New Year Greetings

As this new year's eve, i won't be getting any cheesy SMS forwards, and less than 20% of the regular calls (ISD calls/SMSes are so bloody expensive!); I will be returning the favor by not forwarding any cheesy messages and making less than 10% of the regular calls! :D (Yeah, i am such a cheapo!)

So here is me wishing you all, a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year! 

Party hard, drink till you are talli, and don't worry, we have 2 days off till we hit the mundane office life back on Monday!

Thats all for 2010 from The Furobiker, we will meet next year with some more fun filled, grammatically incorrect and politically incorrect posts! Till then..

Happy New Year

2010 in review (Part one)

Another year gone by, and here i am sitting and thinking about how it was, and how it should have been. Its really funny, that during entire 365 days, we never stop and think that how is life going. We all just keep on running around like crazy dogs, which run after every other car at night, just for fun or maybe out of habit! :P

I learnt a very important lesson this year - Connecting the dots! Shree Shree Steve Jobs once said - "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life"

I had a pretty bad fuck up during June/July. I had applied for the weekend executive MBA program from one of the most prestigious b-schools in India. And by God's grace, i cleared everything and paid my first installment of fees. The classes were to begin on July 1, 2010. So around 22 June, we had to go to the institute and submit our original work ex and educational certificates. I met a clerk there, who checked my certificates, and declared that i cant take admission into the program as my work ex was less than required! I was baffled! Baffled is a very tiny term, i was abso-fucking-lutely shocked!!

I just barely made through the mandatory work ex requirement of 3 years (Since i joined my first job on July 2, 2007 and they wanted 3 years work ex on June 30, 2010). But since i got relieved of my first job on a Thursday and joined my current job on Monday, the clerk believed i had a gap of 3 days, so that takes my work ex from 3 years down to 2 years and 362 days! Oh my fucking God! I learnt so so so much less than what a guy with 2 years and 365 days experience would have learnt!

You cant fight too much with these guys in government colleges? Can you? They never even admitted their own mistake that they should have never given me the admit card to sit in the exam in the first place!

Had i resigned one day later, and got relieved on a Friday, i would have made through their mandatory 3 years work ex requirements. (Govt offices dont count weekends as real days, unless accompanied by a working day!)

For about a whole month, i was fighting with the clerk and his higher officials for letting me into the course. I can't even imagine how many arguments and strategies i used to think every single night as that was kind of THE most important thing in my life at that point of time. I took a hard toil since applying for that program in February, giving the written exams, the GDs, the interviews and what not! Sigh!

But when i look back at the whole thing, i simply feel blessed that i didn't make it. For starters I am now not forced to waste all my weekends for the next three years, studying for a 'weekend executive MBA' degree which i never wanted! I just applied to it, because i wanted any stupid MBA degree as everyone around me had one or was in the process of getting one. Peer pressure makes you do real stupid things you see.

Also, if i had taken that course, i would have never got the opportunity to come to this tiny little snow filled country. Which i think is the most awesomest little thing happened to me this year, as i am almost heading the office here right now :)

So kids, I think for the most part, if you're really honest with yourself about what you want out of life, life gives it to you (Ted Mosby, The Architect)

With that note, i wish you all a Very Happy and a Prosperous New Year! May you all get what your heart really wishes for in the coming year. And i sign off from this blog till next year, as i head off to the mountains to see some more snow! :D

PS: This blog was getting too long, more updates about the year, if and when i get net connectivity on the mountains!

Life in bullet points

All work and no play has made me a dumb boy. And now like my slides, these blog posts will also be filled up of bullet points. All these were meant to be individual blog posts, but since they are so small, i am putting them all together.. Enjoy the randomness..

