My mountain bikes as a friends-gurus-philosophers - Part two

In my last post I described my journey into cycling and a bunch of memorable adventures from past years. Being a regular commuter to office on MTB having having clocked 3400+ KMs on speedo now, I must admit that cycling is one thing that happened in my life which is having a positive influence all through.

Couple of years back I was an avid Enfield Bullet rider! I was a proud owner of 1983 Enfield Bullet Std - did touring for 3-4 days with fellow bikers - went on solo rides to places around that I wanted to explore. There was a lot more speed, power and loved mile munching on such beautiful motorcycle. People around me, who didn't have the sense of what it feels to ride such a motor cycle, were poking fun at me to sell the fuel gulping Bullet and put few more grands on it to buy a cycle instead and thus I granted their wish! To be honest, I jump started my cycling life again in becoming a "monk-who-sold-his-ferrari" ;) I felt really glad that I have made them shut their mouth now.
Break-up with my beloved Enfield took its toll :( but my new love Khs Alite 500, did help me recover back from the depression very soon ;)
Thus as a close friend the first lesson my mountain bike taught me was "to move on in life"!

When I started commuting to office on my mountain bike (16km, round trip) folks around me said its not feasible/suitable in Bangalore traffic and they were too skeptical on lean me doing it even for couple of days. I confess frankly that it was hard for me too to begin with the plan of daily commute. People look at you as a dumb-idiot-attempting-the-impossible-all-in-vain. Sad but true - a lot of people wish to see others fail in their endeavor. But I had to break the ice in integrating cycling as a part of my daily lifestyle. That is when my cycle taught me second lesson to "just get on with it and don't hesitate of what people think of you". This lesson has helped me in welcoming funny comments at my cycling attire during commute - Once a passer-by called me out loud as "Hey, look at that Spiderman!" - Well, I second his thought as I wearing full sleeve red jersey with black neo-mask air filter in black-red shorts (Just to be more visible on road). Who knows he might call me a "Green goblin" when I wear a green jersey. Hehehe :D

Courage is not to be thought as "having-no-fear-at-all" but it is the power of your will to overcome your fear. It is just the 1st day that mattered when I started - the rest just happened on determination. Its been more than 1.4 years of my office commute now. It is like doing meditation (Yoga) - you keep practicing it daily and hope that you perfect it within your lifetime! I personally feel that anything you inculcate as a habit of practicing daily becomes a part of your spiritual life. I might not daily say mantras and sit and meditate at one place but I rather feel that every time I crank the pedals with my feet, it feels the same as chant! Thus the third lesson my bike taught me was "to contemplate and introspect at least once a while"

To be very honest, at first even I was skeptical about my fragile body (5'7", 60Kg) whether it could take long duration exercises. I was worried more about cycling associated pain and injury. That is when I came across an article about human body and its endurance. It read - Homo sapiens are not meant to be sprinters like other four legged mammals but we are very good at aerobic metabolism and have excellent body cooling system. Great, I thought and I did test myself in doing 100+ km rides endurance cycling to Nandi Hills and back several times now but I have never suffered any injury (touch wood :P). All you need it a proper bike-fit and good posture to sit on bones in your butt to avoid back pain and injuries. Thus the fourth lesson my bike taught me was "we have an evolutionary legacy to be athletes"

(To be continued...)

Yours amateur  biker,
Karthik

My mountain bikes as a friends-gurus-philosophers - Part one

Took a very long break from my web log. So here I am saying hello as in Terminator3 movie - "I am back!!"

I dedicate this post to my beloved friend-guru-philosopher called "KHS alite 500" mountain bike who is just about 1 year old now but wiser than me who taught me a lot of things in life.

