Past pleasant; Present perfect; Future ?

I am a true believer of the saying ‘Better late than never.’ That’s why I am doing this tag by The Layman, albeit it’s too late. I have many an excuse for postponing it this long – work, travel, social commitments, lack of interest in blogging, etc – but to be honest, I postponed it because it was not easy. :-)

So here’s my attempt at answering two questions each from my past, present, and future.

Yesterday

My oldest memories

I vividly remember …

• Playing at my mother’s office in the evenings
• Collecting jasmine flowers from an affectionate neighbour’s garden
• Going to nursery school with my neighbour-friend-classmate escorted by an elder neighbour
• The extremely nice nursery teacher taking me to her house during lunch break, and I for some reason, giving her a tough time by crying and demanding to go back. I guess I was sacred by her father who looked tough.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

On Dec 12, 1998? You expect me to remember that?

It’s true that I’ve a good memory, but this is too much ... :-)

Today

My first thought today morning

6 O’ clock. Ding dong (calling bell)

I woke up with a start. Did Unny come so early?

(Background: Unny was to take 7.30 flight from Delhi)

I for a moment thought he wanted to give me surprise and told me a different flight time. Immediately realized he’s not that crazy to take an early morning flight from Delhi (if one’s there), that too in December. It was the newspaperboy who rang the bell. He was too busy to push the papers through the grill, instead dropped it outside and rang the bell to let me know. :-)

If you build a time capsule what would it contain?
Same things that I carry for a trek/travel …

As much as food that it would contain, first-aid kit, survival kit, clothes

Things like maps, guides will be handled by my better-half.

Tomorrow

This year

This year is almost ‘last year’. So let me consider 2009. Hope to do what I postponed in 2008. That means 2008 New Year resolutions still remain strong as resolutions, which can be carried forward.

What do I see myself doing 14 years from now?

2022 – Farming, running a home stay, traveling

Or living in a city and doing the best I could do within the limitations

Whichever it is, I hope I’ll be enjoying life as I do now. :-)

First vada pav, then kanda poha; Next is what?

The Shiv Sena is going to launch Shiv brand of vada pav, a common snack in Maharashtra. This is supposedly aimed at countering the sons-of-the-soil campaign by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Very funny, I feel. A panel of 3 chefs will select the best recipe for the brand from 27 vada pav vendors. The launch is planned on January 23, 2009, Bal Thackeray’s birthday.

So what did the Congress do? They decided to promote the ‘cause’ of ‘kanda poha’ (a breakfast dish made of rice flakes and onions. The Congress claims kanda poha is truly Maharashtrian as the rice and onions come from Maharashtra’s farms, whereas the ingredients of vada pav – potatoes and gramflour – come from UP and Bihar. Kanda poha festival will be taking palace in the next fortnight, where various kanda poha specialists will display their culinary skills.

The Shiv Sena considers Congress’s move as a political gimmick. What about theirs? Oh! I forgot. Shiv vada pav will provide jobs for Marathi manoos!

I personally support Congress as kanda poha is healthier than vada pav, though I eat both when I travel. Uddhav Thackeray reportedly not tasting vada pav at the recently held ‘vada pav sammelan’ might be because it’s not healthy. A wild guess! But, I must admit that when one is time-starved, it’s the best choice to grab and eat on the way. A typical Mumbai scene this is!

Now, what will the MNS support? Hindustan Times guesses it to be missal pav. It also suggests the NCP to support kanda bhajjiya, the Samajwadi Party to go after ussal pav, the Republican Party of India to take up bhel’s cause, and the BJP to embrace sev puri.

Hilarious! Isn’t it so?

All these made me think what would Kerala’s political parties support, in a similar fashion. Which party will support porotta? It’s like vada pav. Not healthy. Unlike Maharashtra, Kerala need more options as we have more parties. We can’t make our claims on idli and dosa. We have puttu, palappam, vellayappam, idiyappam, kappa, etc. But we need to ascertain their lineage first. I remember reading somewhere that puttu, palappam, and idiyappam have Sri Lankan origins. If this is true, we’ve only vellayappam and kappa to choose from. Or should we include unniyappam, pazhampori, sukhiyan, avalosunda, churuttu, kuzhalappam, etc? J

On a serious note…

Just now heard the news on Mumbai blasts and shootings. Will these politicians do something productive to prevent such terrible incidents? Terrorists do not consider whether the victims are sons-of-the-soil or not.

