Paintball? Really?

..was what I kept on telling myself if this sport is worth risking whips and blisters. We were eleven at HogansAlley celebrating Aias's birthday.



What is the strategy?

Our carefully engineered plan designed for taking the opponents out took a dip when I was first shot thrice in the head by Aias. Look below where he sneaks without my knowledge.



Kasmir is ours. Har Har Mahadev.



Done doing mix n match with teams as well as fields, everyone is tired.



Getting drinks and discussing moments in the game.



Revealing his Greek culture.



Aias turned 24 and I turned black n blue. Not really.

With Housemates n Karl

Photo is taken at C.O.Jones bar where Karl (guy extreme left) works as a bartender. Next is Paul K, Aias, Paul J and me. Both the Paul's are students at Yale doing divinity where Aias works with me in the same company.

Office Space

9 hours of my life revolves around this place every day.

Marriage Profiling

In this era of Globalization 3.0, I never gave a serious thought on how well can online dating sites can be worth. Take for example, "shaadi.com" technically was started off by an Indian company and as of now they claim to have thousands of entries in their database which includes people with an international flair to a reasonable extent. My first impression was as how a Chinese salesman would proclaim in one of the Russel Peter's standup comedy - Noooooooooooooo.

Looking for girls online seemed different. I just didn't get it, the world is getting flat (quote from Tom Friedman). If more and more people start using the web power, why cant marriage be taken to this level. Moreover, if I dont find a girl soon enough, I would probably land up doing an arranged marriage too. Big deal - uh!

I never had a first hand experience with anyone who would probably share the same feelings until today. I came across a Romanian colleague of mine who told me that he will be off on a 2 week vacation to Jamaica for his honeymoon. Cool! I congratulated him and casually we started talking about marriages and women in general. I learnt that they dated for over 2 years now and it all started with one of these regular marriage portals. I just couldnt beleive it!!! Do people seriously take these web sites? Are people getting more and more tech savvy? Or is it really G 3.0?

There is only one question guys. Am I right?

Level 1 - SJCP or Rome: Total War

2 interesting things happened to me today.

One, take a date for my long-awaited Java Level 1 certification. Second, install Rome: Total war - a strategy game. Whats the point behind fulfilling each? First leads to professional prestige (ABCDs) while I love the second. Comes from the days where I used to sit for hours beating up Age of Empires.

Time to rethink my priorities....

Chak De Fatte

...has been something that I have been saying a lot recently - on posts, amongst friends, on phone calls, and even dreams. Recollecting back to the old memories, how did this start in the first place? Courtesy goes to my old roommate - Mr. Amanpreet Khurana. Aman moved here last week where he took up a new job in CT, not far from my place. Glad that I have a Desi friend staying closeby - nothing that can be still better than a guy from Kopargaon - someone with whom I stayed for 4 years. Isnt life good to you?

Now thats what I call - Chak De Fatte.

Legally Void

Yet another long weekend and I had pre-decided that this should also not go waste. So I made a few calls and Mahale, Huned, Umesh and Rahul pooled in for this trip. Out 6 of us, the vacation was planned for a New England tour. It included sight-seeing Boston, Cape Cod and the world's renowned whaling capital - Nantucket.

Everyone drove up to New Haven Friday night and stayed at my crib to start the vacation with. It might be the first time that my room was filled with 1+ Desi. Happily, we were all dancing away to glory and having a gala time that night. Lal and myself did our usual dance copy of Amit, Bari, Yatendra, Gujju and Hiren Bhai. There was also a special imitation of ABCD.

Saturday early morning, we headed towards Hotel Marriot up in Woburn, MA singing Kajra Re for a 2-night stay. The check-in time was the usual 3pm and so we spent a few hours driving around Boston. We saw Harvard Square, MIT, Prudential Center, J Hancock tower, Chinatown and a little of Cambridge driving around on a Dodge Caravan. So we reach the hotel, check-in and come back 10 miles south to Boston again for lunch and then go back to hotel - bad planning maybe but the drive was not that trouble at all - 20 minutes maybe...and I was not driving too.

We basically passed around time on Saturday talking and a little bit of chilling out. It was an eery silence before the storm striked. I slept that night at 1 in the morning and was scheduled to get up first the next day at 2:30 again that morning. Now I am not a kind of guy who usually sleeps less than 8 hours...unless its a vacation. Anyways, We got ready and were off sailing on a Flying Cloud to Nantucket. As soon as we reached the land, I saw a shop renting mopeds and bikes. We got three of them and made pairs -it was me urf Jaidev and Laale Di Jaan aka Veeru together shooting for Sholay on that island.

Ghoom Ghaam kar we decided to do some water sports in one of the beautiful beaches - we played frisby. I noticed change in my complexion in less than few hours which meant that I will be spending my next few weeks with a darker version of Sandeep. Day passed by like a snap and I was shooting the breeze in the backseat. Monday being the last day of the vacation, we took sort of easy and were home early evening. Huned stayed back that night and left the next morning for Binghamton. We even caught a glimpse of the 4th July fireworks.

Weekend was great.

MSG is not Monosodium Glutamate

It is Microsoft Sues Google unlike what you see MSG in Chinese restaurants. Well, I am a Google fan but seems here that Microsoft has a valid argument. What is the whole point of someone signing a contract when they can easily get off the hook? They might get something out of Lee here but from Google - possibly not enough evidence. I am sure Lee can hammer out a mutually acceptable agreement if he gets some legal muscle working on it too.

The winning finally kicks off

I was up in Glastonbury to attend Raj's daughter 3rd year birthday anniversary party last Sunday. We were scheduled for a match against Cognizant later that day. Naugatuck was 40 miles west and I was hoping that we should start off by having to bat first. Yes, no-one was happy to stay outside on a 3-digit fahrenheit scale. We did win the toss and posted 98 on the board. Having them defeated by a margin of 20 runs, I must say that there is a lot to improve finally. I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing GOD ever created on earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isnt too bad either. Erik was right, its all about that fucking commitment.

IBM takes on GE

Desh was looking for his Lagaan 11 to play against GE this Sunday. So I drove this afternoon to Shelton to play for IBM which means I had to get up earlier than expected. Weather became perfect as we lost the toss and took the field. Some time later, it became hot and I was worn out on the field completely dehydrated. Opponents piled up a total of 65 runs in the allocated 15 overs.

Sadly, I couldnt open my account inspite of some powerful strokes and the wicket keeper took an excellent catch by jumping to his left and receiving the ball. We lost by a close margin but had a good exercise. Looking forward to a second round next week.

Wait and watch..