My journey into cycling started long time back in Mysore when I was a kid learning-how-to-balance on small hero bicycle with the support wheels on them. But I never had an opportunity to ride much of bicycle during schooling days as I always had to take bus due to longer commute. Since then I had a longing to own a bicycle looking at many of friends coming on bicycles to school. Years passed by but the fascination for bikes was never gone. Well the first thing I bought myself was the Hercules bicycle saved from my internship money after finishing my under-graduation. Yes you read it right! after finishing my engineering. It doesn't take people to be crazy to ride a bike but being crazy helps. Soon after that I got bit by the bug of riding longer and longer distances to satisfy the thirst and improving my endurance. Couple of guys like "Nomad" and "roasted neurons" inspired me (Their funny names and writing style itself are enough. Need i say more!) to take the cycling to next new level. That happened five years back exactly on this same day I had been on solo biking journey to Maakalidurga. A memorable journey indeed with lot of thrilling adventures of mountain climbing, taking dip in lake, hiking with other camping members en-route! Then the phase of office commute started on same bike and I called it operation Manyatha. Indeed it was a mission and a tough one but it is good that I am able to keep it running successful till now but on a much better bike now. The thirst for riding long distances and building stamina ever increased and that is when I had registered for Bengaluru cyclothon in 2009. My views about cycling changed a lot after meeting people at cyclothon and seeing more mature biking groups. This is where I met GGI and BBCh members for first time. I saw road race bikes for the first time in my life during the event who were zipping past ahead of me with their 9+ kilo imported race bikes while I was riding a steel-framed 30+ kilo purely Indian made local bike. :) My riding distance had got better by this time of about 60+ kms a day on my Hercules cycle. Soon after this cyclothon incident in my life, I pulled my cousin (Sumukh) into cycling. He was then new to cycling but i forced him one day for a Nandi hills ride, an overkill for a beginner indeed but it was the most funny ride ever as I did tow him for about 10+ kms with our bikes pulled by a rope after he started limping on our way back! Even more funnier part was that the rear mud guard fell off!! I mean it just fell off while riding and got stuck between the road and rear tire but it was this rope we tied to our bikes which helped us to avoid the disaster of me having a face-first-fall. Hehe.. With no tools with us, all we could find was a hardware store nearby where I only found a hack-saw blade to cut the mud-guard off the bike. :P

Too vintage.. i guess! :P

Country bikes with informal bikers then...

Are you kidding me? Tow away zone!?.. we were towing ourselves all the way back to Yelahanka!

Cutting the mud guard which fell towards the front of wheel!

Then I decided that it was the time for me to go for better and more reliable and lighter frame bike. But never found a proper way to go in search for proper kind of bike which suited my budget and my way of cycling. Road bikes looked really cool lean machines with those aerodynamic drop bars with those thin 700x25c tires and elegant frame geometry. But I am a kind of guy who takes too much adventure within and loved to be one with nature than on asphalted roads speeding at 40-50kmph. Thus I opted for Mountain bike and sooner I got to know about cycling-and-more(CAM) team who were having this regular weekend cycling rides around Bangalore. Me and my cousin both opted for rented bikes and took the ride as opportunity to get ourselves exposed to some modern day imported bikes with good components. We got Merida Matts 20V rented during the whole ride. It was then I realized the beauty of handling and braking of these Mountain bikes. We did the ride starting from Horanadu-Kalasa-Mudigere-Kottigehara-Sakleshpura, the heart of western ghats i must say, in-and-around the Charmadi ghats. The climbs were thrilling, tiring, challenging which were all negated by scenic beauty, greenery and pristine routes we took Not to forget the amazing food at  Linger Balur estate! and the lovely bungalow built almost everything out of wood from 1850s. Made new cyclist friends who were riding Cannondale Trail 5, Mongoose Tyax, Rock Rider 5.2s, Schwinn hybrids etc., but just fell in love with the Cannondale bike after I took it for spins.

Lovely greens meadows between Kottigehara-Sakleshpur

I look like a charred version of me :P

Welcoming us to village life

A lovely water body with lotuses on the way (In the pic - Sumukh)

How often does one get a change to be there!?

Soon after this ride we went to BOTS, Wheelsports (specially for KHS, Merida, BMC), Pedals and Wheels, Wheel life adventures (specially for Giant bike) and other branded bike distributors. Finally I chose KHS alite 500 as it has best components for my budget range.

