I am tagged...

Shirsha has tagged me! And I am prompt to finish it quickly :-)

Favorite Colors: Sky blue, light yellow sometimes bright colors
Favorite Food: Chats (pani puri), Marathi food. Other than that Italian, Mexican, North Indian… anything veggie, spicy
Favorite Month: No preference. May mebbe… thats the summer holiday time and has my b’day too !!!
Favorite Songs: Mera Kuch Saamaan, Everything I do, When you say nothing at all will do anytime. Other than that choice depends on mood from Jagjeet to Metalica… I am huge music buff
Favorite Movies: Dil Chahata hai, Animation movies and RomComs like When Harry Met Sally, You have got mail, Notting Hill
Favorite Book: In Marathi all PL Deshpande books. ‘Love story’ and ‘The Fountainhead’ in English
Favorite Sport: Kabbadi :D
Favorite Season: Rainy season
Favorite Day Of the week: Wednesday
Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Most of them (including mint too!!!) and I have started liking chocolate a lot these days
Favorite Time of Day: Dusk

8 CURRENTS:
Current Mood: Its Monday again … *sigh*
Current Taste: Bakhar Wadi that my romie got from Mumabi... yum !
Current Clothes: Pajamas
Current Desktop: Ocean Blue
Current Toe nail Color: Colorless
Current Time: 7.22 PM IST
Current Surroundings: My room
Current Thoughts: zzZZzzzz

6 FIRSTS:
First Best Friend: Don’t remember
First Screen Name: Ashley
First Pet: N/A
First Piercing: Ears
First Album: Don’t remember
First Movie: 'Annadi' thats the first movie I remember watching in theater

6 LASTS:
Last Cigarette: When someone around me smokes :-D
Last Taste: Parathas we gobbled on at 'Boby da Dhaba' in Ulsoor ...
Last Movie Seen: The Angrez… too hilarious
Last Phone Call: To mom
Last Book Read: Shantaram

Have You Ever Broken the Law: Traffic Signals … many times even on phoren grounds
Have You Ever Been Arrested: Not yet
Have You Ever Been on TV: Yeah … when we were watching uncle’s marriage CD
Have You Ever Lied: Yup!
Have You Ever Kissed Someone You Didn't Know: Naah

5 THINGS:
Thing You're Wearing: Pajamas
Thing You've Done Today: Wake up late, dozed in office though meetings, came back early and now waiting for office servers to come up and blogging
Thing You Can Hear Right Now: “Paint my love” MLTR
Thing You Can't Live Without: Do water, air etc count ?
Thing You Do When You're Bored: Read, Listen to music, Watch TV, sleep, go out, bug friends

4 PLACES YOU'VE BEEN TODAY:
Home, Office, Southie eatery near office, bad bad Airport road and MG Road traffic

3 PEOPLE YOU CAN TELL ANYTHING TO:
Mom and couple of friends.

2 CHOICES:
Want to see mom and sis desperately
Never give up on anything in life

1 THING YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE: Travel all over India

And I tag Apoorv :-)

“Baaah Baaah Baaah…” someone I used to consider the most sensible person gave (or I should say tried to give) me advice of lifetime. I didn’t know what to say … should I laugh or cry. Words have meaning my dear, and they do hurt other people. I couldn’t help but wonder… Do we really have the right to judge other people? And then try to judge other “other” people based on these other people and the go ahead and give them the free advice? And if we get advice, should we really consider it? If somebody is giving you some advice does it mean that it has to be right? Ok, so you used to consider that person for a long long time, so does that mean the person has to be right this time too. People change and so do their views and our opinions about them!

Someone gave me a beautiful example about change of opinions,
You are madly in love with a guy and you see him raping a girl… will your emotions be same ?

Haaah… Its amazing life… You never know what will happen next :-).

This is to all those people who have faith in life and faith in yourself…

If you have dream, live it
If you have intuition, follow it
Be true to yourself
And everything else will fall in right place!!!

And let there be world peace!!!

The 99th Post

Its going to be a log weekend (Monday is Bangalore Bandh :-() and I am sitting at home on the Sunday evening. There are lots of thoughts crowding in my head and I am not able to think straight… I had a not so good start of the weekend. I need to write something… it always helps to disintegrate my thoughts. What should I write about? Was talking to my friend about it and she suggested why not write an autobiography… Ahh… now that’s interesting! I asked her, ‘name a single great thing that I have done that will make others read my autobiography’. ‘Why do have to be great to write it and why do you want others to read it? Do you always write for others?’ She asks me. That’s true, I don’t write for others… neither to please anyone nor to hurt anyone, till now I haven’t written anything ‘politically correct’. This blog has always been like reflection of my most dear thoughts which I generally feel very awkward to talk. I have been writing about stuff without caring for who reads it or not … and believe it or not, putting down thoughts on paper (webpage that is :-)) makes a lot of difference to whole thought process… and has helped me to get out of the bad phase of life when I started blogging. And this happens to be my 99th post. Yayy!!!

