Become a Java expert and you will lose all ur hair and here I break the record for giving the saddest titles!! :P

1. I attended a lecture on Java today in office. There were four people who took the session and my net learning has been
a). The net total of all the hair on all the four men's head = hair on one half of my head
and if u have seen me you will know how little that is!! :P
So,
net learning: Never become an expert in Java. You will lose all your hair

2. Volunteered and attended Swabondhini's annual day as usual this weeknd . It came at the right time and gave me the much need perspective that i need in life right now. For the whole of last week i was wallowing in self pity and asking profound questions like "Why does shit happen to me always" and generally going around keeping a face like a dead duck. After Saturday's event I am like "I have a great set of friends, a decent job, a great family, hell i have arms legs and a brain that functions ok" and i have been trying my level best to not keep a face like a dead duck.
P.S: if my natural face is like that of a dead duck, its hardly my fault, dont u think?? ;-)

3. Saw Evam's play "Who murdered Hamlet" on Sunday and my admiration for Evam has increased exponentially. I am amazed at the amount of talent these guys possess, the absolutely brilliant sense of humor, the unbelievable energy they exude on stage and their ability to weave humor into the most mundane of things/topics/current affairs. I mean they are such naturals. Their performances are spontaneous, not rehearsed and the way they blended current affairs into it was just brilliant. But i have completely forgotten the original hamlet after watching Evam murder Hamlet!! :P

4. My cousin S had his 9th birthday on Sunday and we got him a nice red flashy bike. the thrill and joy which you see on a 9 year old's face when he beholds the bike for which he has been waiting for a long time is just priceless. He kept going to the balcony every 5 minutes till he feel asleep to see if his bike was alright and if someone was touching/fingering it and going "Deiii, Adhu yen bike. Kai vekkadhe, pakkadhe, moochu vaangadhe etc" while we looked on in amusement. Now all of a sudden he has problems with his old bike. Its small, the brakes are sad, the seat is torn etc etc.

Elder Sisters - Bah!! :-\

So the other day my sister called me and went

Preethi: Yaar Shruthi, Karthik India aa raha hai.

Me: ahaan!! good. Yeh karthik kaun hai?

Preethi: what?? I cant even recollect the number of times i have told you about karthik. Why are u behaving like Lord Emsworth. Next you will probably ask yeh Preethi kaun hai. sheeeesh!!

Me: Preethi. Is it a crime to not know who Karthik is. Bata na.

Preethi: Arey appa's mother's sister's son's son who stays here in Dubai very close to my place. K and I hang out with him and his family mostly

Me: ohh ahhh!

Preethi: he is coming to india

Me: mmm hmm.

Preethi: I want some stuff

Me: ohhh!! who is going to give it to him?

Preethi: Errrr. i sort of thought you would

Me: Like hell i will. What do u want, where does he stay and when does he leave? I will try and give it to him this weekend

Preethi: errr. He is leaving on Friday and he lives in Kodambakkam

Me: Friday?? thats like day after. no way man. Work is shit in office. Its been ages since i saw sunlight. I reach home at 9 everyday. there is no way i can go to Kodambakkam and give this stuff to him. Kodambakkam!! Sheeesh!! Thats soooooooo far. I dont even have a vehicle. I might as well courier it to Dubai. What do u want that is so important?

Preethi: Errr. I want some coffee powder.

Me: what??? You want me to go all the way till Kodambakkam for 1 kg of coffee powder. Hah!! NO way!!

P: Please yaar. Its been 2 months since i last tasted coffee. (Putting on a voice not unlike Lalita Pawar in all those movies where she plays the hero's mother and goes "Cough Cough Betaaaaa mujhe bahu ka moo dikha de phir mai khushi khushi yeh duniya chod ke chali jaoongi")

Me: Whatever happened to Nescafe, Bru etc

Preethi: Ewwwwww. You know how much i hate instant coffee. I want filter coffee. Proper Leo Coffee shop coffee powder put inside a filter with hot water around 100 degrees temperature poured over it and percolating to give the sexiest aroma ever. mmmm

M: there are children in Somalia who havent seen water/food for ages and you want coffee shipped to Dubai!! Sheeesh!! Talk about insensitivity!!