Then I did a lot of upgrades to my bike since it was mainly a commuter purpose bike for me but often a trail bike too. Got a Cree 950 Lumens torch which runs on 4000mAh Ultrafire 18650 battery with a custom mount made out of a reflector clamp. A simple DC-4W cyclocomp to monitor distance and speed. A custom built DIY project for phone/battery pack charger. The recent of all was to get the puncture resistant tire liners kit installed as I face lot of thorns in trail rides towards Nandi hills and Hesaraghatta. Here are some videos that I took during my rides sometime back.

Offroad cycling is just so much fun! Have been to Nandi hills thrice (Dared the 8K climb only once though, last 2 kms are killing!) and Hesaraghatta trails about 4 times now, each of these rides would be around 80+ kms from my home at Sahakarnagar.

At Hesaraghatta lake (water remains to be precise!) - with my schoolmate Nikhil

Sumukh and Jon during the Nandi climb

It was a 100+ km ride back tiring ride that day!

Then came another bike trip with the office colleagues who are more of marathon runners and share same level of enthusiasm and passion as mine in biking. It was 3 day ride to heart of Madhumalai, Ooty. The ride was memorable as it was through the famous wildlife - Bandipur, Madhumalai, Gudaloor forests. We started from Mysore all the way to Bandipur (1st day), Bandipur to Masinagudi (2nd day), Masinagudi to Ooty (3rd Day). The ride was splendid and so was our final day accommodation at Taj savoy at Ooty! Yipeee.. A refreshing star hotel pleasure after treacherous rides (but not to mention that it burnt a hole in my pocket though :P )

My colleague Manav with his Kona dew taking a break

Thats the way - Mahi way! :)

Took rest here for few mins before the start of climb when I saw deers cross the road next to me!!

I was probably in 1x1 gear ratio here - crawling the way up!

Bend it like hair pin :P

Hocus - pocus - focus!

The latest ride of mine was my second ride with the CAM team last month starting from Bandipur - Gudalur - towards Kerala, Wayanad - Sulthan batthery - Soochipara falls. The tea estates were mesmerizing at the Soochipara falls. The best moments of the ride was to sip the freshly brewed tea, taking a stroll inside the estate in which it was grown, kids cheering us and asking us for name in their pretty English, taking a full body water massage below the water falls soon after a long ride!

Horse shoe for sale in one of villages

Lovely morning sunshine

A piece of art from a tree right next to them!

Yes. It was Christmas time last month! We stayed at Hotel Issac regency.

Fellow bikers

Edakkal hills in Kerala.

Speeeeeedo...

Most lovely pic! No words for its beauty!

Tea estates

Vivek Kini - on the way to Soochipara falls

Scenic route throughout

Tea estates very close to Soochipara falls

I hope you enjoyed my photo log of my journey as a primitive biker -> to an informal biker -> to an amateur biker. :D

Having done past 3000Kms now (of which 2000+ would be in commute), even to this day I enjoy my office commutes as it keeps me energetic for the entire day in getting me exposed to the some sunlight and breeze and relives a lot of pressure at work. Special thanks to Endorphins here! Even though traveling is slow paced I reach faster than on Car and coolest part is that I know a lot about short cuts and also round about ways to reach home in-case of traffic jams ;)

I didn't say why I called my Bike as friend-guru-philosopher yet! I promise to come back with another post as sequel to this soon. Thus I would like to end this post as I started with Terminator movie quote - "I'll be back!!"


Hasta la vista,
Amatuer biker Karthik

My Grandpa, A true story

Today evening, my mom was watching the opening of the movie named "Me and my dream"(Naanu.. nanna kanasu), a remake of tamil movie "Abhiyum naanum". Several actors were made to read out letters to their young kids about love and care for their little daughter which is the basic theme of the movie, A dad giving all that he can to his lovely daughter. Mom (as always!) being highly emotional and sensitive was taken back to her childhood memories and those old day memories just flashed by her eyes. Mom and I, being close friends, She shared her childhood story with me.

