What is the deal with this?
People naming their children after countries. I happened to browse through a magazine in the doctor’s office, and there was some photo feature where the names leapt out at me- India and China!
What are they trying to signify here? That the girls are fertile and delicate?
How about Khazakstan? Or, for that matter, USA?
Sounds like my dad, who after his Masters in Chemistry, swore that he would name his children after names of chemicals. My dad insists if he had the chance to do that, we sure as hell would have been true to our names- Carbon Monoxide, Hydrogen Sulphide (rotten egg smell) etc.
On that high note, I adjourn for another day!

Traffic o traffic!

This Big Dig thing better be worth it.

It took me 2 hours to go 9 miles yesterday. Frustrating, to say the least. I could almost see the fumes arising from people's ears in each car. Everytime, I take the carpool lane when it's open, cos I figure that'll be faster, but yesterday, the carpool lane was the slowest. And it was almost like a punishment, cos I couldn't move over to the other lane. Why on earth would anybody build a median between the carpool lane and the other lanes? What is the point in a law abiding country like America? Stuck in the carpool lane, while I see other cars whizzing by. Of course, they had to stop too, a couple of hundred feet away. How on earth will I ever be encouraged to carpool again? All I can say is that the country has lost a potential carpooler forever. Take that, you Boston!!

Take the other main road- Massachusetts Avenue. With a city that boasts of Harvard and MIT, you'd expect better traffic rules. But Mass. Ave has turned into a case study of "how not to be", at least in my school of urban planning.

Firstly, it's not a straight road, but be as it may that 'straight' is not hip in Mass, that's pardonable. Then the signs for the road are all turned. So, at almost every intersection, you'll find Mass Ave turning left or right. And bcos it's entirely possible, you turn too, thinking street signs are supposed to, well, signify. But after a couple of blocks, you realize that it's not Mass Ave after all. So you figure you can make a couple of turns and get back on Mass Ave, right? That's where you'll be making a mistake.

After that one turn, you'll find a "Square", that has streets radiating from it in all directions, and none of them will indicate the whereabouts of Mass Ave. And bcos you'll be in the 'left only' lane, you will be forced by honking cars(really it's the driver that honks, right?) to turn left, and this is the only place in the world where a sense of direction is actually counter-productive.

If you had no sense of direction, you might bump into Mass Ave at some point. But if you did, you have a big problem. you think you know where you are with regard to Mass Ave, but Mass Ave is like one of those company secur-ID things, that change numbers every minute or so. It moves every 5 minutes or so. (That's probably MIT's contribution!) So while you steadfastly hold on to your notion of direction, and keep driving toward it, you're actually moving away from it- kinda like a desert oasis (I'm huge on similes today, aren't I?). And of course you cannot stop anywhere and ask for directions, cos parking is impossible.

If you finally get on Mass Ave, and try to get to your destination, there's a problem of what lane to stick to. The left lane is supposed to be faster, if only it weren't for those left-turning vehicles that switch on their indicators only in the last moment. And you're stuck behind that car, looking for a gap in the right lane to switch to, while people pass you looking at you like you're the greedy person who got his due. "Wanted to go fast in Boston, did you?" they seem to say.

Eventually if you do switch to the right lane, there's either 1) a bus, that stops at every block, or hundered feet, whichever is closer, or 2) a double parked vehicle, with a police man leaning on it and having a coffee(why don't these guys get tickets ever?- while I get tickets for every imaginable thing?). Of course, now the left lane zooms by, and there's no left turners. Why can't Mass Ave prohibit left turns? Beats me. Probably because there's no way then that ppl can get back on it, ever!

And in downtown Boston. You see huge signs for I-93 splashed over some construction thing happening. Come to think of it, I think anyone can just dig up a road, and put some kind of sign, and people would assume it's to do with the Big Dig. There might just be a lot of people doing that right now. Most of these sites are, I'm sure, doing nothing really. Just digging roads up and filling them back on.

Anyways, I follow the huge sign, and there's no sign of the Northbound I 93. I try all kinds of combinations, but absolutely not. Seems almost like a deliberate attempt to prevent people from going North. Just too frustrating.

And God forbid, you ask someone for directions. People in Boston only know the way from their home to their office, and wisely enough, they stay out of every other route in Boston. But ever helpful, they help you nevertheless, content that they have helped a person, cos they don't see you get lost just around the corner!

But a sign that is ever-present, and crystal clear, is the direction to the Airport! I was driving about 15 miles West of Boston, and I see a clear sign for the Airport- "Airport- Best Route" it said. And throughout downtown, I find nice clear signs for the Airport. Makes you wonder if it is a city policy to encourage people to leave the city? People might get so lost that they might just be like, "Screw it, I'll go to the place that has clear signs", pack their bags and leave. Infact, that might just work with me!!

Out of this World!

