Coked to the Gills

It's been a while since I traveled to Corvallis. As I am thinking this, a crisis pops up and I am called to jet across the world to help with it. I pack my bags. The wife is also going to be travelling to LA later this year. She shows me her itinerary. She is going for a three day conference and her whole trip will last thirty days. She is spending the rest of the time visiting with friends and hiking the trails. Not a bad plan, I think and a germ of an idea begins to form in my mind. I work in a week’s vacation and start planning for a road trip. But more about that later.

My flight takes me through Dubai. The first leg is short and sweet. Dubai to Seattle is the long leg of over 14 hours. I am in 39C and I squeeze in. The seats seem to be getting smaller each time I travel or maybe it’s just my gut which is getting bigger. I am seated next to a strange guy. I try to think of what is wrong with him and it suddenly hits me. He is built upside down – his feet smell and his nose runs.  I wait for the liquor service to start. Thank God for small mercies. I quickly get drunk. To sit next to this guy for any length of time, drunkenness is absolutely mandatory.

I land in Seattle to good weather. The temperature is exactly half of what it was in Bangalore although it is sunny. This is a welcome relief from the sweltering heat of Bangalore though it makes me feel cold. I pull on an extra sweater and get weird looks from people around me who are all in shorts. 

I drive leisurely, enjoying the feeling of déjà vu as I pass familiar landmarks. I tune the radio to my favorite station. Someone is talking about the salmon in Oregon. Apparently, people have been flushing cocaine and Prozac down the drain, though why they would do that I have no idea. This ultimately ends up in the river and the salmon absorb and accumulate this in their bodies. This explains why they are jumping up river. They must be feeling pretty high being ‘coked to the gills’, so to speak. I don’t grudge them their high – I mean, wouldn’t you do drugs if you had to swim 900 miles upriver to have sex once and die? I decide to eat salmon at every opportunity. It’s an easy and legal way to get a hit.

P has a hot meal waiting for me when I arrive in Albany a few hours later. G has cooked some Indian curry to welcome the weary Indian traveler. She is a great cook and it is some of the best curry I have tasted, in India or outside. I partake heartily and feel refreshed. I steal some of P’s whisky to take back with me to the hotel. Food and drink on arrival – it doesn’t get much better than that!

 Friday night finds me at Flattail Brewing, meeting up with old friends. Old habits die hard and we make our way to the Peacock. The women of Corvallis seem to love the top of the ‘cock! I meet Al here. Al was a kid when we used to live in Corvallis many years ago but he is grown up enough now to legally drink in a bar. J is playing the fool as usual and Al pulls me aside “What are you doing with that woman?” he asks. “Be careful of her. She is a hustler!” It’s sweet to see this young man looking out for me.

They decide to put the cheap Indian labor to good use and I end up cooking at Tiffs the following day. Of course, we have salmon. The Americans have never eaten real Indian food and they are easy to fool; which works out well for me and my culinary skills. It’s either that or the coke in the salmon is doing its thing and making everybody happy.

Work is hectic and the days go by quickly. A part that was supposed to be here when I arrived was shipped on time, but ended up in Singapore. It takes a few frantic phone calls to track it down and get someone to overnight it back to Corvallis. It arrives a week later and I am about a bit apprehensive of whether I will be able to get it to work in time. My road trip is at risk if it doesn’t work. The electronic Gods smile down on us and it works like a charm. My work here is done. I can start planning my road trip.

Gajagajaga.... Ghostbusters!

"Gajagajaga!". "Ghost busters!" The sound reverberates across the hall and transports us all to a different dimension of thirty years ago. As our minds float back to the sparsely populated campus at electronics city, there are smiles across the room by those who remember that Ghostbusters was often replaced by other choice words, especially one involving the mother of the recipient. There were only a few buildings and lots of open space. No trees yet - that would come later, planted lovingly by Jacqueline and cared for by many hours of hard work in the hot sun. The hostels are just one floor with barely enough space for all. The mechanical workshop is an imposing structure that dwarfs everything else - imposing until one looks inside and realizes that it is as empty as a drunkard's wallet at closing time. This is the first of many lessons that we will learn here - things that look imposing on the outside not always as sturdy on the inside.