This story is two generations older and hence may seem very unrealistic to some but happening in all our lives.
Story line starts somewhere in 1960's when mom was in her school days. She was the latest addition to grandpa's family, I mean really late coz she was completing her tenth grade when grandpa retired at the age of 58 years! Hmmm... seems like no family planning soon after independence :P Well, If it was there I wouldn't have been here to say this ;)

It was a family of 8 people; Grandpa, his mother, Grandma, two aunts and two uncles elder to mom and my mom. They all lived happily in a posh villa in the area known as Malleshwaram. Even today it is being called the same after decades of development in Bangalore. To me atleast some places like Gandhi bazaar, DVG road of Basavanagudi, MG road in central Bangalore, 8th cross of Malleshwaram, Jayanagar 4th block hangouts should remain the same even after centuries.

Is there something like lived-happily-ever-after as in fairy tales!? Nope certainly not, coz this is real life. Betrayal, deception and cunning nature of some people inside the family rips it apart into pieces and that is the exact reason why I haven't seen one of my maternal aunts till now!(Anyway, That's another long story!) Grandpa lost his own beautiful house in this gambling of others! At this time, Mom was doing her second year BSc in MES college. (Even I did my pre-university at the same college :D)

Every father's thought of crossing all her daughters to safe house (its called Marriage! here) crossed my grandpa's mind and no sooner he was into action. Dad's family had come to visit the Mom's family in Malleshwaram and like every other bollywood movie the police came with a court notice on the that same auspicious day! Grandpa somehow managed to drive off the policeman but not the situation impending in about a month. There is a saying in kannada - "Nooru sullu heLiyaadharu madhuve maadu" meaning "Do marry even if it necessitates 100 lies". God knows why they people earlier used to take so much risks! Hmmm.. Not so different in our situation where we see lots of fake love, fake assurances and fake promises. Everybody lies and many of them flirt!

Before the house was bid for sale, Marriage was successfully carried out and the last burden(!) on Grandpa's shoulder had come down. Mom said that grandpa had asked - "What is my purpose of life next? I am done with all my responsibilities", after undergoing a lot of financial and emotional turmoil in the recent years.

Then comes the most dangerous part of life called old-age where children are supposed to take care of their elders. But as the favorite inglorious quote says, "where there is a WILL only then there are family members" comes into play. Inheritance of property causes a kinda civil war between sons and no sooner did grandpa decide to move into an aashram(Old-age home) at his own willingness together with his mother. It was quite a daring task to leave the small family to join a bigger family! But with all the energy, the young spirit and his back-end support called pension, he was able to move-on. Not only did he change but he was also able bring a reform in the aashram activities. He had been to Himalayas several times with his good old friends amongst all this. He started a new wing in aashram and audited the whole of it for more than 14 years. I have been there several times when I was a small kid. I had cried and somehow managed to bring home his hand lens which was used to read newspaper by him. I now apologize for giving you a lot of trouble grandpa. Every time mom sees my elder brother in his half sleeve shirts, she is perplexed to see you standing there. No doubt everybody sees their own parents in their kids. This post is a salute to my late grandpa who has been a brave heart and yet soo kind hearted too which makes my mom often say that "He was the best papa in the world" in a childish tone :)

Abstract dreams and subconscious mind

I am sure everyone have had some kinda dreams which makes no sense to them which they can't even recollect after getting awake but I think they have some implicit meaning behind them which we even even don't know of.

Yesterday, I had one such absurd(!) dream in which of-course, as in everybody else's dream, I was playing a lead role and as always it was highly colorful than the recent HD movies! :P

You are sure going to call me crazy after reading the whole story below :D

I don't remember where it all started. But in my dream, I was a kinda pharaoh. A bunch of other Egyptian/(or were they Roman! coz I'm not sure of the dress I imagined) guys were playing the game of cricket(!) and I was at fielding at the cover position. Not to be surprised, we were playing the game in the middle of the desert! I caught a cover drive shot diving and landed on the sand which swallowed me in as if it was quicksand. I fell into a circular concavity which led to a pathway of stairs below which inturn led into a dungeon. I saw some familiar faces been captured behind the bars and thought of rescuing them. Soon the jailer and his men attacked me to lock me in. I escaped fighting them out and saw one peculiar semi-sphere with some old odd inscriptions on it. Some resembled the shape of humans and some others were unseen unheard language writings. As I escaped and resurfaced the sand I was on the other side of the boundary line! All the fellow fielders were puzzled and asked me what had happened. I had just seen a portal to new dimension. I had traveled through space and time and broke that continuum. None believed me. No sooner everyone felt earthquake, sand storm coming. That huge semi-sphere emerged out of nowhere in the center of the pitch and storm drove us all away from the feet. Nothing to hold onto we were all in air-borne in seconds and soon I could no longer experience it turning into a nightmare, I got up.Sigh!

