Amused To Death – Pratish Menon Blogs

I can’t even begin to tell you how much of a task it has been for V & me to find a nice, decent, happy place to move to in Mumbai. We had an exhaustive list of  critical measures that included but were not restricted to:

1. Commute time < 15 mins
2. Balcony = Yes
3. Carpet area > 550 sq.ft
4. Deposit < Rs. X lacs
5. Rental < Rs. Y thousands
6. Location > Good
7. Ease of shopping > Good
8. Neighbours / Building denizens >= Sec A
9. Vaastu etc >= Good

With such criteria, it was definitely quite a task. While I had tracked down such a complex (it’s located in Dadar), finding a place there was quite a herculean task. I am happy to note that our combined efforts paid off and the deal’s through.

Looking forward to moving in tomorrow. Another era of disruptive transformation begins now

That’s what the wife called me today. Quite apt, considering the fact that at least 60% of my time in office is committed to working on presentations nowadays. The remaining 40% is spent in communicating them

Never thought that (almost) two years of staying in Hyderabad would undo roughly 28 years of being a Mumbaikar so much! Just having a hard time re-acclimatizing to the HnH (Heat & Humidity) here. Granted, Hyderabad IS hot for a coupla months (April & May can be really unhealthy) but the saving grace is the dryness… Mumbai is usually muggy for most of the time during the year, except December & January when things are relatively better.

Apart from the weather, the other thing I am having a tough time adjusting to is the commute. I drive about 76 kms to-and-fro and on an average day, the onward journey takes about an hour, while the return takes two. On bad days, add an hour to both. Ever since the iPod got busted during my return from London last July, I have been forced to burn CDs to listen to music in the car. Wasn’t a big hassle in Hyderabad, where the average commute was half-an-hour at the max. Mumbai commute, on the other hand, is proving to be excruciating at times. I do have a few short cuts handy but then those only bring down the commute time by about 25 mins or so. (Yes, it’s a boon nevertheless!)

To cut the commute, I have been exploring options of settling in closer to office. That’s however easier said than done… Three long months of house hunting are over and I am hoping to finalize the place and move in the coming weeks.

Workwise, a lot of new challenges… Working with a Steel company is obviously a very different ballgame from that of an IT company. Both have their pros and cons, of course. I am able to see the ‘impact of IT’ much more clearly now than ever before.

On the lighter side, I can never look at a trailer carrying steel products without analyzing whether they’re Hot rolled/Cold rolled/Galvanized/Painted apart from gauging the average thickness, tonnage etc etc. I also end up noting whether the products belong to us or our competitors

Loss of innocence in some ways?

Am I the only one who seems to have a problem with trusty Firefox nowadays? Seems to be consuming abnormally high amounts of memory as compared to previous versions

Posting from Opera now…

SNAFU is an acronym meaning, “Situation Normal; All Fucked Up”. It is sometimes bowdlerized to “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up” or similar,^[1] in circumstances where profanity is discouraged or censored. In modern usage, “snafu” is often used as an interjection, as a shorthand for the sentiment expressed by the phrase. “Snafu” is also sometimes used as a noun or verb, referring to a situation that suddenly went awry, or the cause of the trouble. The acronym is believed to have originated in the US Army during World War II.

That’s the current state of my blog; did this WordPress thingie etc and in short, my old posts have disappeared from the face of the earth. Will do my best to locate & port them here. Bear with me in the meanwhile, okay?

Edit: Managed to recover the posts, but I am sorry to report that I can’t say the same for the comments. Not for now at least.

And thus it happened that I moved back to Mumbai on the 4th of March, 2009. It’s been good to catch up with old friends and reconnect on matters that are close to the heart. Quite a few changes afoot.

Yes, I moved jobs too. And I do admit that I miss Satyam. More on work later.

Now we all know that Google has been pretty futuristic with their products (the Google phone MAY be an exception) but how about getting an email from the future? Well, that’s what happened to me just now.

I just booked a ticket on IRCTC and got an email on my gmail id. Nothing out of the ordinary really, until I noticed the ‘time stamp’ on the email… See the pic below to know what I am talking about.

Email from the future? Now THAT would be cooool, eh?