August 15, 1984. India's 48th Independence Day. A bunch of youngsters arrive at NEC to voluntarily lose their independence. This loss is temporary for all except four of them; these are the four that find their wives on campus. It's a motley crew that's gathered there - a guy in a leather jacket, one with hot potatoes in his mouth and one with a perpetual itch in his unmentionables. One has bucket hands while another is so short that he looks taller when he sits down. One boasts of being an expert in electronics thereby earning a lifetime nickname that even his daughters use today. One has glow-in-the-dark teeth while another speaks with a German accent ("Vere is the Vaarden?"). There are a bunch of animals too - buffaloes, camels, cocks, ducks, monkeys, mice, foxes, rhinoceros and chameleons. There were even one who is suspected to be Neanderthal. (Yes, try and guess if all of this is really true).

Life is hard. There is a lot to do and we start with building our own workshop tables. This is a practice that will continue - we get to build every lab as we progress through the years. We have mixed luck with the teachers - from extremely good to sadistic jerks and everything in between. The evening trips to Konappana Agrahara are a pleasure especially the pooris at the little shop or the delightful offerings of Manu. But there is not much money to spare for puris and we are mostly at the mercy of Christie and his cronies. There is an advantage to that - if you survive that, you can eat pretty much anything and still be happy.

There is so much to learn. Our primary teachers are our beloved Principal and his deputy - the Vice-Principal, who is is so named because he is wiser (or so he claims). Then there is Which-un and weekend cricket matches with Fibora. We learn a lot about life and a little about love; or maybe its the other way around. The four years pass quickly and we are eager to go out into the world to prove our worth.

The sound of singing voices brings us back to the present. "Old Jaq Delisle had a farm .... ". The weekend is a roaring success. Fourteen out of the twenty two who passed out of the first batch are present. That's a great percentage. The numbers for the second batch are similar. People have come in from all parts of the world - Brazil, Australia, The United States, Indonesia, Singapore, Chennai, Belgaum, Hyderabad, Kerala and of course the Grand City of Mumbai. There is a lot of fun and laughter and one thing strikes me: there is not even one unpleasant incident during the entire weekend spanning across three days. 

Friday night is campfire night. After a few games by the fire, the children settle down for a game of Dumb Charades. All goes well until our boy from Brazil mishears 'American Hustle' to mean the American posterior. He does his best to describe it, gesticulating wildly and even waving his hands down the middle to better explain his position. Of course, everybody gets it and it leaves them gasping on the floor, laughing until the tears roll down their faces.

Kickboxing

Room 102 is commandeered and turned into an makeshift bar. After a few bottles of Scotch and wine, we find that there is still a lot to learn from our erstwhile Principal. We have come a long way from NEC to necking. He breaks it out into small steps for us. Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 are easy to describe but beyond Step 4 are activities that cannot be elaborated in this children friendly blog. Saturday morning sees everyone up bright and early for a kick boxing class. The wives seem extremely interested in learning how to punch and kick. Somehow, this does not bode well for the husbands in the coming months.

After Kickboxing

All good things must come to an end and finally it is time to say goodbye. There are ideas for the next such reunion in 4 or 5 years and our CEO is retained for that period based on the excellent job he has done. It was a great feeling to reconnect after so many years and we are all looking forward to the next reunion.

Management Lessons from Motorcycling

I have had my motorcycle for a few months now and the odometer reads over 6000. That is quite a bit for an old dog like me. A big plus for me is the amount of introspection one does on long rides and the lessons to be learnt along the way. I have attempted to share some of this new found knowledge below:

I join a group of CBR owners on Facebook. The idea is that it is a lot more fun to ride in a group. The first ride with my new friends is to Kolar for breakfast. It's just 70 Kms (~50 miles) away, so it's a good choice for a short ride. We assemble at the crack of dawn and set off down the road. I settle into my cruising speed and quickly realize that it just won't cut it with this group. They are a bunch of youngsters who think they will live forever. I quickly catch up but I am pushing my Honda to it's limits.  Until now, I had thought that the maximum speed of the bike was 125 kmph. It turns out that I was wrong; I touch 149 Kmph. That's when I learn my first lesson:

Management Lesson from Motorcycling: Give the youngsters a free run and they will push you to limits that you did not think was possible.

