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Have you used a (western) toilet? “Yes, Of course”, you say.

Have you ever fixed an overflowing western toilet bowl? “NOOOOO!!!!”, I hear you shout.

After spending an hour trying to fix one of our’s last night, Lemme tell you, you dont want to be doing that. Thankfully for us, it was overflowing before use. Lets not even imagine what would have happened otherwise. In this enticing experience I learned how the toilet bowls/flush work ! Thanks to my personal librarian(who else? google, hehehehe!), I had already edified myself with some literature about fixing toilet bowls before I let lose the left over mechanical engineer[I made a futile attempt a few weeks ago trying to replace a flat tire in my lovely Honda Accord] within me. I soon realized that my beloved toilet bowl’s uninformed tantrum was little unique and a solution for that has not been documented ever. Apparently, the smart guy who lived here before us had put a quick temporary fix to whatever has happened before. To fix your own mess is onething, to fix someone else’s is totally different. Its harder than it looks! Besides, the few little parts are so meticulously placed within a 6 inch wide tank, there is hardly any place to stick your hand inside. [I had just then read this section on the same webpage about how LA police had to rescue a man who had his hands stuck inside a toilet bowl!!! Poor cops had to unscrew the whole toilet and drag the man with his hands still stuck to the toilet to a firestation before they could free him of his mischief!!] So I was ultra conscious, though I was working with the tank and not with the toilet bowl. I finally managed to take out the small strip of wire that was broken, internally connecting the handle to the water outlet cup. After that it was business as usual. I fixed it, put it back and tightened the two ends with extra care. Followed it with a series of performance testing by flushing the toilet thrice within a span of 30 seconds[should say stress test isnt it?] and ensured that the mechanical engineer is still sane.

An interesting observation came out of this. This toilet has shown its ugly face only twice. And on those two occasions, we had a guest. I figured its got to be the guest somehow screwing it up. So its got to be the pressure with which they push the handle down, that breaks out the smart patch wire!!! YES, Its got to be. I now realize how much we both have learnt to live in harmony with our toilets??? Our broken toilets and us co-existed peacefully with so much understanding and an darn alien disturbed our peace!

So, the next time you use a toilet at someone else’s place – touch, hold and press the handle with tender care – He might have worked his ass off to fix it the night before!!!

PS:Did you notice the link I had put on Honda? Turn your speakers on and check that simple but mind blowing ad/movie for Honda Accord and if you arent amazed…I suggest u see it again.

Left Tampa at 85 degrees and landed at newark. It was just under 45 here. It was total blast on the afternoon of tuesday. We went out to the beach at clearwater for some fun team games, only one of which had a meaningful name – Tug of War which surprisingly our team won.

We started off with a game where we split our team into two and stand against each split, throwing at each other small balloons filled with water. As soon as you throw you go back and stand behind the last one. So as the gap keeps growing its becomes tough to catch the balloon let alone not to crack the water out of it. We werent too fascinated by the first game besides we were just getting to know who else is in our team. We screwed up right the first throw, the water was all over the face. We flunked. [Try to catch a small balloon filled with water, 9 out 10 times you can’t]

[Clearwater Beach, Florida. Thanks to www.gotoflorida.net]

Next, everyone in our team form a circle holding each other’s hands and have to pass around a large plastic ring without letting each ago. Without letting the hands you have roll yourself into the ring from one person to next all the way around until the right comes back to the first person. Uh! We had no choice but to lose. One of my fellow mates was a lady who must have been over 250 pounds with a mid body surface area just a bit larger than the ring. So instead of embarassing her, the guy before her candidly let the hands go so we dropped the ring and gracefully gave up.

This was followed by another game with? What else? Water. Oh Come on, we were on the coast of mexico, what else to expect? However it go lot interesting this time around. We were given plastic cups with thin flexi straps attached to it and we had to hold the cup over our head with the string strapped around our face. Nope, you cant hold the cup with your hands at any cost! You run all the way to the beach, fill the cup full, strap it back into your head, hold your hands down, run back. I should say we stop running and better start walking, or rather crawling as if you have your heels over your head. And then walk all across over to your partner who has a bucket on ground, fill it with your cup of water. We had to drop the water by turning our head s down and not with hands. No kidding, this is serious game. We managed to fill the bucket half way, thanks to some wonderful work from my team mates. we won second spot on that one. [you asking me what i was doing? Jeez, with my head up at little over 6 feet from ground, how can you expect me to tilt a cup of water from there, all the way down, and the water got to fall exactly into the bucket? in full?…no way…I contributed few drops ! ]