P: please yaar

M: Abey!! why dont you ask karthik to buy coffee powder. I am sure there is a Leo Coffee shop in Kodambakkam.

P: Chiii. accha thoda na lagta hai. Doesnt look nice. He has come to India on a flying visit and how can i ask him to buy me coffee powder, chilly powder, paruppu podu, vetthakozhambu and all that.

M: Its just coffee powder yaaar!! Eeeeeeeee!! I am not going!!

P: Please Shruthi. How many times have i taken you to the movies, played badminton with you, spoken to so many relatives, lied for you, not told amma about the time when you...

M: STOP!!! what else do u want

P: Thats more like it.!! Hmmm some idly podi...

M: Yeah ok. Will do!!

P: Aur Shruthi

M: hmmm

P: Dont go empty handed yaar. buy something for them go. Accha thoda na lagta hai. They are doing us a favor and you go empty handed

M: Sighhh!! Ok. Shall i buy fruits?

P: Fruits?????? Eeeeeee!! Dhadhi!! Buy some mixture and some sweet from Grand Sweets or something.

So today morning i woke up at a godforsaken 5.30 to go to Kodambakkam and give Leo Coffee Powder and Idly podi to my cousin for my sister who doesnt like to drink instant coffee and only likes filter coffee if the coffee powder comes from a certain Leo Cofee Shop in Adyar, the water is set at 100 degrees centigrade and percolated for exactly 7 minutes and 20 seconds!!And oh yeah!! I did buy something from Grand Sweets. Khali haath jaana accha thode na lagta hai!!

Sisters!! BAH!!! :-\
Sisters living outside India - Double BAH!!

Thanks!! :)

The other day i got a mail from one of the readers of my blog saying

Hi Revs,

Recently I had been to Los Angeles and visited this famous Chinese Theatre where you have hand and foot prints of many Hollywood actors.
Well I took this photo of George Clooney's hand and foot prints. Just after taking the photo the first person came into my mind was you :) (don't know why :D ) so thought of mailing it to you.
Not sure whether you will like it or not :)

Keep blogging :)

Regards,
Chintan

and he sent me the following pic



I couldnt stop laughing. and after reading his mail i had this faint hope that if my love for clooney had reached los angeles, the day isnt far when it will reach hollywood and Georgie will come and ask for my hand in marriage after acknowledging my true love for him!! :P

Here i am on Gandhi Jayanthi - a national holiday, sitting in office handling them null pointer exceptions, waiting for them SQL queries to run and fixing them javascript errors but life doesnt seem all that bad.
Thanks Chintan and be rest assured that i LOVED the pic!! :D
Now i have something to worship!! :P

I am in love - Yet again!! :)

I have to stop doing it. I seem to be doing it on a regular basis now. I really really must stop falling in love. I seem to be falling in love so frequently that if I increased the frequency the shiv sena men would come and get me. At any given point of time I am love with at least 5 different people. Even as I type this I realize that I am falling love yet again!! In the past one week following are the people I fell in love with.

1. I fell in love with my 7 year old cousin. After a long time because of him I laughed at something totally silly.
Now my cousin Siddhu (short for Siddhanth) and I are the only people in my house who crave to have a dog in the house and the other day we were having a discussion as to what we would name the dog, if we ever had one.

Me: Siddhu nu koopadalam - *giggle, giggle*

Sid: shruthi (me) nu koopadalam - *giggle giggle*

Me: hey ile na andha doggie a “Shruddhu (shruthi + siddhu)” nu koopadalam. *guffaw*

Sid: idhu nalla name a irruku aana paathu shruddhu nu koopta approm adhu buddhu aaida poradhu.

Now this was such a lame joke but believe it or not Sid and I laughed for 10 minutes continuously as if we had cracked the funniest joke of the year or something. If someone else had cracked the same joke I would have gone "Soooo lame!! Hmph!!" but that day I was really proud of us.

