The Vote of Confidence motion held today in parliament is perhaps the best reality show I ever saw maybe even comaparable to a blockbuster Movie. It had everything, harassed hero with an anguish that would put Al Pacino to shame (PM Manmohan who else), protagonists with shades of grey (Amar Singh and Sonia Gandhi may have bought MPs) , villains with softer side(Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat and Advani standing by each other in defeat albeit weirdly ) ,comedians ala Lalu Prasad, accusations of bribery , sensationalism , climax , anti-climax. If anything our producers should hang their heads in shame and learn something from the rivetting drama that the House of Commons provided everyone today.

I was sitting in my office doodling along trying to pass time occasionaly checking IBNlive for updates on the vote drama. By a chance of fate I talked to Sharda about something that he was doing and he mentioned that there was live streaming on from the site. Well I put my certificate of Internship on the line to watch this debate as its srictly banned to watch videos at work. Anyways it was all worth it as we watched it we got some cameos as well , anyone saw Govinda and Siddhu among the crowd. I saw Manmohan getting booed with cries of “pradhanmantri istifa do ! istifa do !” , I heard Lalu crack the house up with analogies of gaushala and Rakshasas , I saw Rahul Gandhi trying very hard to come across as a politician (it didnt help that he was being booed and gave up after narrating some half baked story of Kalavati , Roopwati…) , and I saw Chindambaram talking in esoteric economic terms which was a clever strategy since he wasnt really booed because nobody really understood what he meant, and in the end he quickly endorsed the nuclear deal before the LEFT and BJP could boo him.

Oh and then there was the usual Item dance with 3 MPs dancing down the House’s alley with about a crore rupees singing “Bech diya Bech diya Amar singh ne mujhe Deal bech diya” (try singing it like a bhojpuri song you will get the joke) . Well soon it was time to vote but being the illiterate sons of bitches they are, 57 MPs couldnt even manage to vote by pressing a single button for 10 seconds. I mean how difficult is it really to choose one button from three and press it for 10 seconds to register your vote. Of the 487 that did know how to use their finger apart from counting the notes , 253 were for and 232 against. Smiles all around UPA as the Oppositions faces fell. Then there were those who were left wishing they should have been on Sonia’s side and knew they had made a mess of a perfectly good chance (Deve Gowda and Ajit Jogi).

But wait there is still hope for the opposition as the idiot 57 want to vote manually. As a nation held its breath again the results came after half an hour. It was offcial , 275 against 256 , Govt won. As the credits rolled we saw the trailer of the sequel with Amar Singh lashing out against Advani and setting the stage for another blockbuster in the making. Review this Masand and I will personally kick your ass if you give it less than a FIVe.

Update - For all those fools rejoicing (including me) over Singh’s Victory here is some potentially upsetting news. The rupee has risen against the Euro and now stands at 65.34 . Why does Indian Economy choose such an inoppurtune time to stablize. :(

So I start my monday morning in typical fashion, getting up late, not taking a shower , missing breakfast and landing semiconcious  in my office atleast 2 hrs late. Nothing wrong with it except that my supervisor assumes its time for bigger and better challenges. So I am assigned some obscure polygon program to incorporate into my simple little matlab algo and ofcourse I try putting it off as late as possible. Everytime my sup. asks , I start blabbering incoherent but intelligent sounding doubts. Until wednesday when I make the first mistake, I take a day off and forget to inform her. In the evening I get a email from sup. asking about my whereabouts and I arrive next day telling her that I had cold. Actually I was lazy that day, but I guess lazy doesnt sound that convincing as a sickness(which it is). So anyway I again put off the work till afternoon which is when the sup. asks me if I want to take some days off (the post below) and I feel that this is a sign that I dont need to work anymore. Then on friday she asks me to show her the nonexistant program which I was suppossed to work on all week and declares that she wants to see some results soon. Hey what about the holiday you were suggesting yesterday ???

Confused I hop on a train and go to Berlin, where I meet some friends. Awesome hosts as they show me around the city, take me to a disco , click my pictures and you know usual stuff. For good measure they also get me fined for 40 euros as THEY assumed I could travel on their ticket in the local train. I leave on sunday feeling lighter after paying for the German Trip and consequently arrive late again to office on Monday. This is when my sup. declares I should positively show her the program by thursday (i.e tomorrow) which I have yet to start on seeing as I am working on this blog now.

I guess now my Eurail pass will go to waste, first of all everywhere I go my family insists I bring back pictures…. guess they want proof that I am actually there. Plus I have already paid 80 euros in fines for no mistake of my own (both times illiterate friends did me in). And now I am recieving deadlines

Well thats all right now, seeing as I have a deadline to keep . I tried to be funny but when you have a week like mine its hard to extract humour out of loosing 80 euros and getting notices on work.

There are few times in my life when I have been left absolutely speechless, the first one was when I got up to the stage for a debate competition, second when I realized my hair are turning grey , third when I discovered  who killed JFK and fourth was today when my Sup. dropped this line on me out of the blue. “I think you should take some days off for travelling Europe to make your trip more worthwhile”. I was so dumbfounded that I remained standing blocking the lift door and almost causing a fire alarm drill for the whole building.

By the time I had convinced myself that this is not reality TV and there were no TV cameras lurking around the corner watching me getting Punked, she was gone and I forgot to ask for some more travel money… if she is in such a giving mood I might as well extract more out of my internship I have already talked to Choco asking for his advice on how to go about it , yes Choco is the guy who wrote a book on “How to squeeze your Sponsor Dry “. So wish me luck as I try some of his time tested strategies on my Sup. tomorrow.

