why?

Why is the amount of work inversely proportional to the number of days left to do it?

Me too Saina-chasing the feather

Past: December, 2006. Badminton tournament in ex-office. (too many exes in too many categories i say. tsk tsk! ) Me and my manager were thrashed all over the court by two huge and married ladies. Well, we were single then. Slim and trim, may i add and assumed we had a better chance of winning. Oh, they were merciless. One of our colleagues advised us and said, i told you guys to hit hard and high. It looked like you were showering flowers on them. We lost but, we decided in unison, to change the coach. :-)

Present: With my past experience of excellent sportsmanship, ladies and gentlemen, i played badminton the week before last and lost gracefully, with honour and consistency, in all matches that i participated. A colleague of mine gave her name but backed out in the last minute. i had metioned i would have been interested, so i was asked to stand in her place. M was my partner in the women's doubles. i went, encouraged by the fact that she has fractured her right ankle and me, my left. We limped together to the court and decided we would point out the cock (as we also call shuttles) to each other and play spot-the-shuttle.

We did not run at all, but made the other party run so much that we almost won the match. We lost 14-15. Then i partnered my current manager and participated in the mixed-doubles. This time, not only the opponents, but i made my partner also run around that it almost looked like we would win.
However, i suddenly remembered his feedback on appraisal that one needs to be consistent, and maintained it. We lost again. This time 12-15.

My partner M, went on to win many matches and reached the women's finals without running much. Many people wanted to act that they were all great players and stuck to the line, "i have not played for 5 yrs. i am out of practice etc" i stuck to, "if only i hadn't fractured my ankle" :-)

Going back

When shit happens, shit happens.

This was my general mood today and i was getting stressed out over small issues.

i thought i was having the most rough day. However, i somehow had the good sense to reach out to an ex-colleague and a wonderful friend. We work for competitors, but in the same campus. i joined her for lunch. i told her i think i could do with a drink. i was not lucky with the drink though she happily offered lassi.

When she introduced me to her colleague and we started talking about our old place, she said that it was an amazing place to work for and it was also because of me as i went out of the way to make the new joinees feel really comfortable. It is something which she learnt from me. Holy goodness, it came at a time when i needed the most that i even felt like crying. it was like the first drops of rain to my parched soul. Couldn't thank her enough.

mental note:

Reach out to friends. They'll never let you down.
A good conversation is sometimes even better than sex. (why i am writing this, i don't know)

amir khan-shah rukh khan

Wonder why the title? Will come there. i could have tagged along with S to the U.S. i didn't because i loved my job and it meant something to me. i was not working for the sake of money alone. i wanted to make a career out of it. i have put a little over 8 yrs to my profession. S got convinced by his management to get foreign exposure, and i didn't want to stop him, though we could still have a good life here.

Well, the appraisal feedback happened today, and for the first time in my life, i was not happy with what i got. i know your expectations and management's seldom match, but it wasn't even that. Worse is the cock and bull story later about you are technically reporting but not technically reporting to me. If you feel screwed, it is not me reassurance after the series of  you are doing greats.

Thinking that i have sacrificed my personal life for this makes me feel worthless.
Came back, ate potato chips and cried in that order. Tomorrow, i may see some sense. i know.

So, i want to feel important today and have this urge to show off my blog awards given by fellow bloggers. i had saved the images of some awards, but for some, i have forgotten who gave it. So, like Aamir Khan, i want to shun awards, but the Shah Rukh Khan (got the title?) in me is awakened and i want to display them. i know i had got some silly blogger award or so :-) . Please own up. Else, i am going to display whatever i like. i will derive some cheap pleasure out of it.

Bhagat Singh

The collegue said, "The page has become Bhagat Singh". She meant to say that the page got hung. Now, please go back to doing what you were doing before i start listing the movies that i have watched in the past 3 weeks. i watch a movie almost everyday.  i have a terabyte of movies. so, there...

I got a comment that it is not right to use his name like this as he was a freedom fighter. Perhaps, he is right. Maturity has never been my forte. I found it funny at that point in time and blogged. This is a case of technology controlling us you see. You hit Publish and pah, it is gone.