Human mind is really so creative. I am amazed how the brain relates our past visual experiences of books(fiction)/movies(action and thriller)/games(RPG)/dress/emotions into a nonsense dream to get the body and mind the required rest. I read articles about the understanding of sleep patterns and dreaming. I came across an interesting article which explained the REM state of sleep which does help in reprogramming the brain in offline state disconnecting us from sensory input and paralyzing the muscles of our body. The chemical locha in the brain connects a special way to reality by creating a lightning speed of perceptions metaphorically to match with whatever we choose to imagine as an environment. But I am surprised to see how I remember so much of my dream. Most of the dreams are meant to be forgotten by the time we get up but I made myself aware that I am dreaming which somehow got a connecting link between the subconscious and conscious in the cortex of the brain!

Why do I think a lot even about bizarre dream!? anyway, Good night and Sweeeeet dreams :)

Riding gears and safety tips for driving

The helmet is such a protective armor which has helped me to survive till this day to write this blog post about safety and riding gears.

I am a kind of person not riding above 80km/hr, who obeys all traffic rules and regulations no matter how long/hard it takes but in some conditions where the adrenaline rush makes you loose your temper you got to be very careful. So better take precaution than cure/even more disastrous! since life itself cannot be given warranty these days.

I have had bad experiences in riding brothers bike, pulsar 150cc, Well, Its not about the bike that i am talking, but it is all about the Bangalore traffic population increasing day-by-day and "Yamdhoot"-like Leyland lorries(no offense if i used any Trade Mark name here) on the ring road and reckless driving in inter-town roads and lack of streetlights within the so called well planned layouts!
This happened to me somewhere 8 months back soon after I joined Freescale CPG (Can now be called a bad omen coz of its closure :P). Fortunalety, the mishap took place right in front of north-side hospital close to my house. There were 2 guys on the bike plus a kid of around 10 years of age who had probably come to hospital and the rider was searching for a place in parking lot stopping in the middle of the road! looking left and right he suddenly barges into an empty slot with a right turn and there i was following right behind him without knowing what he was upto as he had not put any indicators. Bang goes the collision, not with a loud explosion but i skid off to my right after overtaking him with quite a large distance about 10-15ft to rip off my right shoulder's skin and knee and ankle, but not a scratch on my face/head - without the helmet I wouldn't have survived! I suddenly got up barged to the driver scolding him without even looking at my profusely bleeding injuries. I removed my helmet to see the dent on it and thanked god for establishing the hospital right next to the scene. As i went inside the nurse got panic and called for help! and asked me if i had filed FIR since they refused to treat me as this is an accident case! WTH!(Doc's suck more blood than what i was bleeding out). I said its ok i haven't informed any police.. just do the first aid and give me a shot of Diclofenac, anti swelling painkiller. The tantra T-shirt(you can imagine how thin it will be) which had a huge patch of about 10 cms through which the red-flesh of my right shoulders were visible and the shirt soiled and stuck to my bloody(not to be read in adjectival form :P) arms.

The point of using so many adjectives and adverbs in my last statement is not to exagerrate the accident but to make you all aware of how important is safety while drving. Well, Coming back to the point now ( after a long-long story of mine ;) ), Use of good protective riding gears saves your life, after all you don't love anyone more than yourself, do you!?

Today, I went to cramster sales-outlet and having heard of the DSG, textile and other "brands" famous for the motorcycle riding gears and bought myself the protective gears necessary for my bike trips / driving on and off roads. Even though it exceeded my budget (crossing +1000 bucks) I went for it as it is now affordable as a software engineer but not when i was a student. After all its a matter of safety and thus I compromised it for money.

