Accha...

Work never ebbs and flows, it comes in deluges and drowns you or you get singed by the drought. The former is usually when your boss loves you and the latter is usually due to a lack of love, or because you are a blithering idiot. Sometimes I think I fall into the latter part of the latter category, but then again sometimes I wonder if the Polar ice-caps have already melted and India is inundated with Bangladeshis and me by work.
We all know how ‘internet’ friendly our government has been of late, you know thanks to Minister de l’Twitter and all. But then you come across this flaming piece of internet junk. And realize to your horror that you’re not on the Wayback Machine. Sometimes I wonder if 'e-governance' has become just another buzzword that management consultants have taught our bereaucrats and politicians. talking about politicians, I vote to start a movement against 'vulgar bribes' and let us start with Desh Ka Jamaai. And then bureaucrats too, and even soft bribes like paying for the rent for a house in Mumbai. Stuff like that.
Anyway have a ton of stuff to work on, but in case you didn't know there are major changes afoot at Undie Profit, which hopefully will mean that they might actually start to reduce their 'paid content' percentage to under two-thirds. Or maybe not. Or they'll get Rakhi Sawant as their new lead anchor. Maybe that will lead to an asset bubble? Who knows, anything (even babies, and Undie TV knows a few things about sourcing babies) that would help Undie Profit will work. But in a weird sort of way, I'm glad they removed the cause of the rot, and it wasn't a guy.

My life over the past few days.

Insanely early mornings, getting my posterior felt up by CISF jawans with metal detectors (haven't worked out why my ass always beeps!), yet walking through security with lighters - unbeknown to me (lighters and matchboxes have this bad habit of sneaking into my hand luggage - that despite my drastic reduction in smoking) and generally enjoying airline food (not!) and collecting frequent flyer miles (the one joy of air travel). When I was a kid I loved travelling by air - hopping from Delhi to Calcutta on Indian Airlines' huge A300 planes as an 'Unaccompanied Minor' - but nowadays it has become a chore and the silly liquid rule has led to me checking in luggage when I really didn't need to. Thankfully, I've managed to steer clear of low-costs for a while and I don't think I'll be moving my butt inside a 737 for a while.

This is one thing I have never worked out - the skies over India are always very hazy and Jet Airways desperately need to clean their windows more often.

100,000 visitors, 450 posts!

This is the 450th post on the blog and the other day, the blog steamrolled past 100,000 visitors since I installed the Statcounter code back at the end of June 2005. That is an average of 222 page hits a day, which is quite a lot even if you exclude my own visits. Not bad, if I say so myself!
Adjusting back to Delhi has been a bit weird, I've been bored more than anything else. After all how much can you possibly play videogames, even if it is on the new XBox 360. Since my self-declared semi-sabbatical from drinking, rather a sabbatical from out and out 'lets see what drinking fifteen whiskeys does to the human body' experiments every second night, life feels strangely empty. I don't know what that actually means, if that really means that my life had degenerated to the point that I was on the verge of alcoholism, or maybe even was an alcoholic. Well, I am reading a lot more all over again, and really should start watching more movies.
Office on the other hand has been strange. One of my editors and a man who despite the fact he constantly took my trip, I genuinely enjoyed working and writing for, is leaving. I've been in this organisation for three years and had become really fond of the guy, I mean as a journalist you like working for some people and I enjoyed working for him. He is taking up a big new job, and I'll miss him, anyway there are another two weeks - basically for me to think up what I should give him as a farewell gift. And these words are not being written because I know that he reads this blogs, I genuinely mean them. Well, even though when he does go, office seating will be juggled and I will be brought back from the Kuiper belt seat that I currently have and I hate.
Other colleagues - office has changed a lot since I was in Delhi last and despite the unexpected churn at the top, things are more or less same there, but colleagues on a more equal footing. Well, I don't know if they read this blog but I really want to use this service on one of them. I'm fairly thick skinned, but badly timed jokes are really not appreciated. And when you have the hairstyle he does (like the Manager character in Dilbert, seriously) I would refrain from making jokes. Anyway, I don't want to get started on everyone else, including psychotic young female colleagues, which is enough said.
Chalo, I have to work now.