celebrating with 2 patiala pegs of Honeybee! :) 

Aaaah..this too shall pass...soon enough I hope!

  

TGIF

Phew!..its the weekend finally! I had one of the most hectic week of my life! I had the CMMI interview and a project release in the same week. Needless to say, I got very little sleep.  Since last Thursday, I stayed up late ... in fact till early morning every day. But at least  now, the CMMI interview is off my back! I can at least focus on my usual activities!

I dont have any specific plans for the weekend but my bro who had gone to Kolkata for a meeting would come back tomorrow. So hopefully there would be drinks! Ohh I soo wanna get drunk this weekend!!

RIP Amit Saigal

Courtesy: RSJ online

Papa Rock is no more. Amit Saigal - the creator of the Indian Rock scene passed away today. Its such a sad day for the Indian Rock Community. I first saw Amit Saigal at my first GIR concert way back in 2002. He used to host the show..call up the bands and stuff. He was the founder of one of India's oldest rock magazine Rock Street Journal. He was instrumental in encouraging Indian Rock bands at a time when such a thing barely existed. He created GIR which is one of the best rock gigs in India. Ohh man..its really sad. He was only 46. He drowned while swimming in a beach in Goa. 

I came back from the office at midnight...already having a f*ckd up day at the office. This was the first news that I stumbled on to. Such a sad day!   

Restart

2011 sucked! Too many bad events marred the year which started out on a promising note with India winning the world cup! That was the only good memory that I can come up with for 2011. The rest of the year, I'd rather forget. It was a year which saw many legends leave us. Personally, I lost 2 of my very close people..one just a week back! Then there were incidents which really happened for no reason at all. To put it in other words, there were incidents which really happened for only one reason - to f*ck me up. By the end, I was just sick of it, I was like - "Cmon what else you got!". That was also one of the reasons I stopped filling up my blog. I don't want to write about things which are sad, because unlike happiness, depressing news becomes even more depressing when we reminisce about them. As they say - its best to leave the past behind (I have no idea who said that). 

It was a fun first day of the year. Although it was without friends and the usual getting-drunk-and-being-silly, it was still fun (wow! I *never* expected myself to say that!) It rained for quite sometime in the evening. Something which was unusual, but it was a perfect metaphor for the new year. It wiped the slate clean again..for a new start. Here's to a very happy 2012 to all of us. Hope it makes up for the sh*t that happened in 2011. As Cosmo Kramer says - "Giddy up!".