The death of Average Joe

When Joe ceases to be Average.
He ceases to be himself.

The suspense is over. Average Joe is dead! Wait! Is he really dead or is he just laying dormant to strike back with vengance. No! That is too scary a thought to contemplate the possibility of. He better be gone for good. This is not an obituary! It is more like an opposite to an obituary. Yes, given the life of Average Joe, the things he did or rather he did not, his life story is rather a silent autopsy of a terrorist of the intellectual domain.

Before the death there was the man. Or was it the spirit? The spirit of the Average Joe lingering around, waiting to jump on the body he would come to reside in, when its actual owner makes a few bad decisions. Like every spirit, the Average Joe died a slow death, typical of a spirit. But there was this smile frozen on his face. The smile of a teenager on a tropical beach full of babes.

On a typical day Average Joe woke up at 9am. Logically all the days in the life of Average Joe are typical. The attibute of staying typical no matter what happens, is what renders Joe Average. He hates to be late to office, this is one of the many things he hates about his office, not to mention his hatred for the office itself. His hatred for being late makes him want to wake up at 6am, but his hatred for office makes him want to wake up at 10am. The latter with all its several components being stronger, Average Joe wakes up at 9am for the office that starts at 8am. He reaches office around 10:30am; only to wonder why he went there in the first place. There is the obvious financial interest and there is nothing else. His presence like his absense is never felt.

On the way to his office, he walks across a newly laid lawn after alighting the bus. Then walks past a sun-bathing area by the pool side, to cross a deserted road and climb a hillock to reach his cubicle whose inhabited-or-not status baffles the best detectives of the world.

In all our previous discussions, we were skipping a very important and un-intuitive aspect of Average Joe's personality. By his very nature of existence, Average Joe is a contradiction (hence like all contradictions, his demise is only a matter of time). The anamoly rendering him self-contradictory is his nature to make his life less Average. It is this property that kicks Average Joe out of his cubicle onto the deserted road across the new lawn and beyond; in the lame excuse of lunch. It must be noted that in this entire process, he passes by the pool side twice in a couple of hours. This performance only increases when he does it again to get back to his office after lunch; however long his lunch might take and how much ever unwanted he might be at his office.

After lunch in the world beyond, Average Joe pulls himself up to one of those couches in the student centre. The ones that are laid in leather with a view for a flat screen telvision. Both of these luxury features are above the Average Joe standards. He is not the secretary of any association, not even the Average Joes Anonymous, since such a thing does not exist; these guys are too average to start a thing like that. Noone misses him across the length and breath of the planet. So he goes into a marathon ciesta on the luxury couch. Wakes up late in the evening and gets back to office along the poolside route, picks up his back-pack and leaves for the swimming pool.

All this ended. On this day Average Joe woke up at 6am, travelled sixty kilometers in five connecting busses and five connecting trains. This is when the illness struck, so much work within five hours is lethal to even the strongest members of the Average Joe community. After the journey, he went and had a lunch in the cafeteria. And this not being an Average day, Joe skipped the slumber on the couch, a luxury he hates to miss; but a faint hope that someone in the office has been missing him owing to his absence the entire morning hurries him.

He walks across the lawn and the pool side. Hark! the blow is struck. This Average Joe is not your Average Average-Joe. Average Average-Joes do not get blogged about. This chappie is a special Average Joe, he has his own mysterious admirer or watcher. On this day as he was walking by the pool-side, he saw her! He saw her seeing him intensely; Average Joe's life which has truned Average a couple of months ago has ceased to be Average any longer! You do not call a day in a Dull Jack's life Dull when he sees a very beautiful woman giving him the looks. Dull Jack is Average Joe's cousin, he has been rendered dull unable to endure Joe's Averageness among other things.

Average Joe instantly entered a trance and an instant later, the building atop the hillock that is his office. The question still hung in the air, "why am I here?". Only that this time it was in the foreground while the background was a trance. The rest of the day was so, things were changing in the foreground while the background remained the same, like the blue sky, only that they were the frozen blue eyes of a woman rather than the sky.

This trance was ON when Average Joe's manager (as if he needed one) asked him what his plans for the summer and beyond were? "I am quitting at the end of the month!" replied Average Joe with resolve. "Ok then I need to get you some work for the next three weeks" replied his manager. It was as if "we can not send this guy away without getting any work out of him at all!" The consequence: two senior ladies in the office approached Average Joe with a proposal for a project that could take three weeks.

There is no choice, Average Joe has to work from tomorrow, his days are over, it is true this time. Being the third stroke in a day, Average Joe could no longer take it. He died slowly while the words of the two mangers-with-a-proposal were dancing in the foreground. The letters were too small, too dim for such a bright background that held him.