I hit a bump in the road and it sends my unmentionables crashing into my rib cage. Calvin will do well not to expect a brother or a sister anytime soon as it is going to take a few weeks for gravity to take its course on the aforementioned unmentionables. I crouch low over the bike to try and relieve the pain. Surprisingly, this works to my advantage - it reduces the air resistance and I gain a little more speed.

Management Lesson from Motorcycling: A bump in the road is not always bad. It sometimes teaches you new ways of doing things.

Management Lesson from Motorcycling: Watch out for the bumps when you let the youngsters lead or you could get seriously hurt or even killed.

We have breakfast at Adigas where we gorge ourselves on butter soaked goodies. You don't have to worry about your cholesterol when you ride at these speeds! The ride back is more relaxing though I now consider as sedate what I thought earlier was my maximum speed.

A second ride with the group is coming up and I am bit hesitant to go. This is much further - it's a 300Km round trip to Lepakshi - and I am not sure I can survive that distance with this group. Moreover, I am still a bit tender from the injuries sustained in my last trip and this serves as a constant reminder of the perils of overspeeding. Over 50 bikers register for the event and this swings the balance in favor of my going.

I set off from home in the pre-dawn darkness and find that the stray dogs don't like to be woken up early. They chase me down the street, their snapping jaws dangerously close to my ankle. I try to speed past them but they time their runs such that they intercept me perfectly. I finally figure out the way to out-fox them: I ride slowly and unthreateningly until I am close to them and then suddenly accelerate away. They still try to give chase but lose precious seconds trying to adjust to the change of pace; and a few seconds is all my Honda needs to pull away out of reach. I am amazed at the negative energy of the dogs. The most important thing they do all day is to lie around and lick themselves and yet they put their heart and soul into trying to stop me from going about by legitimate business. (I am being nice to the dogs by not mentioning where they lick themselves).

Management Lesson from Motorcycling: There will always dogs who will try to get in your way. They have nothing to do with you and are not going anywhere themselves - their only objective is to stop you for the fun of it. Don't let them get to you!

Management Lesson from Motorcycling: Let sleeping dogs lie. Slink past them; if you try to roar past them, they will gang up on you and hamper your progress.

I reach the meeting point and am pleasantly surprised. Forty two bikes have turned up and they are all parked in a row. There are a bunch of "seniors" who seem to have everything under control. We are bunched into three groups of 14 each and the rules are laid out: Each group has a leader and a sweeper; the leader sets the speed; single file only; no overtaking; and no falling behind the sweeper; minimum five bike lengths spacing. I am in the first group. The leader sets out and we all fall in line behind him. We hit the highway and pretty soon we are cruising at 110. Hand signals are relayed back from the leader so there is enough advance warning of bumps and speed breakers. We reach our destination pretty quickly after an uneventful ride. All my body parts are safe, but the exhilaration of speed is distinctly missing.

Management Lesson from Motorcycling: Laying down processes makes it more likely that you will reach your destination, but you will definitely be slower.

Management Lesson from Motorcycling: Process reduces risk, but you will also never push any boundaries.

When We Were Swingers

To one who has been long in city pent

‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven, to breathe a       prayer

Full in the smile of a blue firmament.

-          John Keats

Its summer and time for another summer holiday. KK calls about going to Coorg and we don’t need much convincing. He arrives from Chennai with his harem and we set off. Coorg is about 250 kms (~170 miles) from Bangalore and it should be a smooth drive.

The  Beemer has a sports mode and KK uses it to the fullest. I try hard to keep up, but my poor Accord is not much of a match for the X5. I don’t do too badly though and catch up with them after a while. The ‘Sport’ mode on the BMW is awesome – it transforms the car into a mean machine and makes it a pleasure to drive. My life needs a “sports mode” button! 