Snake charmer

Recession monster is here. Jobs are getting cut left, right, and centre. It’s good to update skills and learn new ones. See my choice …

Too lazy to be an addict …

When Dhanya tagged me to do this post on Addictions, I thought it’s too easy. But it’s not! When I started thinking about my addictions, I realized I am too lazy to be an addict. Nevertheless, there are passing crazes. Maybe one can call it short-term addictions (an oxymoron, right?). There are quite a few of them. I keep shifting from one craze to another. The trigger comes out of no where, and it can last for a day or two, or a few weeks. Not more than that.

So this should be good for me. But when I am addicted to something, I postpone many other things – even the routine work. I’ll find a way not to do them. For instance, buying vegetables – a quick look at the stock of pulses, potatoes, and onions, and the problem is solved; vegetables can wait for one more day.

When I am crazy about blogging, there’ll be regular posts on my blogs. I’ll be gleefully checking various aggregators and bookmarked blogs, dropping my precious (?) comments all over. But all these seem so unappealing sometimes. And some blogger friends have to tag me to keep my blog alive!

If I get bitten by bookworm, I devour all unread books that had got piled up (when I was drowned in other crazes). Then it's time for more book shopping. And there are days when even the newspaper remains unopened (if Unny’s not at home)

When cooking catches my fancy, out come the old recipe books. A cookery show on TV could trigger this. It’s fun to shop for new ingredients, try out new recipes, re-work recipes to suit my taste, and such. My latest contribution to cookery world is an energy bar made of oats, jaggery, dates, raisins, cashew nuts, and almonds. I'll be taking it for the next trek.

Another TV show or getting a fancy box/paper/bottle could lead to a bout of craft-making, especially from waste. I’ll be at my creative best then!

Talking about TV, while on most days it remains switched off or only tuned to news channels, on some days I lap up any remotely interesting program on those ‘n’ number of channels. Braving the long ad breaks, I’ve watched many a Hindi/English movie during these crazy phases.

All these crazes had taken leave of absence while I was working full-time. But not reading! I used to carry books to read during lunch breaks in office! Now that I am at home full-time, they have slowly started raising their heads.

The latest one is sewing - from which I took a break (with a lot of effort) and writing this post. It’s time to brush up my sewing skills and create great outfits. The old notebook and patterns were hunted out; sewing machine got a thorough overhaul. The patterns were those of the 1990s. Reverse engineering helped – unstitch old clothes, take measurements, cut out new patterns. Old bed sheets got furiously converted into tops, salwar-kameezes, and capris. Learning from mistakes, I perfected the patterns, and tried my skills on a new cloth. And wore the result recently for a wedding reception. Alas! Friends were impressed.

Excited and inspired, I will be sewing new outfits for ‘God knows how long’! :-)

Recruiter hounds

After quitting my job a few months back, I posted my resume in the job portals. I clearly mentioned that I was looking for part-time/freelance/work-from-home opportunities. And as required, my experience, expertise, and stuff like that.

Since then I’ve been getting umpteen e-mails, phone calls, and SMSs mostly from recruitment agencies and a few directly from companies, for a variety of jobs – fitness consultant, insurance advisor, ‘male’ sales engineer, packaging designer, field sales executive, receptionist, personal assistant, SAP professional, financial analyst, customer service executive, event manager, and what not! I am also contacted for quite a few openings that match my profile, but mostly full-time jobs. When I tell them that I don’t intend to take up full-time job now, invariably the next question is, “Why?” Do I need to explain it to them?

There was this lady from a recruitment agency in Bangalore who called me many times for the post of Supervisory Analyst (SA) at Deutsche Bank. I tried to explain that I was not qualified for the job. She argued back saying the job profile for SA had ‘editing equity research reports’, which was there in my profile as well. The similarity ends there and editing is just a minor thing that SAs do! She was not convinced when I said one need to get certified by the appropriate agency in the country to become an SA, and I didn’t even know which is that agency in India. Someone else wanted me to relocate to Hyderabad to join UBS. The calls and mails for this stopped of late; either they got someone or got fed up with my arrogance when I replied, “Ask UBS to shift their research production operations to Mumbai, if they want me to join.”