Snow is stupid! - I always used to like snow, let me complete first, ONLY when I watched it on TeeVee. Kajol dancing on the song - suraj hua mattham - wearing skirts used to give me this fuzzy feeling about snow. Sorry to say, I was WRONG! Snow sucks because of the following reasons - 

• It makes your face and fingers go numb - As someone said, it doesn't matter what the temperature is, once it goes below minus five. Your face, fingers and back start going numb at that temperature and post that you cant feel a thing! Suck it snow! 
• Its like dog potty! - You know the dog potty which sticks on your shoe and you don't realize it till you enter your home (when it stinks!)? Same with snow! It sticks on your shoes, and as soon as you enter your apartment, it melts, creating a puddle!
• The whole town is a skating ring! - The furry flaky snow melts into water when it first touches the ground, and then it freezes into ice!! So below all the cute piles of snow, there is this huge sheet of ice, which can make even a person like me dance (and fall at times!! GRRRR)

Snow is only good in pictures! 

Its vacation time - We have 9 days off (including weekends) for annual Christmas break and suddenly that has become a pain point in my life, due to the following reasons

• Everyone in my office is going home, and i am stuck here, alone :(
• I do not have a fucking Schengen visa!! Which means I can only remain in Romania and go nowhere else in Europe!!  
• The good part is, I am contemplating a visit to some of the Romanian counties to visit Dracula Castles! Just hoping that i don't meet any of the draculas :P
• It will give me a good chance to hone up my photography skills - So we will have some nice pictures of the castles, birds/animals, trees and of course hot blondes! :D

One of the Dracula's Castle

I sometimes feel like kaam-wali-bai !! - I just hope no one from my patriarchal punju community reads the following lines! Warna log kahenge - "Mard hoke jananiyo wale kaam karte ho!!"

• In past two months, i have learnt to operate a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine! Yeah! Seriously! What The Fuck! Why should someone learn to use these stupid things any-ways? Isi din ke liye mere maa baap ne mujhe padha likha ke bada kara tha? :O :O
• Why do i have to go down three floors to throw my garbage bag into the garbage bin! - When there are so many homeless people around, why can't they be employed by some agency, who gives them badges and asks them to collect garbage bags across the buildings? Lets see, there are 60 apartments in my buildings, and there are 4 such identical buildings around. If one guy charges one home just 10 Lei per month for picking up garbage bags from just outside their main doors and then throw them into the community bins, they could make 2400 lei per month! Lets assume not all people want to pay 10 lei per month, still they can make close to 2000 lei per month! Which is a decent amount! (Just for comparison, the cheapest burger you get here at McDonalds is 9 lei (appx), so i think, no one would have an issue paying 10 lei! )
• Seriously! How can any country survive without a dhobi! I fail to understand that at times! Sigh!

Ideally, kaam wali bai should look like this

Blog visitors - Every two weeks, i look at my blog analytics to see what do people search on Google when they land up on my blog. Here are some of the keywords...

• I have seen God! - I don't know which God they are looking for, the one who sits above the clouds and enjoys his life by watching chicks doing pole dance or the one called Sachin. But my analysis says Sachin, as these visitors reach 10 times the normal days when sachin hits a century! Here is the post they go to --- I have seen God
• DesiLoveStories - These visitors have a typical habit. These searches and hence related visitors arrive only between 11pm and 2 am ;) ;) ! Sorry guys, i think you have dialled the wrong number! Here is the post they go to (certainly not what they are looking for :P ) --- Desi Love Stories 
• Kalmadi Jokes - This one keyword has done amazing things to my traffic! Even after about 2 months after the CWG games, on an average day, about 90-100 people come on my blog looking for Kalmadi Jokes! Dhanya ho prabhu aap! Here is the post -- Kalmadi Jokes 

Thats all for the random updates as of now. We will be back with the "2010 in review" post before I head off to some other snow covered village in search of Dracula ! 

The 30 day challenge !

This is not my original idea, i picked it up from Matt Cutts blog - He works for Google and leads the team that  tries to remove all spammy websites from the Google search results.. They still have a lot of work to do, i must say! :D

As they say, it takes just 30 days to build up a habit! If you do one same thing everyday, continuously for 30 days, there is a very high probability that it will get imbibed in your daily routine! Surety to dunia me kissi cheez ki nahi hai maamu! I have been thinking about taking some 30 day challenge since last couple of months, but could never think of any habit I want to pick up and frankly speaking I never had the time to do anything extra except office-eat-sleep-office-eat-sleep working schedule...