Of-course foremost thing a biker must have is a helmet. I own a Studds helmet, flame blue in colour which I had bought while having the bike. It costed me Rs.1200/-(All prices in INR as on June 2009. Best place to buy JC road bangalore) A full helmet with ventilator at the base, available in many sizes. The name says it all for the safety.
Then comes the other parts of the body prone for injuries during mishap - elbows, knees and shoulders. Pain is unbearable when bone has an impact during injury leave alone fractures. Trust me if you have never had one! So next thing you need to go is for a proper riding jacket with armor for elbows/shoulders/back. I bought a cramster pulse(blue),same as the one below. Costed me Rs.5200/- But its worth the deal. Loaded with all that you can ask for. Has optional zipper to attach riding pants, with removable themolite lining for warmth and fully rainproof suitable for all Indian weather.
Next comes the palms/fingers/knuckles on which you directly land if you fall off the bike. Having a pair of riding gloves really helps to take away all the scrubbing of the rough fall. I bought the below TRG1 riding gloves though it crossed my budget. It cost me a whooping Rs.2100/-!!
Riding pants are optional, if you can afford them.

Oh! How could I ever forget the pair of all-terrain Woodland shoes with above all!

If you are loooking out for safety gears, I recommend the below link. Its @ cunningham road, Bangalore. more details @ http://www.cramster.in/ridinggear.php

There are a couple of other leather jacket stores in commercial street, you can visit them too.

Now that I am fully loaded, let me burn all NH's of India with my bikes tread-marks :D

Adios then :)

Fmylife!

People nowadays are so busy that they don't have time not even just to think of themselves.

You can call me selfish or the guy who has no work to do or gone nuts! But I always ask myself questions like - Why am I like this? What is wrong with me? How do I spend the rest of my life the best way that I can?

To be frank, I feel lonely most of the time and I am! Even though I stay together with my family, the word together is merely physical because I sense there is no mentally a good healthy bondage in my family even though I participate in this institution. I shouldn't be the one complaining/revealing about all my personal stuff but I feel this as the perfect outlet for my emotions and I don't even know how rudely I am jotting it down or how many of them I am hurting in writing this! I have been crying a lot within me that nobody notices. It hasn't turned so worst as any suicidal instinct or anything but I do feel a lot insecure even at home. Where else do I find comfort? Don't ask me to meet a psychiatrist as I have been thorough this my entire life till now, me being only closest friend of myself. I resolved into all kinds of music, books, movies-illusions of real life and what not but its all temporary diversion to feel I'm still alive. Everyone needs someone to share your feelings with, to fight with, to love, to care, to feel happy for, to be happy with.

I know that the relations that come through the blood cannot be chosen! But neither have I made really close friends whom I can share the feelings that even I don't trust telling it to my parents.

I DO WANT to live my life happily as possible and have always been in the pursuit of that happyness (with a 'y'). I have practiced and learnt to live lonely life which I know is not a socially good way of being a human being but I have been fighting to overcome it ever since I find a little bit of freedom in my way.

I don't know why even at the age of 22 I still am treated as a 13 yr old adolescent! by my parents. To be precise, I am not allowed to take decisions on my own when they are parents around! Why all the nose poking with my life even after I have started to earn my living? Why parenting when we can take care of ourselves? Always trying to force what they couldn't achieve in their life. Not letting me be somebody different. I hate them when they don't trust me. Won't they ever know that I never gonna let them down. All that I expect them is to wish me that my dreams of life never take me out or turn bad and leave me to achieve it. I feel this whole world is mine to fulfill my dreams whatever they are.

I don't know why I have become such a nerd, a geek now but as a kid I was rather forced to take up studies so seriously that I barely remember participating or rather was never allowed to participate in any extra-curricular-activities that I was so much interested in. I regret for all the things I lost in my childhood just to be a product called "yet-another-software-engineer". There are so many ways of earning a living in this world and I have realized it after seeing the industry for about an year sustaining the heat of financial crisis around. Why is that my career was chosen when I was a kid? I want peace in my life rather than running behind money.

Given a choice, I don't want to be what I am right now. I am pretty sure most of them don't want too! as everyone feels grass is always green on the other side.