The road from Mysore to Coorg is two lane. There is no divider; just a thin white line that separates us from the high speed agents of death hurtling at us in the oncoming lane. Its dark, it’s raining and road winds up into the mountains. I haven’t driven like this in a while and I begin to enjoy it. The radio plays “Take it to the limit” by the Eagles. Well, that seems like something that we can do. I push it up a notch and soon we are doing insane speeds upwards of 120 kilometers (~80mph) an hour through the hair pin bends. Needless to say, the X5 is right on my tail. The Beemer has a sports mode!

We are staying at the Club Mahindra Holiday resort in Madikeri. The resort is built on a hill and is layered down into the valley. The infrastructure is well planned and the foliage reminds me of Oregon. There are birds everywhere and we even spot a few fireflies lighting up the night with their flashing backsides. The place is simply superb. I can’t say the same about their staff though. They range from plain incompetent to downright rude. As to the cleanliness of the place, the less said the better. The tables at the restaurant are sticky – they don’t seem to have seen soap and water since Christmas. Club Mahindra needs to pull up their socks and get down to it (or as my American friends would put it “take their hats out of their asses).

I discover a new alcohol diet and lose three days in a week. The resort is packed and there are a lot of people walking around. Cameras are the new phallic symbols and each guy is trying to outdo the other with the length of his lens. I am glad that I don’t need a crutch for my crotch. We go for a walk and spot a swinger couple. I fondly remember the days when we used to be swingers too – when you spend your whole holiday in the children’s area pushing a swing all day long. We are well past that – our son now prefers to spend his time in the arcade rather than the children’s area.

We take a long hike to Abbe Falls and meet the locals along the way. People are very nice and friendly and all the men seem to have mustaches that stand out straight from their faces. Viagra seems to be the gel of choice for grooming whiskers. We encounter a bunch of leeches on our way back and they attach themselves to our legs. I now understand where the term “blood sucking leeches” comes from. We have a few relatives that fit that definition pretty well. I remember a story about one of them: He and his wife were having trouble conceiving and he was explaining how expensive the fertility treatment was. “Why do you need all that?”, I told him. “Just put more men on the job”. He does not talk to me anymore.

The drive back is a little less exciting until the wife suddenly asks me “Would you like a dark fantasy?”. “Well, honey I had a blue eyed blonde in mind, but this could work too”. Well, it turns out that I am way off base – Dark Fantasy is a new kind of cookie. For a minute there, I thought I was gonna get lucky!!

.

All said, a nice and relaxing holiday.

Salt Water is Better Than Fresh

Milwaukee is a blast. I called Larry three weeks ago and asked him what I should pack for and he said to get my shorts and T shirt as the temperature was 5 degrees (-18C).  Well, I land in Milwaukee three weeks later and the temperature is a mild 32 (0 C). The sun is shining and everything looks great.

Well, I’m here for work and not for the weather and I get down to it. Call it beginner’s luck (or you could just say that I am darn good!) but I have the boards working in two days against the four days that I had planned. I try to advance my flight to Portland but it’s just too expensive so I decide to stay. There’s a snow storm brewing and I want to see it. We’re going to get six inches tonight, maybe even eight. Well, it sounds obscene, I tell them - they don’t find it funny. The morning turns out beautiful. How the whole landscape can look so pristine and virgin after being slipped 6 inches the night before is beyond me.

The days pass in a blur. There’s beer at lunch and there’s Scotch at dinner; and sometimes there is Scotch for dinner. I make a new friend in Tim and he offers to drop me off at the airport. We detour along the way for a few Fat Tires. One is too many and two are one too few and in the end we make a mad rush to the airport to find that my flight is delayed. That doesn’t matter, because the Fat Tires keep on coming. I only hope that I will be OK to drive when I get to Portland.

Corvallis feels like coming home. All the signs are familiar on the drive down. I stop on the way at Albany to see my seaman friend and there it all starts. He has a good Glenfiddich which is already 12 years old and there seems no point in letting it get any older. He drives down to Corvallis with me and after a quick shower I am ready to hit the bars. A bunch of people join us and we close the bars down – one by one. The designated driver is drinking water. Don’t drink water, I tell him, because fish do it in water (it sounds better when you use the actual word but this is a kid friendly blog). It’s not just the fish, J announces to the bar. Apparently she does it in the water too; and salt water is better than fresh. That was more information than I needed and I vow never to drink water again. But then again…. Why not! It might be interesting.