Stone, next post will be on movies.

random things

R and I joined the organization together. We met during induction and we hit it off from there. By the second day of induction, we became fast friends and we have remained so. I remember his shock and surprise when  my hand went up to the HR's call of people with above 5 yrs of experience. I told him, it is my 6th company whereas it was his 2nd. He dropped me to the auto-stand, all the while trying to get my age with questions about the year i passed out 10th, what is my total years of experience, and if i started working right after finishing studies etc? i told him i know what he trying to do, but played a woman to the hilt and did not tell my age.

Now, he knows my age. We catch up once in a while post-lunch and walk together. He told me he is quitting. R, i am going to miss you and that is why, this post is for you. We say we will keep in touch, but i know it is never the same. One of my ex-colleague and i work in the same IT park together. We were so excited to be working in the same campus (different companies) that we met up or lunch the first month i joined. After that, we have never met up. And it's been one and a half years now. Most of my team mates have also left. For a change, i am sitting back and watching. All this while, i've always been the one who left before the others did. :-)
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From the office bus, i saw a beggar at a traffic signal carrying an infant and an empty bottle of milk. Something tells me the infant is not her child. Any mother, no matter how poor wouldn't display the empty feeding bottle to beg. She would feed the baby with her own milk. She would do something. i don't know. i am disturbed by that sight.
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There was one scene in the movie, Paa. It was just about a minute or so. Vidya Balan as a doctor advises a couple in their 30s not to delay in having kids. Somehow it hit me hard. Looked like she was advising me and S. i am not confident that we are leaving a better world for the kids. hmph!

Sis is coming next month with my 7 month old nephew and 3 yr old niece. Let's see if they inspire.
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Mirror in the sky

"Oh, mirror in the sky...
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life" ~ Landslide, Dixie Chicks

Silent Eloquence completed 6 years of blogging. She was so happy that she got drunk and died. :-)

I went through a phase where I did not want to read blogs, did not want to write. One lesson is not to try blogging once in a month, but try to do it once a week atleast, so that even if you slip, you don't slip months together. A social networking site was partly the culprit and it behaved liked a Mister. What is a Mister? Well, if a married man can have a Mistress, can a married woman have a Mister? So, Silent Eloquence found a Mister in Facebook. An update here, an update there, a comment here, a comment there, boredom, boredom, and lo! I am back.

There are a lot of stories to be told, a lot of experiences to be shared. I am dwelling a lot into personal relationships these days. I am observing, searching and reading a lot about soul mates. Starting to believe it exits and happens for some people, if not for myself. Corporate life, the stressful deadlines, a lot of ambitious single women in their mid and late 30s, single mothers, married couples in late thirties still not sure about having kids, divorcees, married and looking, and a lot of lonely lives... I have met and worked with all of these and some more in this short career span. No, I am not saying these lives are ugly or distasteful. I am saying as is. Some of them are living, 'i am better off like this' happy lives. Once upon a time, it was a simple statistics, an article in a newspaper. Now, I am rubbing shoulders with these people. It is about the people I care about and share lunch with. It is about me and you. There are a lot of stories left in me to share, a lot of stories to be told and therefore, Silent Eloquence continues.

In the domestic front, woodworks are going on in our new flat. Loving every moment of it. Weekends are fully tied up due to this.

At the cafeteria and some hangover

At the cafeteria, I noticed a lady wearing a slogan T shirt. I nudged my colleague and said, “look at that”. My colleague asked me, “Is my bum as big as her’s?” Now, for opening my mouth, I was forced to compare and contrast two things, which were not objects of my desire.

Moral of the story: Be specific about what you are pointing out.

I will not talk about the movie, The Hangover. I am sure many of you would have already watched it or are in the process of downloading it. I am going to talk about the object of my attention, S’ hangover.

Once, we partied at a friends’ place. We normally stay back at their place or they stay back at our place if we drink at night. After downing some pegs of old monk and vodka and waxing eloquent on Richard Dawkins and Statistical modeling, S got up, washed his plate and declared he is sleepy and wanted to call it a day. Later, in the middle of the night, he cuddled up and asked me if he had dinner and what did we have for dinner. He knew that I was his wife (unfortunately! :-) ) and that we were at his friends place, but he had no recollection of events after the 3rd peg. It freaked me out. He came home and researched on the net to see if there have been similar cases, and some people wrote that they don’t remember what happened for 3 days at a stretch. In the movie, at least they were under the influence of drugs. I told S not to drink when I am not around and not to exceed 2 pegs.

Since this is my blog, let me stop with what I said/ordered/instructed and not add what he replied.