There was this smile on his face. There were these words at the tip of his toungue "Oh sure, it will be done" as he died. His funeral will be on the 28th of April at a local Chinese restraunt. 'May peace be with Joe' a weak Dull Jack would say on that day.

The way we love

I have promised in a couple of posts ago that I will be blogging on a couple of things. Like any movie-director worth his salt, me the aspiring movie-maker is keeping my promises in the increasing order of the interest it can generate in the audience, well readers, ok reader, ok ok (what the heck lets face it) me, the only reader.

Now I thought I will post on the way we love changes over the years. This thought like all the good ones, struck me while I was on the road waiting for the walk signal. There is this beautiful girl in my college and she just crossed the road from the opposite side and walked past me. After I do not know how many years, I had what can be loosely called 'butterflies in the stomach'. You know the way love used to be in the teens. For the purists, lets call it infatuation. The 'I-felt-the-smell-of-the-gutter-and-had-a-deja-vu-of-the-days -I-lived-in-an-apartment-by-a-gutter' experience passed; and I ended up promising people I would blog about that. I would not have kept this particular promise, but some important developments gave this post a kick in the butt.

I was in love among others with this particular girl in Bangalore. Apologies for using the word love very loosely, at the end of the post you would be screaming at your innocent monitor, no that is not love that is just a crush, get over your infatuation and grow up pally. You could rather spare your monitor the trouble until we communication engineers make telepathy official. As I was telling, she is getting married and the usual stuff, I knew this all along but the time has neared it seems. Like how poverty-in-the-world stays dormant at the back of our mind and hurts us only when we are uncouthly reminded of it by a documentary, I also felt sad when reminded of the up coming marriage by a friend. I felt bad for a really long time, the time in which an average satellite communications carrier signal would have oscillated roughly two billion times (let me do the math for you it is half a second).

Well now what is wrong with me? I am supposed to be totally upset, drink some vodka or something and do some stupid things. Here I am hale and hearty watching sitcoms, eating bananas, sleeping for 12hrs a day, solving Bessel equations and what not. You may say well then it is not 'pure love', it only 10% love, 50% infatuation, 25% crush, 30% admiration, 40% youth messing around, 30% attention I was getting, 90% nothing better to do. And guys if anyone is starting an association or a cult or a mailing list or even an orkut group that has members claiming to believe in soul-mates, pure-love, holy-crap etc. Count me out.

Its like saying only one cloud can pour rain on one person. Why today, I got drenched by a Persian cloud I saw in the swimming pool (boy it hurts when a girl, especially a beautiful and thin one does twice the amount of swimming you can), and saw her being very very courteous with the gym door to a fellow student with a load. She is at Tech and wears glasses, which means she is slightly geek, which is a turn-on btw. She is extremely beautiful, she can dance (at the next Swing Dance party, I know one more person I am going to ask - that will make it three - not to worry an average night can accommodate up to 20). It is impossible not to love such a person after you get to know them better.

Err now what am I trying to drive at? There was a butterflies-in-the-stomach kind of love, then there was this-woman-has-an-awesome-attitude kind of love, then there was this we-think -alike kind of love, then there was this we-need-not-talk-our-eyes-communicate kind of love, then there was this her-life-must-be-having-a-great-time-being-her-life kind of love, then there was she-knows-me-so-much kind of love, then we are back to the simpler she-dances-so-well-and-swims-so-well kind of love.

Get wet it's not going to rain for ever.
It's ok to miss, it is going to rain again.

Vanity Stall

I thought I will write a small post on good things that happen in my life. Trust me, though for the most part of it my blog sounds cynical, I have what most people would call a very successful life. However, remeber that most people are wrong most of the times about things that matter the most to you.

I had this interview for a summer internship today. It was telephonic, within two hours of the interview, I was made an offer. I think by now I am damn good at these interviews. It is one of those moments when that old raka with his love for coding and analytical stuff momentarily comes out with his friend the business savvy and confident raka to win things that give the present 'sick-of-it-all' raka a confusing time!

It feels a bit good to know that you are being wanted. For a second there, I felt like Mishti Srivatsava. It is this girl from college who used to have a long following, who used to win them all without doing a thing except being herself (I guess, was not one of those guys in college so no authority on that). But atleast I be myself, its a lot easier that way.
Now, Did someone say vanity is a sin?

Passion River

If there is one thing that needs to be mentioned in a blog titled 'anything passion anything', it is the olympics. The winter olympics just got over and I feeling like a kid who is weeping when the prosession is over. I am not sure if it is the NBC coverage or just the love for the sport, but I miss the olympics a lot.