I am a bit dismayed at the number of my friends that I find are recently divorced. I remember reading a recent statistic which said that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Might as well, I guess, because the other 50% end in death!

Sunday is slow. I recover from my flight and the jetlag. We watch the game. The Beavers are playing the Ducks which is always interesting. The Beavers seem to be holding their own until the last ten minutes where they lose it. The night ends with me walking into a glass door. The door is undamaged which is more than I can say for me; I have a bug bump on my forehead and the guys are rolling on the floor laughing.

Saturday is the (Pub) Crawl for a Cause and we enthusiastically sign up. I doubt the enthusiasm is for the right cause though – I think we all have our own private agenda. Apparently more women care about the cause than men which is not really a problem. We take a group pictures and G has his eyes closed. It’s not surprising – I think he has had his eyes closed for a long time now. A tiny pink thong turns up miraculously and the women can now become superwomen – they merely have to wear the thong over their pants. J confiscates the thong. I suspect that it will be just the thing to wear under water.

Lunch the next day is  with friends at the Red Robin. The burgers are exceptional and the service is impeccable. They give me a card to fill out and I tick all the right boxes. There is a question at the end: “Would you like to see anything else on the menu?”. Hell Yes …. The waitress! I wonder if anybody ever reads the feedback cards.

Sunday is a family dinner and we are cooking Indian food. They make good use of the cheap Indian labor and I even end up cleaning the floor. I have two beautiful women as helpers and this makes cooking a pleasure. We are having roast chicken. I stuff the birds and then find that the chicks just can’t keep their legs together. I ask for some string to tie them with and find that there is no string in the house. Is this symbolic, I wonder. Maybe there should be more string in this house.

The flight back is uneventful. I am in a little matchbox on the Portland to Seattle leg and this is not something you want to do in turbulent weather. It puts most roller coasters to shame and I can hear a few barf bags getting used around me. Thankfully it’s a short flight. The 747 from Seattle onwards is smooth and I sleep off my excesses. I have enjoyed my trip but it feels good to be coming home.

The Son God

The Son God

The music in our  house has changed. In fact, it has changed so much that it sometimes almost doesn’t feel like home anymore. And it’s not just at home either; the music in the car is different too. I look around to find the reason for the change and I realize that I now live with the Son God who seems to decide what music gets played. I switch to the radio and find that his influence extends there too – the radio station seems to own a similar metronome. If the music is cacophonic, the lyrics are worse. The singers seem to be in competition to make the songs dirtier. They are all speaking English but I nevertheless cannot understand. There is an upper limit on the number of letters in each word and it is set to four. And the ideas and what is considered right and wrong is even worse. Rap music must have been very popular in Sodom and Gomorrah.  

My hearing has been slowly failing with age and for the first time I realize what a boon that has been. I think that God makes us hard of hearing as we grow older so that we don’t have to listen to the music of our kids.

But I can sometimes be an atheist, especially with regard to this particular God. I find an old DVD of Dire Straits and sit back with a glass of the best. The drumming intro of ‘Money for Nothing’ fills the room and then the guitar takes over and I wonder why I thought the drums were that great anyway. The song changes to ‘So Far Away From You’ and it fits my melancholy mood (brought on by the wife being in Thailand). I lose myself in the song:

“Where are you when the sun goes down,  You’re so far away from me ……”

And then it goes on to:

“I'm tired of being in love and being all alone
When you're so far away from me 
I'm tired of making out on the telephone,
And you're so far away from me”

This reminds me of another song that has been playing a lot in our house lately. It talks of pretty much the same situation but oh what a difference in the approach. It’s called “I Like It” By Enrique and it goes something like this:

“Girl please excuse me if I’m coming too strong
But tonight is the night we can really let go
My girlfriend’s out of town and I’m all alone
Your boyfriend’s on vacation and he doesn’t have to know
No no no, oh oh!”

Sigh! I’m beginning to feel my age!