Today, finally after a long thought, i decided to give it a try. I checked for all his past 30 day challenges and thought about some of my own, and finally shortlisted the following ones.

1) Read 50 pages everyday from a physical book!
2) Bring some order in my personal finances!

Read 50 pages everyday from a physical book for the next 30 days - Dude! Its a tough task to read 50 pages everyday and that too from the physical book! I spent some time today morning reading a marketing related book and it was horrible! Every few minutes i have this itch to change the song, or check my email or to update on Twitter which book i am reading! This damn internet and laptop has screwed up my reading habbits! Grrr! Guess it will take me a week to acclimatize to this new reading habit. Specially, when i have spare time in the evenings for the next 4 months so why not gobble up some 20 books in it!

Bring some order in my personal finances within next 30 days - Eventually i have realized that my money management skills are horrible. I have no check on my credit card bills, damn i don't even know their billing dates! I just pay for them as and when i like. I have no idea what percentage of my expenditure goes where. I don't even know how much savings and in what all bonds did i do in the past 4 years of my working life! Everything has been running on the ad-hoc mode till now! This kind of lifestyle seems pretty cool but the problem is if i want to make a big purchase with my own money, i can't even predict that by what time i will be able to save that much! Guess i need to buy some personal finance software or maybe create an excel sheet about my life!

The best part about writing my 30 day challenges on the blog is that, i am just forcing myself to do these. Because i know, after every couple of days, someone will ping me on gtalk or FB to ask how is the 30 day challenge going! Automated reminders you see :D BTW, i picked the middle of the month to start my 30 day challenge because i landed in this alien land on 19th october. So all my months and countdowns run counting 19th only as the first day of the month! Yes, i am weird! :P

Burger chaap baaten ..

Couple of days back i went to this famous fast food chain, which has all its walls painted with the face of a creepy old man, who claims to be from Ken-tikky! Trust me, that was the most annoying burger of my life!

They have this offer where you get a burger, fries and cola for 10 LEI, whereas, if you take only the burger, it will cost you 9 LEI. Being the idiot I am, I ordered only the burger .. and their began the most irritating 10 minutes of my life ... BTW, do not start finding grammatical mistakes in the chatter below, people here really talk like that!

ME: Can I have a zzz burger please. No fries, no cola.
Waitress - You take no burger. You take Burger, Fries and Cola. Only un Leiu more.
ME: (In my head - Teri maa ki! Tu hoti kaun hai mujhe batane wali ki I no take burger! GRRR! ) - I only take burger. I no take cola, I no take fries!
(yeah, sometimes i have fun in talking in the local language :D )
Waitress: You not understand! I give you benefits! (oh tere ki! ek cola ke badle benefits?)
ME: You not understand. Cola and Fries give me potty problem! :D :D
(desperate attempts to shut her up ! )
The conversation went on for some 3-4 minutes more... Phew

************
Most of the people don't know that Banaras is the largest potato producing city in the world! It produces millions and millions of tonnes of potatoes. Yeah, it never gets reported in the papers because all the potatoes produced there are cheaply procured and fed to the students studying in BHU before the news leaks out! For 4 freaking years, we used to get potatoes in breakfast, lunch and dinner! And the days, when our Maharaj was happy, we used to get potatoes in the evening snack also.. So you can understand the mental trauma i had eating those fucking potatoes 3 times a day, 365 days a year for 4 years!! And kids, thats why I HATE fries...

Uh, about the No Cola thing... You know the difference between a cold drink and a slush? The cold drink is a liquid whereas a slush is ..err.. semi-solid! I wanted to give a better example, but then, too many people think its gross to talk about food and upset stomach at the same time. :D :D Since I wanted to pack the stuff and take it home for dinner, i didn't want a cold drink. Last time it became kind of slush, because of the bloody cold here, while i was walking back home! And i HATE slush, it reminds me of. err.. upset stomach! :P :P
*********

Well well, that poor girl thought it was a language problem that I was not able to understand that I will get "Benefits" if I take the package deal. Wrong! It was a psychological problem, which no benefits can cure :D (Oh dear God! Why did you have to make the spelling of psychological so hard!)