Passion is a word that is used very loosely. Ambitious marketers just throw it around and the word tends to get too hackneyed. I hope my attitude towards life does justice to my using it in my blog a lot.

Anyway, the Olympics had their tag-line as 'Passion lives here'. For once, for a change it was not a trite usage. Infact it is no exaggeration to say that it was one of those rare occassions when passion as a word falls short to decribe; to describe the spirit of the olympics. The sage like existence the atheletes lead, the life they dedicate to the games. It is just so great, there is a glamour to it, a completeness, a perfection, a symmetry to it (to quote 'Gone with the wind').
You can feel the love of the atheletes for their games. I would say Passion flows around there. I know I am just rambling about a personal love.

My favourite events in the olympics were. All of them! But the most favourite was, you guessed it - the figure skating. Especially the couples. The event was the greatest display of the olympic spirit. The winners were Tatyana Totmiyanina and Maxim Marinin. They had an amazing tale of recovery to tell. In one of their earlier perfromances they had a terrible accident where he had dropped her on the ice, where she fell unconscious. Now they were back in the olympics after six months to claim the gold. The way he was handling her was so careful, like how you treat a bird. They performance was very catuious, thus rendering it very graceful when most skaters tend to make it very animated at the cost of grace. The chemistry, which I would attribute to being trough rough times together, was so good. I do not think the joy of winning the gold medal was much more than just participating in the olympics and doing it flawlessly.

Speaking of flaws, are we not entitled to our own share of them! The pair that came second were Dan Zhang and Hao Zhang. Mid way through their performance, the Dan had to suffer a nasty fall while attempting a a throw quad salchow. I thought they were out, the lady seemed really hurt, but when asked by her coach, she said that she would continue. Participating in the olympics is a great honour, its a dream and its about living that dream, more than anything else. Inspite of deducting a point for the fall, they come second. The spirit of that lady is so admirable.

Other fascinating stories include Cindy Klassen. This beautiful lady resorted to speed skating after she could not make it to the national hockey team, to become the most decorated olympian in a single winter games. The sad story of Michelle Kwan who could not make it to the olympics but has won all the major titles in figure skating. Sasha Cohen who won the silver in womens' figure skating inspite of falling twice. And the lone medal winner for Japan Shizuka Arakawa. God! is she so beautiful. What are the women made up of? Gold? The Germans who are always at the top. The scandinavians who have the highest medals per capita. The list just goes on and on.

Well I think thats all for now. I am planning to go to the Vancouver olympics in 2010, before I go back to settle in India, let's see if the united states can hold me here for so long. When will India ever win a medal in the winter olympics. I want to live to see the day, what the heck I want to make these few things happen. i) India winning a medal in the winter olympics ii) Participating in the football workd cup iii) Hosting the summer olympics. Hmmm... ambitious? Thats me!

Soul Sellers Inc.

Regulars at this blog know that the lines they read are from the finger tips of this very talented software engineer who hates technology and hence computers and hence software. A lot of people say that I am very difficult to understand. A 'successful' person who is dissatisfied. A tech-hater at one of the world's best tech schools.

Neway, software giant Microsoft thought I am in computer science and sent me an interview offer, and as a preparation, I was asked to go trough one of those 'we-are-such-a-cool-place-to-work-at' web pages. A strong believer of preparation is the key to success(how ever dis-interested in that succsss you might be), I was going trough those 'oh-so-cool' job profiles. I was depressed, now who wants to develop software systems, how ever kewl the HR people may make it sound? Acknowledging life's great capability to suck, I went on to the other pages.

Now there was this page on the locations of Microsoft. They have one in the Silicon Valley like any software company worhty of its code does. They have this stuff about how close it is to SF, Palo Alto, LA, LV, Lake Tahoe etc. To quote them verbatim 'Did someone say road trip?' Suddenly the dream of SW descends on me. How cool it would be to go to Stanford at Palo Alto for the dance classes and parties. To SF for some football and fun. To LA on road trips, to Lake Tahoe for skiing. To Vegas for some sin. In that BMW that you bought within a month of joining work?

Being a rich bachelor (thanks to your lousy job) sure does help. Though that still leaves us with our having to the 'lousy' aspect! Is life like this? You work those 50 hours a week just waiting for it to be over to earn some money to spend the 25 hours of weekend? Is it impossible to make your passion your profession.

PS : Please do not wish me all the best for the interview. It does not matter, if or not I get the internship offer. It will only be a painful reminder of the pros. life.