2. I fell in love with my 5 year old cousin Arya when she called me the other day and said "I love u shruthi" her voice dripping with an innocence and genuineness which only a 5 year old is capable of. Not a day goes by without me wishing "I wish they were here in India". I hate having to see them grow up in photographs.

3. Even as I write this I am falling in love with my sister because she just called me and said "hey I have made ur favorite adai for dinner. So u better come home tonight. We will rent a movie and pig out in front of the TV". I love her adai’s and I love watching a movie with her because every time we start to watch a movie I fall asleep half away and she gets totally irritated. :D. I think the only movie for which both of us dozed off was khoya khoya chand. SAD movie!!

4. I fell in love with an auto fellow two days back because he actually charged less that I expected him to, to reach a particular place. It is a pleasant surprise when u brace urself to bargain and fight and then realize that he has actually quoted less that what u had in mind.

5. I fell in love with myself (yeah guys!! This one is really important. It is very important that u love urself if u want the world to love you. Never fall out of love with urself.) when a little something I wrote for someone’s birthday made that person really happy.

6. I almost constantly fall in love with people who say nice things about me or write nice comments on my blog. (yeah!! I know I am shallow. :P) but every time some one writes something as simple as "hey!! Nice blog" or something I find myself falling in love with them. Lol. I have a really really weak heart!! :P

7. I fell in love with this friend of mine when I re-read THIS blog which she had written about our life in college. I miss college more than anything or anyone else right now. :(

8. I fell in love with a team mate of mine after she came and told me "hey I found a couple of defects in ur code. They were minor so I fixed them on my own. Am not logging them for u". Such an angel she is!! :)

9. I fell in love with George Clooney (yet again!!) when I saw ocean’s twelve last time. How can that guy be so criminally good looking even at the age of 50?

10. I fell in love with P G Wodehouse (yeah!! I know he is dead) after I read pigs have wings yet again last week and laughed till my sides hurt.

So as u see in the past one week I have fallen in love with so many people and so many times that u can imagine the number of people I would have fallen in love with in the past 21 years. I am worried that if ever I get married and my husband asks me "so, have u had any past relationships?" I wonder what I will say!! :P

Jokes apart. Right now I am totally in love with life and seem to be falling in love with everything and everyone. I love this phase in my life. I love writing about it, I love being able to write about it, I love the fact that I always seem to have a smile on my face, a song on my lips and a spring in my step. I love feeling useful and being able enough to help someone I don’t know. I love the fact that I have just enough time to do everything I like to do, I love the fact that I am getting to spend quality time with my friends, I am also glad that it has been more than a month since I had a fight with my mom. I love it all!! I feel free, I feel liberated, I feel sooooo good!!! :)

Of Sisters and Brothers in law who love to feed me!! :P

I am dreading going to my sisters place nowadays. Why you ask? Well let me explain. Now I have relatives all over Chennai. Like I was telling a friend of mine the other day, if u stumble and fall in Chennai you will either fall over a software professional or a member of the natraja iyer or gopalakrishna iyer family. Name the place in Chennai and I have relatives there. Thiruvanmiyur - Yes, mandaveli – Yes, T.Nagar – Yes, Adyar- infested, velacherry- Yup, kodambakkam – oh yeah, besant nagar – yeah. You get the drift? And all the members of the natraja iyer and gopalakrishna iyer families have one thing I common. They love to feed people. All of them have two passions in life. To eat and to feed. Which is why I avoid going to their houses because all of them love me and the amount of food they give me is directly proportional to their love and the amount of food I eat is proportional to my size.