Anyways, a couple of minutes and some angry stares later i got my zzz burger.

Waitress: Your burger, No fries and No cola
ME: Thank you young lady!
Waitress: (in her head - stupid Indians, Not know how to take benefits!)
ME: (In my head - LoL @ what you said in your head! buy a Wren and Martin please...)

Smile Please!

Because i have got a new camera! Yay! Say hello to my Cannon SX 120 IS Power Shot!

Cannon SX120 IS Power Shot

Ageing has its own symptoms, and bad memory is one of them. I forgot my dear old pocket camera at home while packing :( :( :( .. and how can I afford to miss taking pictures of hot blondes Christmas decorations and snow! So here I am with my new buddy!

These days I am reading tonnes of photography related blogs to make use of the manual modes on this camera. Hence, clicking a lot of weird pictures :P  The funny thing which i discovered while reading all the photography tips and tricks is that you do not need an awesome camera to click great pictures! Most of the photographers use Photoshop/GIMP to beautify their pictures before publishing them!

Golmaal hai bhai sab golmaal hai! :D :D

Now you know, those chicks on FB do not look as awesome in real life as their profile pictures. So think before sending them fraandsheep request. ;)

Anyways, here is my pic taken with my new camera, and effectively edited to soften extra brightness coming from the front window, and remove 2 pimples and few strands of hair from the forehead :D

Dimaag ki batti gul ho gai

Few days back, sitting in my apartment, i was watching a stupid Hindi serial which was aired in India in 1993. The serial was in Hindi but it had Romanian subtitles! Considering the fact that it was a stupid saas-bahu serial, it was really weird that it had no vamp like Komolikkkaaa, with a peculiar background tone! :P

But that is not what this post is about.

While watching that serial, i had a sudden realization that how can i be so dumb that i am watching this utter bull-shit! There got to be something better which i can do! I can't go out because its raining cats-dogs-mouses and buffaloes, so what to do sitting inside the home? And then suddenly, a bubble popped out of my head with a light bulb shining in it, exactly like it used to happen in the cartoon series till few years back, and i got an idea!

Why not do something about my long lost dream of "Trying to write a book!" Saala, apni to soch hi choti hai... I never thought about writing a book, but i always wanted to try writing a book and then probably throw it out of the window or something.After about 30 minutes, armed with my netbook in one hand and a big mug of self made frappe in the other, i sat down to write something.

In about 5 days, i have written close to 1500 words. I have got a couple of decent starting pages, and a few paragraphs, and stuff which i will insert here and there, in between the main story. But the real fucking problem is The Main Story! In my past 4-5 years of blogging, i have always picked up real life incidences, added a bit mirchi masala and some fictional touch to exaggerate them and then blogged about them! This is my first time with a 100% fictional content!

Hehe, when i read the above paragraph again, the words - "This is my first time" sound a bit ..err..weird! :P

I am trying to work on a plot inside my head which involves a guy and a girl.. wait a second.. that sounds boring, lets add a lot of girls :D So the plot involves a guy and a lot of girls and.. ok ok.. you got to wait for sometime till i finish the thing. But seriously, imagining fiction and then writing it in detail is a real tough job. Phew.

I am using Google Docs to write it, so that i can share it with a few people to get the comments on the progress. Frankly speaking, blogging is a different thing, but when you seriously want to create a story, the good old pen and paper are the best. You can keep the sheets in front of you if you are getting confused between what came after what!

Anyways, being a lazy ass, i have decided, i wont run around showing my short book/novel to any publisher etc. Thats too much of a pain. Moreover, being an android fanboy and an avid Open Source supporter, i have decided to make it into pdf format and keep it on my blog for downloading free of cost! Isse pehle ki koi aur piracy kare, main khud hi apni book ki piracy kar doonga! :D :D :D

So keep watching this space, in between the regular posts, i will keep updating you guys about the progress of the book. It will be a short book, not more than 140-150 pages long. Meanwhile, if you have any ideas / suggestions, feel free to drop me a line using the contact form on the top of the page..

Indian Weddings...

