This came to my Facebook account!!!

Slept thru the earthquake last night. Like a good martini, I might have been shaken but certainly did not stir 🙂

It is a pity that the earthquake happened on a Friday night. Fulton County was robbed of a chance to close schools for another day 🙂

I got this email first thing in the morning to brighten up my day. Figured this should make Sharmila jealous enough… Instead, decided to move forward and sent the sender this reply… Read the original email (pic attached) first.

>>>>
Dear Arpita,
I am delighted to know that you are interested in me. It is not often that an IT employee shows interest in me. Tree climbers, may be. Chimney cleaners, maybe. But never an IT employee. That too an IT employee from India. I assume there are not too many of them in India.

I am a bit confused though. Your domain name says “talentjobs.in”. I, perhaps mistakenly, concluded that you might have a great job offer or at least an opportunity for me. But I can’t figure out how your interests in painting, dancing etc etc figures in that.

Speaking of interests – in the last two days, I had two other ladies – Sonali and Jhuma from your company reach out to me with identical interests as you do. I am wondering if you might know them because they are from Howrah too!! What is the chance of that? !

Can I be so bold as to ask you to contact them and settle on a time that might work for all three of you? You see – I have to fly for over 36 hours, then take a bus and then depending on the exact location in Howrah, perhaps an auto rickshaw too! It would be terribly inconvenient for me if I have to do this three times over.

Please let me know…

P.S. I noticed that you write your name with upper case and bold but mine with lower case. Hope you do not think any less of me than yourself.

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Last evening, Sharmila brought the girls back from school and the girls could barely contain their glee at the prospect of two unscheduled holidays. (Fulton county has closed schools Tue and Wed due to inclement weather – which in Atlanta-speak after the scare of the previous snowmaggedon roughly means “some clouds have been spotted over Birmingham, Alabama” 😉 ).

In any case, the girls were rejoicing and Sharmila was getting really mad at the thought that she would be again stuck at home with the kids. So, some mild form of caterwauling ensued between Tasha and her – she demanding that we go somewhere for the weekend and Tasha wanting a “staycation”.
Having been burnt before, I stayed completely out of the fray. There is no good that ever comes out from me getting in the middle of a fight between Tasha and Sharmila. But it was starting to get heated up.

Trust Nikita to calm things down. She gave Sharmila one of those hugs with “mommy wommy” words and said “We will go shopping this weekend”! Incredibly enough, it worked! Tasha also wanted to join them for shopping!!! There was total harmony after that!

I went back to my room realizing that perhaps I am the one who came thru most damaged in a fight that I did not have a dog in at all!!!

As many of you know, Sharmila is a pro painter and her favorite topics are boats, horses and such. Once in a while, she ventures into other areas. Sometime back, she drew an abstract painting. For the paintingly-challenged like me, an abstract painting is just that – abstract. No subject, object and all that… at least, that is what I think.

Anyways, Sharmila had put up one of her abstract paintings to dry in the garage. When she drove into the said garage in her car bringing Nikita back from school, another of those hilarious episodes ensued.

Nikita looked at the painting up and down… tilted her head to look sideways into the painting and then finally declared “This goes into the ‘I don’t understand’ pile” and stomped away!

Rest of us were on the floor with our sides bursting…. we laughed so hard….

Again, nobody gets me like good old Larry Mason (of the “I wish you enough” fame) does!!! A few more wines at BJs on Stemmons Freeway and I am sure all my problems will be solved 🙂

As I was walking with a few of my team mates in Callaway Gardens last evening, we saw this nice building. We were intrigued by the fact that there was a Soap Opera House there. Upon closer inspection (zoom in if you wish), we realized that it was a laundromat!!!!

Somebody has a sense of humor!!

So, if the Red Hot Chili Peppers does it, nobody complains. And if Janet Jackson does it, it is “wardrobe malfunction “? That’s sexist!!! 🙂

After the Tech fair competition, on our way back, Nikita and I stopped at a Starbucks. The entrance to the Starbucks was a little convoluted. On our way out, we got stuck. After pulling out of the parking spot, I could not move forward since there was a car there waiting to move who was waiting for the car in front to move who could not take a right turn because another car was blocking the way trying to come in. And that car could not move either since there was a car in front of it who wanted to get into my parking spot. But it could not do that till I cleared out!!

So, I explained to Nikita that in computer science, this is what is called a “deadlock”. Nobody could move since we had a circular dependency. Eventually, all the drivers realized that we have an unsolvable problem. It was solved when the car wanting to take a left turn, decided instead to go forward into the Drive Thru lane.

As I finally pulled forward, Nikita asked, “So, are we Liveopen now?”.

I am like – “What? Oh!!!!” 🙂