If you scroll down a bit and see the lowest widget on the right hand side of this page, you will notice I keep a Cluster Map of Visitors to this site. It shows from which part of the world are the readers accessing my blog. Now I say accessing because presuming that they are reading it might be assuming too much. Nothing really high tech about it, you just have to sign up and give your URL to these people who then track the clicks from around the world.

But its a very satisfying application to say the least. There is nothing like the feeling that not only your gtalk contacts(its pushed down their throats by yours truly) but other people too are actually enticed by this crap. Some might just have stumbled here by accident only to make a hasty retreat, others I guess are lured by the trap of protected posts with the help of an magnanimous friend (read Pande ji) publicising it on their page. Coming back to the map, yeah as you can see I am very papulaar in Europe , well Intern season has its advantages. And thanks to those who are reading this in USA and Canada. Yours truly has also made a foray into the middle east with atleast one reader in Dubai(Sheikh Sanganee), India is expected as most of the friends are there. Down Under there are some poor souls who I guess have nothing better to do and then there are the islanders from Singapore and surrounding areas. Now for the surprise visits - Atleast one Chinaman and two Pakistani guys have paid a visit here.

As of yet the Africans, South Americans and New Zealanders havent bothered. But I hoping they will come around as Good Posts attract Good readers, Crap attracts everyone.

Yes I know I surprised a whole lot of people including myself by scoring well in GRE. It was one of those moments when the computer understood my hidden brilliance unlike in the CS lab where the machines were bent on proving me a retard. So for all those mugging and prepping and slogging their asses off for this exam I will take a well deserved rest from my intern to poke fun at you. Read the next few points in total silence and remove all harmful objects within your reach, otherwise you might end up hitting the poor machine.

1. If you have never read more than 15 books other than your course books, you should drop the idea of GRE altogether. I am telling you now what your Dad will tell you after you give the test “What a f***ing(1) waste of money”.

2. If you think with 3 months of mugging up of 3500 words you will end up with a good score*(2) think again shithead. The real preparation starts after you know the usage of atleast 2000 of them and know the meanings of the rest. For the proper usage you should have developed a reading habit back when you were in 8th class or sth started from enid blytons and moved on to the serious stuff gradually. Now its too late. Refer to last line of Rule 1.

3. You think that by doing the high frequency wordlist you can manage a decent score. Hey even the test experts from Princeton Review and Kaplan say that. Well sorry to break your bubble but that is meant for retard american kids who want to improve from 700 to 900 or 1000 and can probably afford to go without scholarship. You, my friend, are advised to pull your pants down, stand on the street corner and bend over if you love getting screwed so much, which is what is going to happen to you on the test day.

4. In the rarest of rare circumstances by a quirk of fate or by hidden genious, you do actually manage to learn all the 3500 words, well rejoice, take a break before the test day and enter the test hall only to realise the first word you get is not from Barrons (this can happen as the list is not exhaustive). What happens next- you start sweating, loose your nerve and end up wasting too much time in guessing and screw it all up. Again Refer to last line of Rule 1.

So you see , pretty much anything you do is redundant at this point of time. And for those of you headed to my home to beat the shit out of me, relax. This post has been written from the nuetral territory of Nederlands. Best of luck for your test

* 1- insert uck in place of ***

2- good score can vary from person to person based on how low you think of yourself. I think 1450 is a good score.

I am sure you are all familiar with those days where yawns and constant need to surf the net overcomes your hardworking self. But if you are in a place where there is constant monitoring of your actions and there are people around you who might rat you out, chances look grim , dont they? Well not anymore. Here are some of my well researched and tried out formulas that could be carried out with reasonable rate of success anywhere in the world except maybe In Langley

1. Dont surf porn. What else is left then , I hear some of you ask. well plenty , and you should maintain atleast some semblance of decency !! you perverted minds..

2. While Chatting, always make a sombre face or a straight one. Frequent smiles and real life impersonations of LOL and LMAO are not going to help you cover your indiscretions. Reason is simple enough…. if you are working , you should be looking sad…

3. Always keep multiple windows open, preferably one in which you actually surf and others which are related to your work. A ratio of 4:1 is a must and 6:1 is recommended. This way your supervisor can get fooled and chances are he wont see the one window where you are surfing for jokes.

4. If you are given free coffee , then take frequent coffee breaks but not very long ones. 15 minutes on one break is ideal, more than 20 and you are on the radar. If you are still lazy , interspread your coffee breaks with toilet breaks. Say 2 coffee breaks and 2 toilet breaks in 2.5 hrs and you have effectively wasted 1 hr out of 2.5. 40% efficiency , not bad eh..

5. Never sit idle , twiddling your thumbs, leering at your female co-workers or just staring at the ceiling. No matter what, your hands should always be on the keyboard or drawing some doodle on the pad but never idle. Sitting idle can fast track your way onto the HR radar and you might find yourself answering some uncomfortable questions.

6. Take long Lunches. Start prepping yourself for the lunch 10 minutes before the actual time (you know , scratch your tummy , take a dump to rid yourself of the breakfast… those kind of things).

7. Dont sit around gossiping with co workers. Your aim is to waste your own time not others. Let them struggle with their own time, while you take advantage of this post. Read blogs, best substitute for books. Read online newspapers , read their editorial discussions , messages from the readers , if interested add your own comments. However is news aint your thing , there are plenty of tabloids to scourge on the net. You can read the latest paparazzi shit on celebrities and wonder how they can be so stupid.

If you have more of these , let me know. I am always on the lookout for new innovations