Few days back, one firangi friend of mine ate my head for about 30 minutes asking what all happens in an Indian wedding, and then very nicely said " so its just like the new Julia Robert's movie - Eat Pray Love" !!  Hmmm... baat to ekdum mast boli saale ne.. Lekin Eat Pray tak to sahi tha, wo love wali cheez 500 relatives ke beech me thodi mushkil hai :P

But i think thats the summary of only the wedding day, which according to me is the most boring part of the wedding! The real fun is during the preparations and other functions of the wedding! :D

Frankly speaking, i have not attended more than 2-3 weddings in my life where i have spent more than 2 hours on the wedding venue or lets just say during the entire wedding process..

Typically, we all just go to the weddings, eat a lot of snacks while chatting with the long lost relatives, rate the hot chicks from the other side on a scale of 1 to 10, wait for the bride-groom to settle on the stage, eat some stupid shahi paneer n dal makhani meanwhile and finally drop an envelope with some currency notes and a one rupee coin on the bride/groom's lap. And yeah, we also get a photo clicked for the records and then cite some stupid reason such as exam/office/meeting/blah to go back home and sleep!

But this time, i attended each and every function of my cousin's wedding. I was staying at their place only for most part of my trip! (I just missed one important function - ladies sangeet! Itni saari movies dekh dekh ke kitne armaan the chupke se ladies sangeet me ghusne ke.. but logistical issues .. uff :P )


Waise, being a dulha/dulhan is the most annoying and boring part of the wedding! Saala, aadhe time pundit Jee peeche pade rehte hain, aadhe time fotographers! Majority of the time, even the Pundits dont know what gibberish they are uttering in sanskrit!! Being such a holy saint, i spotted the pundit conning the poor people around on atleast 3 occasions!! The pundit started chanting a mantra, forgot the lines in beteween and then patched up with the ending sentences from some other mantra!! On top of it, on one occasion, he simply refused to chant anything and after every 10 seconds he used to utter "Swaha", where everyone jumps and throws some brown powder into the fire! He called it the Maun Mantra! (Silent chanting!) Liar! Bhulakkad!

I have always felt that weddings are a complete waste of time if you just wanna go n eat n come back. Isse better to shagun e-transfer kar do, petrol ke paise bhi bachenge! If you want to enjoy a wedding, its better to take a week off and enjoy the fun of each and every small small ceremony! (Like i did :P :P  )

Anyways, my small vacation to India is over and i am back to Romania :(  These 8 days passed so quickly! Pata bhi nahi chala! But the good part was that i witnessed first live snowfall of my life in Austria!! With the temperature falling to whopping minus 14 degrees!! Bolte bolte lag raha tha ki muh me baraf jam rahi hai :D :D :D

Chalo bhai, enough updates for the day, need to find some dinner for myself.. Adios!

If Only ...

Cherryjee has tagged me yet again! Grrr... Here is my previous list of Tags, most of the tags were inspired by her posts! (click here and then scroll down)

Whenever i visit her blog to check out her latest posts, my fingers start trembling, the dogs outside my home start barking, my pados wali aunty shouts nahiiiiiiii, the power goes off and boom! I find out that she has tagged me yet again ! I wish there was a employee harassment policy on the blog-world as there is one in the companies!

For those of you, who do not know what tagging is on the blog-world, here is a beginners guide! Whenever any blogger is sitting idle, jobless, homeless, blogging from some boring coffee shop in the down-town, he/she makes the list of most stupid questions in the world. He/She then posts them on her blog and writes his/her own answers with the questions, and then like a chain email, asks her/his friends to complete the tag (questions) on their own respective blogs OR ELSE he/she wont talk to them! Yeah, you guessed it right, these stupid tags are generally created by females!! If you did not reach that conclusion till now, wait till you read the questions!

This process is repeated thousands of times, till i take up the tag! People get so bored and frustrated by reading my answers, that they vow to kill the next person who even thinks about taking up that tag! :D :D

This tag is no different! Here the questions are "IF you were a month, number, color blah blah blah.. then what would you be????"! Oh dear God! By the way, if this blog ends abruptly, without me saying bbye, please run and call police, ambulance or whatever, and tell them that i got so bored that i committed suicide before completing the questionnaire :D :D :D

So it begins...

