Noticed a number of boards on the electronic city expressway on hosur road, reading:
"Wish you a very Happy 62nd year of Independence Day"
:)
Its been a long and arduous week...what with all the codes that I had to review (and do a good job at it too)...plans that I had to not only prepare, but also get approved...appraisal...
I remember the first thing I told the first person I met in office on the first day of the week..."I want to go back home" :)
The only thing that kept me going through all this was the fact that it was going to be a short 4-day week, with a holiday almost in the middle of the week (Thursday, Oct 2, Gandhi Jayanti)...I almost screamed out (yaaaayyyyyy!!!! Today is over and its a holiday tomorrow) when I finished the last of yesterday's meetings at 5 pm...
The whole of today felt like it was a Saturday (getting up late, badminton...). While returning home after a very satisfying game of badminton, I realized that I have to go to office tomorrow. Felt a little cheated, almost like Ayesha Takia must have felt in the movie "Sunday", where her Sunday is missing...
However, dint take me long to realize that I should be happy, after all tomorrow is Friday and theres still a Saturday n Sunday left this week.... :)

31 September?

Yeah...it appears 31-Sep-08 is the date before which I was to use the Dominos Pizza voucher that I won on Radio One.
Am sure, the poor VP who signed it din't see this coming :)
1. Your appraisal has to be completed today, if not, your confirmation may be a casualty.
2. The codes you have to review need a lot more of review than you thought.
3. You run from building to building in the sprawling campus to discover you have a cool 30 minutes to wait before your meeting.
4. Meetings run into lunch-time and your appraisal is pushed to post-lunch.
5. After a hasty lunch, you run back to your desk to check on your emails.
6. After an appraisal meeting, a glitch in the application threatens to leave your appraisal incomplete (and its 3:30 pm already).

What do you do?
Either you give up, bitch over coffee with a sympathetic listener and wait for the 5:30 bus to leave the campus, carrying you with it....
Or...you battle it in True Pradeep style :)
You threaten where required.
You smile where appropriate.
You persuade where possible.
You replace pride with common sense.

And voila, you have the appraisal ironed out, the tough BO certification replaced with the relatively milder Oracle SQL certification
Then you beat a hasty retreat...before anything else can go wrong, you take the first bus back to civilization...
"...in the ashes of every past there are a few cinders of memory that glow with warmth..."
- Deeti, in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies.

Profound, but just as simple... :)
This one commercial on the radio kept bothering me...its about some builders who offer villas in exchange for apartments and the like (a novel concept)...
The ad goes like this:
The receptionist at the builders receives calls from various folks asking if they can exchange their tiny apartments for the luxurious villas (in various dialects/accents, sounding convincingly pissed with their apartments, which they bought for various reasons like investment, etc) and she consoles them by saying they can.
But the prospective customers names, Ms Sobha, Mr Mantri and Ms Purva, which surprisingly, the receptionist knows even without being told, does ring a bell....doesn't it?