With a scorching southern sun over our head and all the running arounds, we were drenched with sweat and sand. Tug of war followed as the last action packed game. With four of our team being women over 40+, there was not enough muscle to pull us off. At least thats what I thought, with some other teams with four or more guys, some of whom looked like real football players. But…But…not sure where we derived our strength from…but we pulled off one by one and beat every other team to WIN it. Yes, especially the final was a REAL tug of war, that lasted big too longer. They almost got us down on the other side, but we werent giving up. With me supposedly the strongest among the six being at the last[dont you know that strategy for tug of war?], I was screaming “GYEAARARARRARRRAAAAA!!!!” at the top of my lungs pulling the rope as if i was falling off a cliff. Perhaps, we just held it one second longer. They gave up and so we were all throw down on to the hot sand. I knew we won. That was much more satisfying than the other games. The guys watching from outside said it was pretty intense and patted me for my vocal support!(and of course for physical support too, remember in tug of war, the weakest link is the most important, so if you win, you should thank the weakest guy more than the strongest! )

We came back to the hotel, I took a quick shower back in my room { i was awfully dirty since I was also a target for some of the left over waterballons! } and came down to the swimming pool for a good relaxing swim. After an hour or so, we all started the water sports. I wrecked the waverunners with total enthusiam. I have already been on one of these before, so this time I was just having a total blast with full throttle. I never tried to let the gas go at all. With more and more of our folks joining the ocean on more waverunners, there were more waves, more speed and more wakes to be jumped over! It was true a thriller, with life jackets on, you have no reason to worry of falling over as long as you safely away from other riders. Speed was the food for those two hours and I was feeding voraciously catching every wave at its peak!

[If you didnt know what a waverunner is…Thanks to www.floridastateparks.org]

After that stint, I saw a kayak lying over the coast doing nothing. Though I didnt sign up for it initially, I was allowed to take it for a ride. Since I had done this one as well once in austin, I got going without much difficulty. Only now, kayaking is lot more streneous than holding the gas on the waverunners. With so many sports activities dispersing waves around, it got much harder to kayak than on a stagnant water. I managed to hang around for half hour before I realized Iam putting myself up for too much trouble. Back on the shore, I spent another hour or so on the pool relaxing.

We followed that with a great dinner at cuban restaurant next door. The next day went with another few presentations and then we were off to the airport on our way back. Tampa was still shining beaches and the occasional dolphins that showed up were still inviting, if only I had won a lottery. For I dont want to think how much it would have cost me if I had to pay for all the fun we had. I think I glanced over a board next to the water front that read – “Rent a waverunner for just $125 an hour!”

Lot of things had happened around the world while I was off, especially the one that surprised me when Harini told me over the phone that “Veerappan shot dead in encounter”! I havent had time yet to read all the conspiracy theories, yet to swim out of my backlog of emails.

Atanu Dey whines about a recent decision by our all-star Lallo to reject the idea of importing wheels for trains. He rather proposed ( or did he already approve ? ) a steel plant to manufacture wheels! And the best place for the plant : Naturally, Bihar!

I feel bad that not much could be done with these political moves. While Manmohan and Chidambaram are trying to promote the UPA’s plans for more FDI combined with rural development, Our Laloo comes in and bowls a yorker. All poor UPA wickets gone in a single delivery!. He doesnt stop there, he comes in at the rate of one per week these days. The latest one with a coal/iorn ore freight scam. Perhaps he thought everyone would forget the once famous fodder scam. Come on, Laloo, Ain’t it all part of the same game?

But as i think about it? Is laloo that stupid to have all the train bogies wait for 10 years before the first “Indian” wheels come out of Bihar? Agreed, Laloo is smart not necessarily stupid. Is Mr.Singh so? When Laloo claims that he will immediately speak to the PM to report the coal freight scam, why cant he make a freaking call to Mr.Singh to clarify his “doubts” on India’s self-sufficiency? ok…eventually I have to be settle with Lallo as long as his buddies in Bihar dont churn out square wheels!

Tim Worstall, in his rebuttal posts a terrific question : What do you think will make the people of India richer? An indigenous railroad wheel manufacturing industry? Or a train system with 20,000 extra carriages on it and a further similar number running on new not old wheels?

Aside of the topic – UPA – United Progressive Alliance and CMP, common minimum programme. Only our IAS officers can come up with such astonishingly ambitious but really-means-nothing acronyms every political season for their alilances! Whats in a name? Thousands of people across the world dont read past the title. So these titles, for the uninformed foreigner, perhaps gives a positive outlook. Ah! Let it be, if thats the only good thing out it.

As I was collecting my mails from the mail box at my last residence this past weekend, I noticed a cover, so simple in its look, with the name arunachalam krishnasamy written on top of it. I figured, for our old and naive african american US postal delivery lady, the first 7 letters of the last name matched and she didnt have to match the rest of the name, so she must have dropped it into my mail box. Poor thing, she must have sure noticed the different first name, but perhaps thought i had new family member of something.

And there I noticed there was a spanish stamp for .70 Euro and the sender address on the left side read something like “El Gordo Mega Internation, espanalo” nd some more stuff in spanish. Since our arunachalam’s address was printed (not hand written) i thought this guy must have gotten some serious mail here. Thats when I realized that it didnt have any apartment number. Oops! it read 100 warren street. jersey city, nj, usa. Strange?