I was watching the movie, "The Candidate" (1972)yesterday, on Bravo. Was a great movie, and I remember my professor telling us about a similar documentary movie- "The War Room (I had to look this up on Google)". The prof. distinctly gushed about a scene where there is a lot of confusion regarding Chinese take-out. Now I saw a similar scene in "The Candidate." I don't really know what my point is, it was just very surprising. Perhaps the point is just that take out is very confusing, in general.

Oh! And it was the Apprentice Finale yesterday. Though they coated it in oodles of sugar, I think Bill won hands down. And I also think that the whole thing was rigged from the beginning. And reality shows are getting to be boring, especially the Bachelor kinds. I think people are sick of that, so unless something big comes up, the wave is going to subside pretty soon, and so the Networks better milk the audience out. One more problem with it is there's not much rerun value, as opposed to sitcoms like Seinfeld, which is on its 32nd rerun, with my husband just saying the dialogues along with the characters and refusing to watch anything else.

And we saw Spike TV the other day, the Star Trek series was going on. Forgive me, but I have never been a fan of it, and when you look at it objectively, you do feel that it's a stretch of your imagination. To watch these ppl with ape-ish masks and some markings on their nose and imagine that they are aliens? After ET, I guess all concepts of aliens changed, and I still think that it's our homo-sapieno centric view that makes us think that they will have a face, a body, and legs for locomotion. When they finally do arrive, they're going to be in a form that no-one ever imagined. Perhaps just a mouth (Wait a minute, sorry- that's my mother-in-law!), or just a rectangular block, or spherical (that WOULD be easy for locomotion).

That's my 2c on aliens. I guess I'll return when I actually have something to say!

Tax time!

Till this year, I had my friend do it all for me, and I got money back from the IRS. This year though, I got married. Seemed like a good thing, cos we would get some tax benefits(like my husband says, It's got to be worth something, right?), but the actual filing would be a nightmare, I guessed. Plus, my husband had never done his own taxes, but decided to take it on himself this year.

Regardless, one of his friends had the software required, and we were to go to his house to get it all done. We met him at the office, and tried to follow him to his house- my husband had sworn that he knew where the house was, anyways. In about a tenth of a second, we lost him. But of course, since we knew the way, we were fine, or so it seemed. So, we drove around for a bit, in what seems like circles, (but in Boston, even driving straight can seem like a circle) till we were on a straight piece of road.

We had ordered food from a Thai restaurant, and just passed it. Thought maybe the friend hadn't picked it up yet, and I went in. Confusion galore! There's like six feet by six feet of space, and about 10 tables in that space- not to mention the chairs. And the one thing that makes any situation terrible- a wailing child. The mother got up from the chair that she was sitting on, and spoke to some kid in a TShirt that looked important- the girl was bustling about like one of the surgeons on ER, shouting directions no one understood.

I had to approach her cautiously, when there was a pause of more than one sec, which took a while in coming, and asked her for my order. She looked straight ahead, forcing me to wonder if I was in some kind of weird "sixth sense"-ish situation. She took the order from the person behind me, and asked me to wait. Meanwhile, the wailing child woman had moved to the other side of the counter, identifying her as one of "them", and I wondered if I could approach her for my order. At that very moment, she gave a loud scolding to her little kid, that sounded like something I didn't want translated, and the kid shut up for a second. She was now holding the kid in a weird way, in an almost horizontal position, with one hand around the kid's waist. Now you know why they're so good at gymnastics!

Needless to say, I did not dare approach her for any reason on Earth, and I waited. Then, all the people had ordered but one, and the girl had gone inside to the kitchen a.k.a. main combat zone. A man took her place, and asked for my name, and looked around. My order was not there! The girl re emerged from inside, looked like she could not be bothered with such trivia, but such is life, looked at some papers, and said it was already picked up! This whole operation took about 10 minutes, and I ran to the car to tell my husband we could get going.

Now, one thing before the paragraph that follows- we are the last couple standing that do not have a cell phone, it seems. More on that later, though. Anyways, we had no cell phone, but of course my husband promised he knew the way.

So he asked me to look in the opposite direction for the house. I asked him if he knew the address, and in the usual way of men, he had no clue. Said he's been there many times, why would he need a number? So we looked on the left for a building that had some stairs leading upto a courtyard kind of place, in the dark, all we could anyway see were dark buildings, and .... numbers!

Anyways, we kept driving for a while, and then, just before a sign that seemed to me to say "Welcome to Connecticut", we decided that we had missed it. So, a left turn followed, and then the search began on the right side of the road. We passed by so many buildings, but none of them was it. Drove a while till we realized we were in Downtown by now! Round Three was extremely pathetic. We had people wave to us, recognizing us, it seemed. We had no way of asking anyone directions either, we had no number!

This time, I began to doubt my husband's memory. After all, it took him a while to remember my name right, was he really to be trusted? Now, we started looking in both directions, as neither of us were sure. After passing the Thai place a couple of times, this time we drove slower. Almost right by the Thai place was the apartment! Wrong side of the road, but with the Big Dig you never know! They might have changed it overnight!