For example lets take my grandmother. My grandmother spends all her waking hours deciding what to cook. The minute she finishes making lunch her concern is “Tiffin ku enna pannalam”? The minute the tiffin menu is decided it becomes “rathri yenna pannalam”. It’s a long vicious cycle. My grandmother thinks that every problem in life can find its roots to food. She believes that if hunger is wiped out in this world all the problems would disappear. If given a chance she would probably call osama bin laden home for lunch and feed him because I am sure she thinks he goes around bombing world trade centers because he is hungry. I am serious. There are times when I am really angry/sad/pissed about something and she goes “pasi naala dhaan unnaku kovam varadhu. Iru thayir sadam kudukaren” (you are angry coz u r hungry. Wait I will get some curd rice for u). anyway she is a darling and her food would give the best chefs in this world a run for their money and I don’t complain and if u look at me u will realize that I have done more of eating than complaining.:P

Anyway after my sister got married I decided I would give her and her husband (lets call him K) the pleasure of having my company. I had my own ulterior motives. I knew that if I had to reduce weight it wouldn’t help if I went to any of my other umpteen relatives’ place. My sister I decided wouldn’t be that great a cook (Big Mistake on my part) and hence my decision to grace their house with my presence. Coming to the essence of this post I have decided to stop visiting my sister’s place because she has started proving it is the blood of natraja iyer and gopalakrishna iyer that runs in her veins. And as if that’s not enough she has also started influencing K. Not only has she started cooking well but she has also donned role of a mother hen whose sole purpose in life is to feed. My sister and BIL do not have any children yet and they seem to be practicing with me. “Feed your sister and u will feed ur children well” seems to be their motto. With 0 exaggeration (stop rolling ur eyes!!) this is what happens everyday when I visit them

8.00 in the morning

K: hey shruthi. What do u want for breakfast?
Me: Errr.. I think I ll just grab something in office
Sis: no no. I know u wont eat anything. I will make some oats for you

Now there is nothing in this world I detest more than oats because 1. it is healthy and 2. it is white (I hate all white things. Milk, oats, vanilla ice cream etc)

Me: Please no.!!
K: nothing doing. Oats it is. And u must have lots of fruits along with it.
Me: hmmm can I just have the fruits alone
Sis: oats will help u lower ur cholesterol, prevent diabetes, blah blah

She will make a very good mother and will make some poor kid’s life hell I decide.

Me: ok. But just make me a little.

After some time my sis comes carrying this 2 litre vessel full of oats and places it before me
Me: Hmmm. U guys take ur share. I ll eat the rest
Sis: (giving me a puzzled look): our share?? THIS is ur share. Ours is in the kitchen!!
Me: What??????????? You expect me to eat this huuuuuuge bowl full of oats? What do u take me for?? A pregnant elephant who needs her nutrients???
K: hey wait!! I haven’t added the fruits yet.
Me: (voice sharp with sarcasm which is wasted on K of course): only apples? U don’t have oranges or bananas??
K: oh yeah we do. We even have pomegranates.

"Just wait" he says and cuts half a banana, half an apple, half an orange and half a pomegranate and empties into the bottomless chasm also called a bowl of oats. And after that both of them hovered over me till I finished (yeah!! I did finish. I couldn’t flush it into the loo with both of them watching and fussing over me) the entire bowl.
The same procedure was followed for lunch and dinner where for lunch a plate full of bisibelebath (it could easily have been used to feed 5 children for 2 days in Somalia.) + curd rice was forcefully shoved down my gullet by a very loving sister and BIL and for dinner I was again lovingly fed 5 aloo paranthas (no kidding!!) with curd and after that my sister complained that I wasn’t eating what she cooked and being disrespectful. At this statement of hers I was even afraid to stare open mouthed for fear of the fact that they might push some food down my open mouth thinking I am hungry.

So there you go. I have decided that I must make my visits to my sisters place infrequent if I am to keep alive my hopes of reducing my weight.

P.S: Preethi and Kishore – if u guys are reading this u KNOW how shameless I am. U KNOW that tomorrow this time I will probably be at home telling u guys that I am hungry and want food. So though I KNOW you guys wont mind me writing this post, this is just to tell u that u guys are the best!!Love ya!! Muah.:) . and before they throw me out of blogger for such obscene public display of affection I will stop this post!!! :)