I don't know many youngsters are suffering similar plight! but so is my F**ked up life! (I had never ever used the F word even with ** in my blog till now)

One Nite at the Customer Site

No, this is not a sequel of the Chetan Bhagat's novel :D
Let me not even mention the customer site name(of-course you can guess it).

At on-site place, the work is a lot more different than what it actually is @ my office. By different, I mean a lot more hectic with lots more work pressure. But I feel that work is made more fun when people around talk to you comfortably closer and expose some personal feelings of home/family even at work.

This happened to me one day(actually very late evening). One of my colleague(Let me call him, Mr.X) and myself had to wait for the daily release build to do basic sanity and also check the all different fixes called CR's integrated into it and make sure there are no regressions.. If you don't get the "bad long phrase" that I used just now, feel free to replace it with "testing" ;) Since the developers were busy with fixing issues all day long and integrators always take all the time in the evening to put all corrected CR's into the single build, we poor chaps had to wait for our turn till night! sob sob.. ;( However, I still call it "insanity" testing rather than sanity tests :P

Since I came to customer site later that afternoon, It was not boring yet, even if I was staying a little longer. Thanks to managers who look into that we are scheduled properly.

Moreover, It was a Saturday evening and I received a message from our Team lead which said "Thanks for coming on weekend" and soon I realized that he too had taken off for the day, leaving Mr.X and myself to attend to the further needy. You may not know how horrible the next day(Sunday) might be when you stay late evening during a weekend! Am I again supposed to say "pissed off"!? :P

But Mr.X, was so different in his attitude! as he had seen so many of such weekends before.. He was so positive that I couldn't believe my eyes!

First of all, Let me introduce Mr.X. This guy is an adorable family man who loves his wife sooo..much that he sacrifices everything for her(lucky her)! A very open, honest and helping guy.

We had been out for dinner that night (around 9:30pm for the build was yet to come) and I asked a few personal family questions(in general) which he didn't even hesitate to answer! Even after 5-6 years of marriage he is still so young - like a "teenage lover"- at heart. With my eyebrows raised, I asked how he could spend time with his wife in "ruined weekends"(like the one I was suffering now) even after staying so late at Saturday night? To which he replied that he would go out on Sundays with her getting up early in the morning as it's the only way he could be with her for more time. Man! Didn't I say he is choo-chweet :)

This lovely incident doesn't end here. Soon after we headed back to our workstations we received the patched binaries and testing was soon carried out and it was all over earlier than he expected. But, time was ticking very fast for only me. It was already 1:00am, the next morning! He had expected not less than 3:00am to reach home. He was so happy that it was all done and all set to leave, he noticed a bouquet of flowers in nearby cubicle and smoothly drew a Red rose from it and said He would surprise her wife today by going early! (I was dumbstruck with his lovely thought)

Even on the way back in the company cab to his place, we had little chat. He welcomed me home in that odd hours too.. for which I said of-course I will, but some-other time. Getting down from the cab at around 1:30am, he ran down the lane to reach his home with the red rose in his hand and a big smile on his face.

For that fleeting moment in my life I really felt that, Love was in the air for sure :)

One stupid story...

Our tenants vacated yesterday and i was lending my mom a helping hand in cleaning our new house. Soon there was the entry of neighbor kid, about 5 years of age and was very accustomed to our old tenants and asked about the "Tamil aunt"(They were from Madurai) who had just left.

I don't know how and why the "story telling" began but my mom and kid were talking about a story of dumb idiotic guy.
The story was somewhat like - The mother of that idiot asks him to get butter from a shop. but he puts it in his pockets to bring it back home. Later when asked to get it in a ice pack so that it doesn't melt he does it same for bringing salt! Ah.. this poor fellow then makes the princess laugh who had not even laughed in her lifetime... and so king makes him marry to her because of his utter sense of humor(so called).

I hated this kind of stories as they made no sense to practical world but there was something more interesting than this.

After telling complete story, the kid asked a very surprising question (which i overheard) for which even my mom was awestruck!
She had asked - "why didn't the princess divorce that idiot and marry another prince?"

I couldn't believe that young kid of this age could pronounce any word like D_I_V_O_R_C_E.
The time is getting from bad to worse for the next generation.