You and me babe, how about it?

Wish I could write something like this...this expresses the eternal story of romeo so well
_________________________________________________
A lovestruck Romeo sings the streets a serenade
Laying everybody low with a love song that he made
Finds a streetlight steps out of the shade
Says something like "You and me babe, how about it?"
Juliet says "hey, it's Romeo, you nearly gave me a heart attack"
He's underneath the window
She's singing "hey la my boyfriend's back
You shouldn't come around here singing up at people like that"

Anyway what you gonna do about it?

Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start
And I bet that you exploded into my heart
And I forget I forget the movie song
When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong?
Juliet
Come up on different streets, they both were streets of shame
Both dirty, both mean, yes and the dream was just the same
And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real
How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?

When you can fall for chains of silver
You can fall for chains of gold
You can fall for pretty strangers
And the promises they hold
You promised me everything, you promised me thick and thin, yeah
Now you just say "oh Romeo, yeah, you know I used to have a scene with him"

Juliet,
When we made love you used to cry
You said "I love you like the stars above, I'll love you till I die"
There's a place for us you know the movie song
When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong?
Juliet
I can't do the talk so like the talk on the TV
And I can't do a love song like the way it's meant to be
I can't do everything, but I'll do anything for you
I can't do anything except be in love with you
And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be
All I do is keep the beat and the bad company
Now all I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme

Juliet,I'd do the stars with you any time
Juliet

A lovestruk Romeo sings the streets a serenade
Laying everybody low with a lovesong that he made
Finds a convenience streetlight, steps out of the shade
Says something like "You and me babe, how about it?"
"You and me babe, how about it?"
________________________________________________

Life @ Fort Smith

Day 1 @ Fort Smith: Pensive mood


After 6 months: W/ my colleagues

Relationships and Maturity

Eh! Bad topic. First deal with maturity. Hope that would inevitably land into something to do with relationships (keeping in mind my overworked grey cells) ;-~
Hope we all agree that maturity is something elusive that comes with age, education, exposure to different cultures, interaction with multiple communities and has nothing do with CMM (Capability Maturity Model) practices led down by Carnegie Mellon University for improving the maturity of any process(industrial, techno-commercial). Wish they had a model for improving maturity of a person or a relationship for that matter.

Univ of Wisconsin tells that "When a person can live with her past without being bogged down by it, she remains adaptable, capable of continued change, then she is mature."
The mature individual can accept her own shortcomings, realise her faults and is usually much mellowed about life. The mature person knows that she has to go on choosing alternatives, that each alternative costs something, and there are things she will never be able to do and experience, but then maturity is about giving up a lot and realizing how much to give up. She also knows that there are things she will never be able to do again, that she can never recapture the youth or relive her first encounters with certain experiences. She will give up all temptations for a cause that has long time effect. She knows that her integrity would be continually threatened by practical demands, by seductive temptations, by concessions, by conflicting values, and can only be preserved at the cost strong resolve, love for life and faith in mankind. A matured person would take that extra step (often interpreted by immatures as sacrifice or compromise) to make things happen, to keep falling pieces together, to caress a lonely heart. She would make that effort to survive a relationship that is going through a bad patch or may not have blossomed completely.
I don't see too many trendy and smart youth (both guys and gals) doing such things for their relationships; they are all about move-ons, break-ups, divorces. They are afraid to take that risk as it challenges their ego, dreams, sense of freedom and pride. They are all about take-it- easy.Definitely they are good, attractive, smart people who have a lot going for themselves but they are just afraid to settle. So most beautiful men and women have the most confused and most hazy souls. They think settling down will make them like the other 'schmucks'.

Believe me. Trust me. Having one to relate to, talk to, share your life is something so sublime and special; it makes life so easy to live and enjoy. Extend your hand for the person waiting. Your relationship deserves your maturity not whims. Amen!

Crossroads:Walk carefully

Life has put me in a terrible mess. A cracked ring finger on the lefthand is not the only thing thats going wrong. After a long time, I realized that my personal life is also in a mess, and Iam 28 going on 29. I have been looking for that special one (after the first breakoff) and whenever I thought I met one (@bar, @train,@concerts etc), I realize thereafter that I have been wrong. That I will not be able tolive my life with the 'one'.
I, as an Indian, believe in only one marriage for one life, and so there have been multiple times, when I had to refuse women because I knew things would not work out. Women on the other hand think Iam cute,intelligent, have a good job and make good money, cultured, friendly,caring, a-keeper and so the vicious cycle repeats on. Lets be friends or Iam confused with my life right now has been the excuses that I used..And when I think I can find whom I need, whom I have been looking for, hope God will be good enough not to make me taste my own medicine. I, the born athiest, and spiritual is ready to pray to any God to make this work. Just pray for me and my life. This is important to me. Amen!

Bold Topic

This is going to be a bold topic to deal with.
How much time should you give yourself before you sleep with your date?

Iam sincerely asking for opinions and hope this one would draw some good opinions. Remember, this is true for both guys and gals who wants to love life and are based in US.

