Oldies are goodies

We had some friends over briefly on Sunday. It had been ages since we met although we all live in the same city! I often feel bad about how rarely we meet up with friends post-kids phase :(

So we have known this couple forever now. Subhash and the guy were together in engineering and the girl and me were in there too, in the same batch, three years behind the guys. So it is an all-in-the-same-campus set of people. I have known them for as long as I have known Subhash. This couple also used to live in the same area (the guy was in the same street as we were) when we were in engineering - you get the drift. Long long long time pals.

We did not meet for very many years while we were in the US. Till they moved back to India a couple of years ago. That was a long gap. But as soon as we met - we were catching up like we had never parted. That is the magic of friendships that people so often talk about I guess! The other day when we met, we laughed over a few things, general life goings-on, common friends etc. And somehow we never laugh like that or let go that way with anyone else. At least I don't. It is mostly my 11th-12th std friends and engineering friends that I am able to truly have fun with! School friends - thanks to lack of prevalent social technology - we never managed to stay in touch like I was able to with this other set.

All said and done, I am thankful for the people who bring fun into an otherwise mundane life. Although we don't meet very often (in spite of some being in the same city, sigh!), when we do, it is like the time-lapse never existed! :)

Friends, Facebook and keeping in touch!

On Monday evening we had friends over at home. They moved back from the US (Dallas) and arrived here on Monday. It was a great way to spend an evening. This couple is exactly like us in a sense that the guy was Subhash's batch mate and the girl was mine. We, in fact, used to live close by and more often than not, commuted together. The guy's house was a stone's throw away from ours and so this also brought the girl over to our ilaaka a good deal ;)

Anyways, so this was the first time we were seeing their kids. Adorable. But then I realized that I haven't met the girl at all in this past 9 years since we graduated. AT ALL!!! My god. That was certainly a revelation. I completely was taken aback when I realized this. Then I got thinking. Yeah, indeed, we never met. But we caught up so often on Facebook, Picasa photo share, Orkut, Kodak photo share etc (in order of least primitiveness) that it was almost like we were living close by.

Surely, technology does something to bind us all. I think I am a living example of what my employer promises :) THE HUMAN NETWORK ;) ;)

'Tis the season for visiting

Thanks to the holiday season a lot of my friends from abroad are visiting India :) I already had one of them stop by at Bangalore and come and visit us and Rohan. Thanks S! I really like to catch up with pals. Which is why whenever I travel some place, if I know of someone living there, I make it a point to call on them. It feels good.

T is going to visit from Singapore on Christmas day. I am excited!! T and three other friends, together we used to call ourselves the "HumPanch" gang. Over the past few years however we have never met up, all the five of us together :(  Four of us are married and I just realized that I am the only one who has met all the spouses and vice versa (Subhash is the only one all the four of them have met). None of them has met any of the other's significant other. How sad! Time does indeed make us busy and afar.

Some more good stuff

K is coming today! After she leaves, S comes in to Bangalore. She is one of my oldest and dearest friends and I am so glad she is here for the housewarming :) The only ditchy thing in this whole affair is that I will hardly get to spend any quality time with her, but that is ok, at least I get to see her :D Besides, we spent some good time when she visited me earlier this year ;)

My dear friend..

We are off to India in a couple of weeks (another post on that later) and one of my very close friends wanted to see me before I left. We couldn't make it at all because we are going crazy packing and selling and saving and discarding. And she was buying a home. So it wasn't easy for her to come either.

And then she did something only she could do:) She is picking up the keys to her new home today and flying out tomorrow only to fly back on Sunday. For that 15 hours, and just so she can meet me, she is actually spanning the width of the West Coast:) And I haven't stopped smiling since I saw her itinerary last night. Not sure how much I deserve it, but all the same, glad to have made some really fast and thick and absolutely wonderful friends! :)

MBAs ;)

Sudhir had a baby girl last week and we were delighted for him:) They named her Annapurna and I was positively surprised. No one uses such good old fashioned names anymore!

I remember sometime back when he first knew about his to-come baby, we were chatting and he was telling me about the MBA programme. What does it mean you ask? "Make Babies American". True. So very true. Sudhir and I were joking about it. And he was wondering if he should do an MBA program;)

Well, looks like you did manage to get an MBA after all Sudhir ;)

Of old....very old....friends

Thought I would write an ode blog to Orkut. I got an invite to join this multiple times, in the past couple years, but never paid any attention to it, like I didn't to all those "I want to remember your birthday" invites that I got;) But finally on Shetty's insisting I joined it, if not for anything, just to stop her from buzzing in my ear every now and then about it;)

But boy! am I glad I joined or what. I met soooooo many of my school friends as I would have never imagined. I even met a couple seniors and scores of juniors from school. Lots of my sister's classmates as well. Reminiscing about St. Ann's is not possible to do completely with anyone except fellow Annites and I found quite a few of them in Orkut to reminisce to my heart's content! I even met one teacher who used to teach us in 8 and who we were all crazy about;)

Of old.....very truly old friends.....

Thanks to Orkut..

The funniest class in JNTU (3/4?)