Relaaaaxxing with V… It's been a hectic weekend actually, got
married after all

Now, now, don’t get any ideas from the title of this post. I haven’t gone the Shobha De / Irving Wallace way, at least, not just yet.

It so happened that a happy occasion is fast approaching and I need to get a suit stitched to look presentable for that day. While I had been ‘measured up’ by the tailor last week, he’d called me for the ‘fitting’ yesterday. So I went with V to check it out. I was quite excited, this was probably the best tailor in Hyderabad and he was supposed to be responsible for dressing some of the top honchos around.

After keeping us waiting for more than a few minutes, while he measured up a portly gentleman, the tailor cast his benign look on us. I slipped into the suit, he pinned up the lapel and propped me in front of the mirror.

“Hmmm…” I said, turning and preening. The fit certainly seemed right and my shoulders looked like those of Michael Jordan. Not bad, I thought. Then I noticed that something was amiss.

“I need half-an-inch-of-cuff to be shown below the sleeve of the coat”, said I.

The tailor looked at me as if I had just quoted an ancient Egyptian hymn to raise long buried mummies from the dead. “I didn’t understand, sir?”, was all he managed.

“See, the sleeve reaches way below my wrist. You’ll need to raise the end a little so that a bit of the cuff of my shirt can be seen below the sleeve of the coat,” I explained. ” Isn’t that the norm?”, I asked rhetorically.

“Sir, if you raise the sleeve, then the shirt cuff will show!”, he remonstrated. Clearly, he wasn’t quite getting it.

“My good man”, said I, “That’s how it’s supposed to be!” I had started to sound like an evangelist now. I thought I should give an illustration. “You see my watch? The cuff of the shirt would reach towards the lower end of the strap, right?”

“You don’t wear a watch when you’re wearing a coat, sir”, was his curt but enigmatic response.

“Forget the watch, I am just talking about where the cuff would reach. So if my cuff would reach till the end of the strap…”

“You don’t wear a watch when you’re wearing a coat, sir”, the tailor insisted stubbornly.

“Okay, I won’t. Will you just listen to me?”, I had started sounding quite defensive by now.

“Are you sure of yourself? I mean, he’s the tailor right? He’d know what to do…”, V interjected.

“That’s how everyone wears it here, sir”, the tailor added helpfully. He had a puzzled look on his face. I suspect he was sniffing to check if I was inebriated. He was probably thinking further how V could have found someone like me. A crass act, he must have thought to himself. What has the world come to?

Divine intervention was needed here. I definitely couldn’t stand the thought of standing in full public view without my half-inch sticking out. The cuff, I mean. The tailor was obviously not going to acknowledge that he was wrong. V was looking at me rather questioningly. The consultant in me needed to figure out a win-win scenario for all. And then I had a brainwave.

“You see, I need this to be done in European style!” I declared grandly. “That’s how Europeans wear it”, I added as if to explain what European style would be. “The catalogue..”, I pointed.

“Ohhhh…!! Why didn’t sir say so before?”. The tailor moved behind his protective desk and brought out the catalogues (which we had referred to in Session I, while choosing the form & cut for the suit).

V & I quickly thumbed through the catalogue. It featured a bunch of impossibly shaped, sculpted, Greek god-ish men trying to appear very casual, scowling and smiling in turn, all the while dressed in formal, impeccable suits. With the legendary half-inch showing. Of cuff.

“Oh, that’s what you’re talking about…” said V. Her confidence in my sanity seemed to have returned. Evidently, I had passed the test. We quickly went through the catalogue and selected a particular style. It would leave the appropriate part of the cuff exposed as desired.

“You’ll have it on the day after, sir”, the tailor seemed relieved. “I have not seen sir before, is sir new in Hyderabad?”, he seemed to imply that I was not quite versed with the ways of the city.

“No my dear man, I am from Mumbai. And thence I shalt return someday”, I might have added that ‘European style’ was de rigueur in Mumbai too, but then I wanted to look good on D-day, so I let it pass. I had enough of off-the-cuff remarks for a day.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/we-respect-satyam-staff-as-professionals-murthy/82567-7.html

I love the pic

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