When I get mails from people looking for fitness consultant, sales engineer, that too male, I used to reply saying “nonsense, read the profile before blindly sending out such mails”. One of them replied back asking me not to use bad language. Another replied saying they didn’t have time to read profiles. He also asked me to post my resume in the right section if I don’t want such mails. Duffer! He doesn’t even know how a portal works. I replied, “I thought it’s part of your job as a recruiter to read profiles.” Now I don’t bother to reply. I just mark them as spam.

The spam callers apparently get phone number from job portals, but they would not get profiles as they’ve not paid for it. So they make blind calls!

I’ve friends who work for recruitment agencies as well as in the HR dept of companies. Not disregarding their capabilities as well as of many others who work in this field, I think these recruitment agencies ‘recruit’ dumbest people available as they come cheap and, may be, give them targets like 100 phone calls a day or 150 mails a day. Or they won’t get intelligent people to do this mundane job. These people search on job portals by punching in some keywords in the job profile and send out mails to all the profiles thrown up by the search. So since I’ve worked for a magazine on packaging and have written an article on packaging design, they think I’m qualified to be a packaging designer. I can only tear away the package, not design it!

I know job market is dull, but that doesn’t mean I will go and work as a fitness consultant, when I don’t even take care of my own fitness. This particular mail said, “Since our requirements matched your profile …”. Isn’t that nonsense?

It’s not that I get mails and phone calls from unknown, small-time agencies; big ones like Teamlease also are there.

Now, what triggered this post was the SMS I got yesterday. I was attending a meeting at an NGO where I do some voluntary work. My mobile was on silent mode. I didn’t pick up the call when it came, nor checked the SMS that followed. After half an hour, when the meeting was over, I checked the mobile. The SMS read, “Plz call urgently- 25139967.” I checked the missed call. That was from a different number. I panicked. Did something happen to my family or friends? I called back at 25139967 immediately:

25139967: Hello?
I: I got an SMS asking me to call at this number urgently.
25139967: What’s your name?
I: Bindhu
25139967: Hi Bindhu, this is ‘so and so’ from Sai Consultants.
I: Why did you send me such an SMS?
25139967: Because when I called, you didn’t pick up the call.
I: So you’ll send such SMSs?
25139967: Yeah (in a casual, what’s-wrong-with-you tone)
I: Do you think it’s proper to send such SMSs?
25139967: Yes (again in the same tone)
I: You made me panic as I thought somebody I know was in trouble. I don’t want any of your services.

I disconnected.
Such insensitivity, such audacity! It left me fuming, and now I am letting it out here. :-)

Tagged along …

I think I should dedicate this blog to tags; this is my third consecutive post on tags!


This time it’s Arun. He has asked to jot down three (just three!) of my favourite books. Tough, I would say.

Ok, here it goes, with due apologies to my all other favourite books …

1. The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follet

2. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
3. The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh Should I pass on this difficult tag? Nah! Arun, sorry for that. :-)

Photos courtesy: Wikipedia

Quote it!

It looks like only tags make me blog. This time I was tagged by The Layman.

The quote tag demands to list out five of your favourite quotes from the books you’ve read. Here’s my list …

1. Life is difficult.
- The Road Less Traveled; M Scott Peck

2. If God does not exist, then how do you explain all the suffering of the poor?
- Snow; Orhan Pamuk

3. If love is not allowed to flow, it becomes fear. If love is allowed to flow, fear disappears.
- Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously; Osho

4. Shopping is female. When men shop, they are engaging in what is inherently a female activity.
- Why We Buy; Paco Underhill

5. What is past, is past for me

What is gone, is gone for me

Be with the rising sun

Be with the rising moon

Not with the setting ones.
- From a poem in a college magazine I read years back

And I tag …

Sapna

Rose

Arun

Mirage

Multi Menon