Let me write about some random thoughts I have been having this weekend. I was thinking what I want to do now. I am neither depressed nor sad… but in a reflecting mood (I guess I do lot of thinking every weekend :D). But for the first time in last eight years I am missing home. I am missing dad. I wish I would get to see him at least once and tell how much I love him. I never said that to him when I had a chance. I want to go back and be a good girl I used to be, responsible and sensible. Yeah… I was like that . These two years in Bangalore have been totally insane for me. I have done the most bizarre things. Interestingly every city/town I have stayed in has brought drastically different changes in me… I will write about them some other time!
Yesterday my roomie got idea of opening a hair salon in front of Barista on MG road looking at the different hair styles of guys there. And I got mehandi (Henna) done on my hand sitting on the footpath :D. I just looove the mehandi smell. We didn’t cook anything again this weekend and gobbled on free food at two friends’ place. I bunked guitar class again… finally my guitar teacher called me up asking whether I want to attend the class or not :-). I plan to practice tomorrow and attend the class next weekend… of course, only if my laziness permits. And tomorrow I need to do some office work which I have been postponing for weeks!
Will write more later !

Customer Service … Now and Then

Its amazing how the call-centre service is “evolved” over recent times

Earlier the calls used to be like this (when they were new and we were also new to it)

Caller: Hello, Can I take to miss Ashlesha?
Me: Yes. Speaking
Caller: Good afternoon ma’am. This is ABC speaking from XYZ bank. Can get few minutes of your precious time?
Me: Time for?
Caller: I would like to tell you about this very interesting Credit card our company has to offer you since you are working for PQR company. Can I talk to you?
Me: Yeah please go ahead
Caller: Blah blah blah.(10-15 minutes of convincing) So… it is very good offer ma’am. So can I send my customer executive to you today?
Me: Okie.

And we doomed ourselves with lot of credit cards!

Then came next change

Caller: Hello.
Me: Hello ?
Caller: Good evening.. err good morning sir … err ma’am
Me: Good afternoon!
Caller: Err… Good afternoon ma’am. I am calling from XYZ bank
Me: Yes ?
Caller: This is regarding personal loan.
Me: Well I am not interested. Thank you. (I do say that !)
Caller: Ok ma’am. Can I know the reason ma’am? This is very interesting offer.
Me: (meri marzi !!!) I am not interested... isn’t that enough?
Caller: Ok ma’am. Can you give any references?
Me: No
Though sometimes we give number of our colleagues to bug them :D!

Current trend

Caller: Hello. This is ABC calling from XYZ bank. It is regarding personal loan (In a single breath)
Me: Not interested
Caller: ok (Like he/she knew the answer already)

After some time they will play records of this like they used have poll campaign during the days of “India Shining”, when the dear PM would call and talk to you!

I must post something on Monday :-) !

Some time pass…

- If you are 'Indian Ocean' fan (it’s a music band for those who don't know :-)), you can download their music for free here http://www.indianoceanmusic.com/.
Listen to it … they are amazing!

- New blogger version is totally template unfriendly. I cannot put new template because it cries for some
XML parsing mismatch... though it works fine with the older version. I want my flexibility of changing template back!
Hellooo Googlie ppl are you reading?

- ‘Radio Indigo’ plays some nice music. ‘FM Rainbow’ tries to hog all the FM bandwidth around its area. So whenever I am listening to radio and nearing office I need to listen to mix of English + kannada songs :-(.

- I am getting sore fingers while practicing guitar. I am skipping guitar classes again :-D.

- New IE7 is launched. It looks exactly like FireFox (damn those copiers!!!), works pathetic. It hangs miserably whenever I try to open Google reader. Totally off my list of browsers. Try Opera… its cool.

- Popular rock band ‘Iron maiden’ will be performing live in Bangalore next month (17th March to be precise) !!!

- Bangalore people need no reason to put up riots. Like today there might be trouble due to Cauvery verdict. People … grow up!!! Earning your daily bread-butter is important than anything else.

- I hate filling up timesheets.

- My office network is terribly slow these days :-(

- Mondays are boring and lazy as usual :-

Customer Service :-)

Yesterday I got this call

Caller: Hello, can I talk to Miss Aaaasheeeleshaa (they do that to my name most of the time L)
Me: Yeah... speaking.
Caller: Hello maam, this is xxxx calling from Airtel. It is regarding the query you had placed with us for broadband connection.
(This was places couple of weeks ago I guess)
Me: Yes ?
Caller: I am sorry to inform you maam that the connection is not available in your area.
Me: Oh but it is already installed at my home.
Caller: (In little shocked voice)Err… what??? (Gathering himself together)When did you get the connection?
Me: I got it last friday.
Caller: Maam, are you sure that is an Airtel connection?
Me: That’s what the installation guy told me. I have the receipt and all too!
Caller: Err… but our records show that the connection is not available in your area.
Me: But I have it !!
Caller: (After a long pause and a bit of thinking) Thank you for choosing Airtel, maam. Sorry for this call and the wrong information.

I didn’t tell him that we had given wrong address :-D !!!