We rang the bell for his apartment, and got his machine! After leaving a couple of messages, we thought of going back to near the Thai place, to make a call to his cellphone. I completely refused to go, and my husband walked away. After what seemed like forever but was only 5 minutes or so, I make a call again, and got the friend this time, who let me in. I walked up to the apartment, hungry as a dog. The friend's roommate was on the phone, so prolly didn't get our messages!

Now some people are just not made for call waiting. My parents hate it, cos my mother says she gets totally confused, and my dad says he hates asking another person to stay on hold(but actually doesn't understand it either). Some people love call waiting(like me)- people who love having two callers at the same time to feel important, even if both of them are telemarketers! Some people just ignore call waiting on others' phones, and use it diligently on their own phone. What possible importanter call could this guy have? could be the scary reasoning here.

The actual tax filing, in fact, went without much of a hitch( by our standards, that is!).

Monday. And the clock has turned forward one hour. It just seemed like a grand scheme to me, perpetrated by America to confuse the living daylights out of the Axis Powers! This article , though, says that Germany started it all, and going by the popular belief that Germany started everything evil in this world, that's a possible theory too. "Now the sun will rise one hour later", says the article. Are we megalomaniacs or what? We think that by turning forward our clocks, we make the sun rise later?
And the lament of time lost. Do we ever praise daylight saving because we gain the same time in October? We moan then that our sleep cycle is all screwed up! I think that we, as a nation, are a nation of moaners. Take the weather, for example. People who have lived here all their lives will still talk as if the snow is an entirely new concept to them. "More snow? When will it all end?" they groan. Every year is the worst, and that perfect weather that we dream of, probably occurs for one day a year. Come summer, and we are content( not happy, mind you) for a month at the most. Then come the groans about the heat. "It's so hot, we could fry an omlette on our doorstep." "It's so hot, the poor guy with glasses had his eyes burnt by the sun." We delight in such statements, and yearn for colder weather.

Fall is then as pretty as ever, but fall is too short most of the years. "Just 2 weeks was fall last year", I heard someone say," We didn't even have time to admire it." Now I may be a freak, but how long can you see pretty colors? For a week, really? It's all yellow and orange, nice, but then what? You can take the pictures of a lifetime in two weeks. But then, I am an apartment dweller, and we are a different species altogether.

But summer is a great thing. Like they say, you can never admire the Democrats unless the Republicans are in power once in a while. So, we have to take the bad weather as a Bush term.

To welcome summer, we went to the Reebok Outlet store on Sunday, where a friend had an employee discount of 40%. We go to the store, and see a buy two shoes, get one free sale that's going on. Each of us had to have at least two pairs, you could never beat this price! Between all of us, we had 6 pairs of shoes(some of us were a bit consevative), and assumed that we would have the 40% over the shoe sale. After an hour of figuring out what pair of pair of shoes need to be clubbed together to get a maximum discount(that is a major calculation, mind you, what with a shoe of $15 threatening to bring down our profits drastically), we finally figured it all out, and were at the counter.

These discounts are extremely mind boggling, and I propose a software that would automatically calculate the permutations and combinations, and would give us the cheapest price. As I write this, in fact, I am increasingly sure stores have that already, and we were just wasting all of that precious time trying to figure it out!

The sales clerk made the disclosure that we were being too greedy. We would get either the employee discount, or the offer. Now began another round of calculations. The poor sales clerk was looking at us, trying to get us to finish our complex problem, and as we were nearing a solution, I saw a woman holding a pair that looked so much superior to what I had picked up. I asked my friends to wait, but was rudely rejected. This interruption had caused them to miss their count, though, and they had to start all over again.

Finally, though, we went with the employee discount, and walked out of the store, happy that we had bought things we totally did not need for the cheapest possible price!

Today has been raining constantly. Very boring. I drove to Rose's, all the while trying to minimize wiper use. We just changed it, and the mechanic told us that the new wiper came with a life of about a million wipes? I thought a million was a huge number, but let's see. Some math here:
With the normal setting, one sec would be one wipe. 1,000,000 wipes= same secs.= that's just about 278 hours. That's just 11.68 days! If I drove in rain for that long, I'll have to replace my wipers? When my mechanic said it, he made it sound like I'll never have to replace this forever! And if it's heavier rain, then the fast setting would be even more than a wipe a second. And I don't even know if a wipe consists of a to and fro motion or just a to or a fro.

Anyways, tried to use it on INT for as long as I could, but soon had a near hit with a garbage truck (with Rose in the car, mind you). She gave out a long aaaaaah and clutched her purse, closed her eyes, and held her emergency locket (the thing she would press for emergency to arrive) with her other hand! With these responses even meditating might seem violent! So I had to give up the wiper use frugality.