Monday, December 19, 2011

Updates of the general kind

Since I cannot bring myself to think deep enough and come up with a blog post on anything of significance, I just thought I might just come up with something that elaborates on the aforementioned topic of this post.

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Holiday season? Not quite.

Thanksgiving to New years is usually when the clients take it easy and there are no strict deadlines staring into the eye. Not in my case this year. Its been a crazy one month with issues cropping up everyday and the bane of weekend on call support adding its own flavors.Just when I thought the system was getting stable after the go-live ,all such notions have now been charred beyond recognition ,in the raging inferno of day-to-day issues.Which is one more reason why I cant wait for Feb, when I'll be off on a vacation to India for 20 full days. A trip to LA has been planned with colleagues for the Christmas weekend, but I'm assuming it will be frantic from the word go.

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Trip trappings in Texas

Talking about trips, I have undertaken quite a few in the 15 months of stay here in the US. Notable ones include the ones to New York city, Chicago ,Yosemite national park ,San Francisco and the Big bend national park down south in Texas. Which is pretty much almost all of the places I have seen so far. I leave out Las Vegas here because apparently no visit to that city is complete if you haven't covered Grand Canyon and the Hoover dam in the same trip. Having seen these cities, I now crave for visits to the wilderness. National parks, hikes, and the like. Places like the colorado springs in Denver, Niagara falls, the grand canyon are on the bucket list of tours to be undertaken before I return to India for good. Also, my heart craves for an eyefull of the splendid fall colors.The Eastern Sierra ranges in northern california ,the Smokies in Tennessee and New Hampshire in particular are bestowed with the splendor and resplendency of the full glory of the season's colors.Being stuck in Texas means one has to fly out to these destinations and that leaves little scope for last minute planning,whereas in California or in the north/east coast or for that matter the midwest, one doesn't have to plan too much in advance. Renting a car and driving down is always an option. Not so with Texas with its large tracts of barren lands, one-day-per-winter of snow,merciless summers and a non existent fall season. May be the only good thing here is the absence of state taxes,interestingly for a state which is an anagram of that very word!

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Attention span problems

Blame it on Facebook or blame it on Twitter, but my decreasing attention span is a clear and present danger, raising its ugly face everytime I'm confronted with any post/article/link of a substantial size requiring my attention for more than 5 minutes. Yes, its come down to such depressing levels. Once a voracious reader of the newspaper, I find myself struggling every morning to keep myself focused for more than half an hour. That I dont wake up early enough and that I dont have a long enough commute to office for me to spend time on a paper,unlike in India, may be valid reasons, but I'm quite sure it has as much to do with my ability to devote attention lasting long enough. Which is probably one of the reasons behind me not being able to think deeply enough on any topic worth its salt and present those thoughts in the form of a blog. I must also shamelessly admit that I've had to return a couple of books to the library without reading them fully,after having kept them for the longest permissible time,using up all the renewals. I seriously need a way back into the books and I have no idea how.

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Serial Killing

I've never quite been a TV show person. Back in India,I'd miss no chance to troll the hell out of  my folks at home while they'd be busy watching their favorite shows on TV which made me an utterly undesirable element during the showtimes. And that kind of instilled a generally negative opinion on TV in my mind. That seems to have changed in the recent past, thanks to some people I follow keenly on Twitter/Facebook, who have pretty good tastes ( or tastes I appreciate) when it comes to matters of art and music. Of course it is a very subjective thing, it could be argued,though. All of which means I have developed a taste for the american sitcoms and TV shows and I must admit being swept off my feet looking at the production values and the high quality of programming on offer. So far I have completed all seasons of 2 shows, one being the intense drama,Prison Break( they dragged the last season a lot, I felt though.) and the other being the quirkily funny Arrested Development. Used to watch Two and a half men as well, but have stopped after it lost its sheen. Pun intended, for sure. Currently I am catching up with How I met your mother, which has 7 seasons in all but I don't see putting myself through all of them. In all likelihood, I'm not watching season 3 onwards which is why I did myself a favor and read a pretty good gist of it all in wikipedia. On my instant queue in Netflix are Breaking Bad, Mad men and 30 rock, not necessarily in that order. And oh yes, did I forget to mention that I find 'Friends' to be highly over-rated?

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Thoughtful considerations

Considering that attention spans in general are decreasing, and it is not an isolated phenomenon, I'd guess it would be good to end this post here,being mindful of the fact that I need to exercise some mercy on whoever chooses to read this post. More later!