If i was a month it would be - April
How weird! Most of the single guys will write their own birth month as the answer; committed guys can not afford to have any other answer except the month of their GF's birth. :D .. And well, girls are always crazy, you can never predict their answers!! :P

If i was a day of the week it would be - Anything but Friday!
If you had asked me this question an year ago, i would have said Friday without even thinking! But now, there is hardly any friday when i go home on time! Either it is some client call with the client sitting in Amreeka or it is a client deliverable! And the icing on the cake is stupid TGIF status messages on everyones messenger!! GRRRRR!

If i was a time of the day it would be - 3.07 PM
Guru Furobiker always says - Don't ask stupid questions and you wont get any stupid answers! :P By the way, its the time of my birth! You guys also know my date of birth! So all you hot chicks out there, runnn and match your kundali with mine and let me know if our 32 guns match! :D :D (Oh, and if you are not hot, then dont bother :D :D :D )

If i was a season it would be - Winters
Two reasons! First, i love winters - they are lazy, i am lazy, so you can see the similarities! :P Secondly, most of my clients are either in Europe or Amreeka! And they all are busy celebrating Santa Clause's birthday or thanking someone or etc etc during the winters! Heeehawww! Much lesser work!

If i was a planet it would be - Pluto
A part of the universe, yet fighting it all alone!

If i was a sea animal it would be - Interesting! I wont be anything! But i am sure, all those 3 lakh and 47 thousand struggling actors running to Mumbai every year will write Paul Octopus as the answer to this question! Saala janwar hua to kya hua, itna bada break to mil gaya!!

If i was a direction it would be - Aage se left! Bas thoda sa hi aage hai!
I was in Goa some 3 months back and i observed this weird pattern. If you are driving and ask for directions, everyone (and by everyone i mean every sweet child, hot chick or old bastard) will say - Aage se left (go straight and then left). And when you ask how far should i go before turning left, they will answer - Bas thoda sa hi hai! (Just a little bit) !! God Damnit! Irrespective of the destination, their answer was always the same!! Either Goa is built like a circle, or the people over there only drink fenny instead of water.. :P

If i was a Liquid it would be - Beer !
Were you expecting any other answer???? Well actually this answer changes with age... If you ask a college going cool dude - his answer will always be BEER, with the exception of nerds and liars! After the kids grow up, and reach 25+ years of age, they start liking scotch/whiskey etc!

If i was a tree it would be - Corner wala tree!!
The way DDA houses in Delhi are built, each colony has a large entrance (for vehicles) and a small entrance (on some other side, generally for humans, cows and dogs) , and generally near the small entrance there is a large tree! If you were a curious kid and liked to wander sometimes in the colony even after dark, you must have seen some bhayyas and didi's coming back from the tution, and saying their good-byes for the day somewhere between that corner wala tree and the small gate! Yeah, that is where I saw first live MMS ! :D (Saala, kya kismt hai be us ped ki!! )

If i was a musical instrument it would be - Pungi!!
hehe, dont tell me you never heard of it! Govinda uses this dialogue in each of his movies - "Pungi baja doonga!!" :D Anyways, here is the wikipedia entry (click)

If i was a color it would be - Black
Ha! This question is typically either asked by desperate guys or all types of chicks! Why is everyone so crazy about colors? Its just red, blue and green! Rest all so called colors depend upon how many times the cloth has been washed! :D :D

If i was a sound it would be - The vuvuzela sound!! 
Cmmon! You guys have seen how weird is my choice is. I used to like Rakhee Sawant at a point in time! :P

If i was a food it would be - PARANTHA!!!!
Till about 6 months back, i used to eat paranthas in breakfast, lunch, evening snack and dinner! I can eat paranthas even after having  7 course meal!! Ha! Well, i dont eat so much paranthas these days :(  - Talk about health conscious mummies!!

If i was a pair of shoes it would be - Game over!!! No guy, however desperate and frustrated, can ever ask this question to another guy! Its in direct negation of the bro code!

Damn! What a stupid tag! Pheeew!