I knew the bummers at our apartment building management office under any circumstances, even if the earth is going to be blown up in 10 seconds, wouldnt share the “private” information of its residents. So there is no point in asking them for which apartment our to-be-friend arunachalam lives.

After locking up the mail box, I went through the deck of mails one by one and the everything was some crap except our supposedly genuine looking letter to arunachalam. Hmm? I figured since this is a fellow indian, i could take the liberty of opening up his mail and if its something absolutely important, i somehow could locate and hand this over to him and justify my intrusion of his private mail.

As i read the first few lines of the letter, i couldnt believe what I was reading “Award Notification…Final Notice…E750,000 REF NO: EGS/2551256003/03 BATCH NO: 4/0017/IPD. And it went on to describe how important it is to keep this confidential and so on, and finally insisted to contact them before october 14th.

Harini was standing next to me doing something. I looked at her and said, “Dude, this is some serious shit, we got to find this guy ya?” She had no clue whatsoever.

I said, “This guy has won a lottery in europe. Poor chap must have bought a ticket when he went for a vacation or something, and HE WON!, so we got to find this guy out somehow”. She could see that I was visibly restless. I felt helpless becoz I know this guys lives in the same high rise, How could I ever know which apartment he is on, in that 500+ apartments? I started minting ideas. I said, lets go home immdtly and somehow lets locate this guy. we got to do something. I mean, there is no way I am going to let this million dollars go into the drains. For a second i thought I should legally change my name! Who in whole of spain would know that Arunachalam and Sudharshan are different?

We drove back home. I had to do other things so left this in the back of my mind trying to figure out ideas to locate this to-be-rich guy. After all, the name also sounds he might be from tamilnadu, so atleast he would give me something. Dude, something is better than nothing. Atleast I am honestly trying so hard to locate him ya?

Brilliant was I, checked out first thing on verizon white pages and there he was. Called that 201 number. Damn, it goes to some voice mail. I said, “my name is sudharshan. This message is for Arunachalam Krishnasamy. Please call me back immediately at xxx number. This is important”. I made sure I pronounced my name and his name exactly and in the best possible INDIAN accent. I didnt want to take chances that he could miss my name or number or i could miss his name! Noone called me back that day.

You would think what else I would have done to locate him. Yes, I did run a google search. There were tons of Arunachalams and krishnasamys but NOT that one combination and one from new jersey!. I was only praying that this guy lives on the damn earth still. Dont anyone dare to tell me he is nomore!

On tuesday I said, why not just contact the spanish company and let them know that I am seriously working on locating this person and request them to hold the funds for another week or two. Good idea isnt it?

And so, I ran a search for “El Gordo”. As I scanned through the search results. I read a word that made my brain burst for a second. “El Gordo…Lottery…Scam…”

“F**K my OZONE !!!”

NOOOOOO! I told myself I am not that stupid. But I was. Couldnt believe it. Immediately tore off the envelope into uncountable pieces and dumped it into the garbage can. Dragged the garbage can out immediately and dumped it into the bigger one on the floor outside.

I didnt want to see or think about that damn thing again. Suckers! Wasted a few hours of my precious life! I didnt even want to save that stupid spanish stamp.

Amazing and ridiculous that the 60,000 visas that gets allocated every year got filled out on the very first day of the season.

Visa power: Uncle Sam’s ‘no’ hurts India

Looks like Indians are giving the toughest trouble to the policy makers here in US. I said Indians for one reason that everyone knows that more than 60 to 70% of the applicants in that 60,000 are from India.

In a way, I am a victim as well as beneficiary of this policy. Rollback to six years ago, when my H1b was being processed and when I was expecting that “flying out next week” call to pack my things up, I got a call from the recruiter at the then CBSI (now covansys) that my visa processing has been held up becoz the quota was over. That was somewhere in April of the year. Back then, it took from October to April to fill up those 65,000 ( This year it just took ONE GOD DAMN SINGLE DAY! ). So I was politely told to wait until Ocotber of that year. But my feelings were not as polite. I called up friend Ramesh, who then was working at CBSI Chicago, to ask him if he can do anything for me, as if he was the Secretary of State or something. Feels funny now, but when you are waiting in such a situation, you feel like you can beg to any soul living in US. Eventually, I was benefited for waiting 6 months becoz my application must have been up in the stack when the opened the offices on October 1st. As a bonus, US had increased the quota that year from 65,000 to some 130,000 or something. So that was the season when every tom, dick and this harry ( who? ofcourse me !) came to US.

Today I can exactly imagine how many such folks back in India must have felt when this news came out this morning. Good Luck to those guys who were lucky to have fell in the 60,000 odds and ‘Be Patient’ to those who fell out. There is always a next october…like I had 🙂