Friendly Chat

The status bar on the 17" screen of my Dell Inspiron tells the time as 12.43 am Friday. I came back to my apartment about 30 minutes back after having a "hearty" chat with my friend. He does not know that Iam summarizing our discussions in this blog, so I will not introduce him; however he has been my ex colleague and now he is working with me again.
After a long day at work, we started discussing about Indian music and culture and food (while trying chips and mexican salsa) at his apartment before conveniently digressing the topic to our career goals (me, a technical manager and he a techno commercial sales guy in next 5 years) and work. How we have come up where we are, how we need to evolve more to fit into the ever changings scheme of things, how the company should evolve, about old-school typecast colleagues, about confused colleagues, about jobs in us in the next decade, how small work place differences could snowball into issues, how quality of work life changes across companies (both of us are ex-ibmers) are few of the eclectic subject we debated. And then came the topic that we were hiding, love in our life.
How love hurts, how women are more mature in handling love than men like us, how life in USA changed everything for us, how we (both of us are from Kolkata) have never been taught to deal with the kind of isolated existence that we have in a foreign land ....during our discussion these issues remained no longer just topics but passionate subjects to ponder on; an unbiased perspective on on crushes, infatuations, relationships followed soon. We compared the pain of removal of band-aid from a wound with that of a break off; its less painfull to pull it of fast than to procastrinate. How time is a double edged sword for all relationships; more time to know each other brings two people near only to know more shortcomings and have a painfull breakoff. How we conveniently use blinkers to hide our wounds. How we still long for our first love. And life moves on.
I wish everyone who is reading this takes some time of to have a heart-to-heart chit chat with someone in order to unwind the tensions build within; quest for perfect life is bumpy at best so its good to have a hindsight view of things. Living alone in US then may become a little more easy than it has been. May be girls are so strong emotionally because they talk so much!!!!Nice joke!!!

Hate Miandad

Javed Miandad has always been a pain in the rear for India. Both on and off the cricket field. And now he is getting his son, Junaid, married to the Mahrukh, daughter of Dawood Ibrahim--the most wanted criminal in India, on 23rd of July at Dubai. He seems to be one of those Pakis who loves to hate India for all the wrong reasons and do stuff to antagonise India. The former cricketer is the son-in-law of a leading business family of Pakistan in whose businesses Dawood is believed to have invested heavily; besides ever since Dawood got involved in match-fixing over a decade ago, many Pakistan cricket players were on his rolls. Miandad, in particular, was considered close to him (http://www.rantburg.com/popThug.php?ID=11527&T=Dawood%20Ibrahim).
True unholy nexus.
Invitations for the ceremony has been sent to former Indian cricket captains Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Ravi Shastri and Dilip Vengsarkar, and to Asian Cricket Council chief Jagmohan Dalmiya as well as veteran film star Dilip Kumar and Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. Hope none of them attend this wedding as the security watch dogs are hawkish.

Taxes and more Taxes!!!

Sometime it's really bewildering to find out how much of your money is sucked by the federal government as part of your taxes. Its so full of inconsistencies for H1Bholders like myself.
Your residency status for tax purposes is completely unaligned from your immigration status. You might qualify as a resident for tax purposes while remaining a non-immigrant alien for immigration purposes. And you end up paying all the taxes of a resident without enjoying any privileges of being one.
A non-resident files a special tax form, pays tax only on U.S. source income, and subject to special rates;conversely, if you are a resident for U.S. tax purposes, you are under the same rules and file the same forms as a U.S. citizen. That means you pay tax on your worldwide income rather than just U.S. source income. More fun is with the Social Security tax.
SS tax cannot be refunded, you can only claim SS benefits if you qualify. Basic qualification is reaching retirement age AND having contributed to SS taxes for 10 years. So a H1Bholder with an ambition of returning back to work in India will have no chances of ever getting back all these SS taxes; they will be enjoyed by the american baby boomers!!!! In today's scenario, the H1B worker gets the same SS benefits as an American worker who stops working in the US before 10 years, which is zero! Isn't that interesting?

Camp Postcards

the tent (Camp Tilden,Cyclone,MO)

the kayaking pirate (big sugar creek)

Take me where I belong

How do you know that you have not been online for a long time just for plain surfing? When you forget your blog id's password. And when your IE address bar cache looses the blogspot address. Or may be both. Or may be lack of any comments on my writings took away the incentives from me for writing anything meaningful about my life. Anyway, the long hibernation from writing what-i-like has been very well spent doing other 'meaningful' things.
Most of the time was invested in establishing the credentials at job (client site) however also managed some time for doing many first time stuff in USA, like attending an american (read catholic) wedding, smooches in the back seat of my car (accidental), go-karting (Hot Springs), camping by a creek and kayaking (Camp Tilden). All of them were fun to a certain moment of time before they become boresome. In normal american weddings, they keep you really underfed (compared to a full blown indian wedding). Lack of space at the back seat can be frustrating sometimes. Go-Karting is good if you can go on forever and have your own race tracks..where you dont have to pay for. Camping is marvellous still you have to pack it up all and clear up the space. Kayaking is good till you get tired of being grounded in shallow water and sunburned.
Dont think me of a damned cynic. Its just that all good things must come to an end. Why?! Dont know. They just end. All types of flights (paperplanes, airplanes, birds, bees, kites etc) ultimately end on ground. Iam on ground now. Just a way of thinking may be. Ciao.