I was writing the other day about the back-bench days at JNTU, and I HAD to write about this one:) I don't remember if it was in my third year of engneering or not, so the question mark in the title;)

We had this new lecturer for one of the courses (actually I don't remember which) and he was replacing someone who had left or fallen ill or gotten pregnant or some such thing. On the first day of class he walks in with hid head held high and chest swollen;) A very rare sight for the eyes of the students. But they were not ones to behold this new sight, they wanted the familiar gait and so they started to wait for an opportunity to kill his confidence:D

This opportunity, we got to know, was not hard to come by, nor did we have to wait long for it. As soon as this guy walked in with his condescending air, he started telling us about how useless students these days were etc etc etc. And he wanted to get himself well acquainted with us, so he started with saying that all of us (yeah, the whole 50 in the class, I wonder why we had complete attendance that day, a very unusual sight) should introduce ourselves one-by-one giving our names and our aim (Yeah, most of us even the ones in the first bench didn't initially understand what he was saying, aim??). He re-explained what his intentions were and so we started the drill.

I won't go too much into what everyone said except for that whoever said "GRE" got abused for being non-patriotic, including me, and whoever said "GATE" were praised to the skies, so much so that after the first few GATEs the GREs also started turning to GATEs just to avoid the long interjecting lectures in between every consecutive 5 GREs;)

Then the turn came of our "Famous Six". Yeah we had our own. Rajiv, Trilok, Vijay Mohan, Vishwanatha Raju, Kiran and Sriram. I think VM and VR were missing, I don't quite remember and Sriram was sitting with me, so the rest of the gang, Trilok, Rajiv and Kiran were next in line.

When their turn came, all the three of them stood up together (Yeah you had to STAND UP and answer:D). This confused this poor guy (lets call him PG from now on, I feel so much pity on him) so much, that he faltered and said, no only one-at-a-time. To which our heroes answered "No sire, we all have the same aim". Then this PG got even more confused. Let me summarize the ensuing dialogue in play form.

Prelogue: Rajiv was (actually he always did) wearing a cap.

PG: (Very very confused at this point) Even if you have same aim, you should answer one-at-a-time.
Rajiv: No Sir, we are all together, we go together.
PG: (Still confused) Ok what is your aim.
All in chorus: TO FORM A ROCK BAND SIRE!!!!!!!
PG: (Totally aghast at such an aim) What!! Why a rock band?
All: Because we like rock music sir.
PG: So what will you do for a living (assuming their rock band will be an utter failure)
Rajiv: We have our parents no sire!
PG: (again aghast) What? You have no shame?
Rajiv: No sir!
PG: Then why are you studying engineering, wasting your parents money?????????!?!?!?!
Rajiv: They know that we want to form a rock band sir
PG: (Now totally shocked beyond imagination) You should remove your cap, then you will be of some use, you will become someone in life.
Rajiv: No sir, I won't remove my cap.
PG: (Doesn't know what to do now) Ok, you will all burn in hell;)

That last part was an exaggeration, but his expression was enough to convey that. In some other class, when we were all having our Hindu crossword and Juke Box session in the back bench during one of his classes, this was some other dialogue:

Prelogue: Rajiv had written a rock song which went "I cry for you, cry for you, cry for you" and I was commenting on it, when PG started speaking:

Rajiv: Sir we cannot hear sir!
PG: If you take off your cap you will hear ( ;) )
Rajiv: What is the connection between cap and hearing sir, I don't know.
PG: If you take off your cap you will know.
Rajiv: (In mutters to me) Pichaasupatriki velli choopinchukovali. (Should go and get checked into a mental hospital)
PG: You should go to the mental hospital (Uh, Oh he seemed to have heard).
Rajiv: I don't know how to go there sir.
PG: I will take you.
Rajiv: Ohh you already went there sir? How is it? ;)
PG: You will go to hell! You will defintely go to hell. (Ahh, he finally said it).

So that was it. We troubled this guy sooooo much, that after 3-4 classes, he stopped coming to the lectures altogether, giving some excuse or such. Which was good riddance to bad rubbish anyway, he was never a good lecturer, didn't know his subject matter, we could teach him any day, and he was also utterly full of himself.

I later discovered, he was my aunt's husbands brother :( They were asking me one day if I knew him. And that he started teaching at JNTU recently. I was like, uh, well, ah, yeah I think I know him and have seen him sometimes;)

What else can we say:D

I love to laugh..

..at almost anything. Some of the best laughing days we have had though is when we used to laugh at/for nothing. I must mention all my friends here, Teju, Shetty, Vamshi and Rathi. Now, Vamshi, Teju and I are the only three souls who are capable of laughing at nothing or creating something out of thin air to laugh at. So much so that Shetty was always troubled. "Girls!", she used to say, in her typical St. Ann's Captain style, "you must stop your sidey jokes". And there, we laughed again, we will laugh at whatever sidey, uppey or downey jokes we want!!!:)):)) Remember Teju?;):))

So we scared quite a lot of people with our laughing. Some of the most striking are when one of our lecturers in St. Francis, refused to teach our class because he was intimidated by the "girls of 2A". Another is when we went for our second round of EAMCET counselling. We just went there to hang out, none of us had any real business to do, we just finished all the movies in town so we went to the counseling to hang out;) We laughed so much that one of our friends (not one of us five) disowned us because she was embarassed at the way we were goofing around and went and sat by a corner.

Lots more history to think of when I think of laughing. How much I goofed around in Hyd!! I so much want to start doing that again;) But for that I need the right combo of people, like Teju and Vamshi, and of course Shruti and Rathi to sit with us and get embarassed;)

I still love to laugh, and take every opportunity at it;) Like Darcy says in Pride and Prejudice, what defence can a man have against a person whose sole objective in life is to laugh;)