“I can’t even count how many women I’ve slept with”
:One of the female executives of a partner startup company as we exchanged notes on how in the early days of our companies we doubled up people in hotels/ on trips in order to save costs.
Monthly Archives: April 2002
Eavesdropped!
“It’s all about chicks man, it’s all about chicks”
:Random drunk guy in the back of a cab in Cambridge who motioned us to put the window down while I was parked next to the cab at a stop light so that he could tell us his deep thoughts!
Eavesdropped!
“Are you guys gay?”
:Roxanne. – okay, okay, there is no story behind that other than my friend who I was visiting happens to live in an area which is considered the gay-area (he claims he didn’t know before he moved there.. yeah right đ ) And so when his neighbor saw three of us guys returning late at night, she asked us… “Are you guys gay” (maybe I should also menion that she was so drunk that we were afraid she wouldn’t make it up the steps okay).
Keep your butts to yourself please, thank you!
Writing this blog as I sit at Starbucks by the window – unfortunately all the comfy chairs that I like are occupied and so this was the only alternative. Right on the other side of the glass pane, every so often there are people standing in order to smoke. It’s kind of ironic, since one of the things I had put on my list of things to bitch and moan about recently was smoking and smokers!
My grandmother used to smoke about two packs a day. My dad probably still smokes about two packs a day. So you would think that I would be used to smoking and that it wouldnât be that much of a bother. Having now spent close to the decade in the US where luckily there is some respect for non-smokers (unlike India, Europe and a lot of the rest of the world), my tolerance for smoke and smokers seems to be bottoming out.
This past weekend I was out with some friends for dinner and drinks to a bar where I literally had to leave my mouth open and breathe through my mouth because the smoke was making it impossible for me to breathe normally. But thatâs more me than the smoke or the smokers since Iâve realized that I actually cannot tolerate smoke more than a certain degree very well. My nose just doesnât think itâs supposed to function well in a smoky environment and contrary to the orders sent down to it from the brain, it just goes on strike.
But that said, I so have a basic problem with smokers. Why is it that smokers feel that it is their right to keep throwing their butts all over the damn place!? Regardless of how educated or well to do a person might be. When it comes to smoking, they seem to have no qualms about throwing their cigarette butts right where they are standing. Walk outside any building and you will see a collection or smelly cigarette butts all over the damn place.
Secondly, why is it that smokers thing that they are just so freaking cool⌠maybe they think that just because they smoke the exhaust of their lungs is sacred and thus it is their duty to make sure that they direct the âholy-smokeâ directly towards someone who isnât as lucky to be able to produce their own holy smoke.
Oh⌠and how can I not talk about the smell. The noxious smell of smoke in someoneâs breath or in your own clothes after youâve been to a smoky place. Ugh⌠disgusting. Whatâs especially bad is when the next morning, as you wash your hair you can smell the remnants of the previous nights smoky excursion.
You could take the most beautiful woman and all she has to do is put a cigarette in her mouth and start to light up and itâs an instant turnoff. (Ironically, I seem to see more women smoking than men these days)
My grandmom stopped smoking finally after a series of illnesses which required that she stop smoking. But I definitely didnât make it easy on her when she was smoking. Her birthday presents were usually little table-top placards with anti-smoking slogans on them. They said:
Kissing a smoker, is like licking an ashtray.
Kiss a non-smoker and feel the difference.
Cancer cures smoking.
Ahh⌠I guess Iâm done with my rant about smoking⌠Iâve had enough discussions with my dad over it, since I wonât go into his room any more when Iâm home, since it put plainly, stinks. I guess my only refuge will be when I eventually move to California where I can go to a bar and get a drink, without coming out smelling like someone sprayed hydrogen sulphide all over me and my clothes!
Resetting Expectations
One of the things that Richard Feynman mentioned in his anecdotes in Surely, Youâre Joking Mr. Feynman and What do you care what other people think? was to treat everything in life as an adventure and an experience. My guess is that in the heart of hearts Feynman was as much of a geek and an introvert as the next person and his telling himself to take everything in life as an experience and an adventure was his way of getting himself to do things which he would otherwise be hard-pressed to undertake.
This hasnât been the first time that I came across that concept. My momâs been tried to din the same thing into me for years now and one of the sayings in my school journal used to say: Life is an experience⌠live it. However, the concept behind taking risks and essentially doing things which would go against the grain of preserving oneâs image is something that definitely doesnât come easily to me.
People (including those close to me) have over the years developed expectations of how I act, behave and how I would react to things. But the truth is that the âexpectationsâ that they have developed are based on a façade and they really do not have any idea of how I would really react to behave under a given situation – especially if I wasnât always trying to live up to their expectations. My external reaction is often determined by what people expect of me in a given situation, and not what the nascent reaction would be. So itâs a catch-22. A chicken and egg proposition. People expect me to react a certain way and therefore I do thereby reinforcing their expectation of how I should be acting. The net result is that I often come of giving people the wrong impression of what I really want or think.
Recently, Iâve tried to make a concerted effort in order to do things which people would not normally expect me to do â because I believe itâs about time I stopped worrying about what other people expect me to do and instead do what I think and feel. Of course, thatâs a lot easier said than done – and every so often I find myself taking two steps forward and one step back and sometimes – one step forward and two steps back, because itâs not easy to reset expectations.
Blogging is simply one form of doing things which people would not expect me to do. I doubt anyone I know would have thought that I would go out and start publishing my thoughts in a public medium, let alone be talking about things which I do not even discuss with people in person (including this). The others Iâll refrain from mentioning here, since itâs something people will just have to figure out for themselves and some ⌠maybe not.