waitin for my visa

i suppose william and monica are plotting against me. soon after i published my previous post [in which i had produced a ballpark figure of £3 million for the ultrasound scanner] william dispatches me a [link] from eBay for a south korean made scanner that has a price tag of £28,000 pounds. he alleges it is a bargain ! monica had a look at it and insists it is a much better scanner than the one they had at rosie. i am not taking any of that nonsense woman !

the other day william goes to sainsburys [a super market chain] and asked me if i wanted anything. since i did not bring lunch, i requested if he could get me a cheese & tomato panini and entrusted him with a £10 note. he goes to sainsburys, gives monica a tink on her mobile phone and reveals that her favourite cereal [which is not stocked in tesco, our regular super market, any longer] is on sainsburys's shelves !! monica implores him to get as many as he possibly can, ofcourse using my mahoney, all without me being aware of it !!

now our kitchen is filled to capacity with crispix, monica's breakfast cereal, and waffles. oh well, never mind. nothing of any value has transpired in the past 1 week. i just thought i would login and blog a bit just to convince you i am still operational. i have applied for my singapore visa late last week and i am anticipating it in a day or two. i am planning on a [train] journey from singapore through to malaysia and probably all the way to bangkok and back. well, i have to get permission from the [boss] for this.

i can see a tiny bulge in monica's tummy !! woo hoo !! nhs's purple booklet says there will be a lot of harmonal activity in the expectant woman's body often translating to an increase in the body size, breast size and even mild case of pimples. i am not so sure about that when it comes to monica. but, for the past 12 weeks, i can say, i have been putting on more weight and having a bout of harmless pimples. reprehensibly, my breasts in actual fact have become bigger. if i don’t do something about this, i would have to start thinking about bras or some other type of support.

jumpin joey

the punting on saturday was brilliant as expected except for the sporadic showers and unremitting complaints from eric. every 5 minutes he kept requesting for one of us to take over. saturday reminded me what a whimp eric really is. na, just pulling his legs. he was a genuine star. he laboured for more than 90% of the time, avidly giving us a commentary on cambridge colleges and their history. that pole they use to punt, it weighs about 10 kgs. i couldn't accept as true a skinny african [mauritian] toiling with the punt for over 2 hours !! i promise you, he has a career in punting when he graduates with his m.phil. [here] are some photos from our punting session on saturday.

took monica to [rosie maternity hospital] for her first scan today !! woo hoo !! we had a 9:00am rendezvous. she was asked to come in with a full bladder since the scans look vivid on the monitor. so, monica woke up at 5:00 am, drained her bladder, had 3 glasses of water and promptly went back to sleep. at rosie, the lady called us in and a gel [that has silver chloride to facilitate access] was applied to monica's abdomen. pulsed ultrasound, because of it's high frequency can be aimed in a specific direction and it obeys the normal laws of geometric optics with regard to reflection, transmission and refraction. monica asked me if they are like x-rays. i was able to her that no, these transducers use high frequency pulses less than 7 megahertz. x-rays are on the other side of the spectrum, after UV rays but before gamma. i have read about these scanners before.

forgeting that hogwash, we saw this tiny baby on the monitor and i assure you words simply won't do any justice if i am to express the bliss i & monica experienced that fraction of a moment. monica even cried instantaneously, jubilant tears i promise you. the baby provisionally is nicknamed jumping joey. when ever the lady pressed the transducer on to monica's abdomen, the baby hopped. we could catch sight of the umbilical cord, the face [including a pronounced nose], the legs and even the pulsating heart !! i am not sure if the baby is a boy. the hopping seems to persuade me that it has to be a boy, but at the same time the jumping could mean the baby is very ticklish .. more like monica. hmm ..

the lady measured the length and she concludes the baby is about 12 weeks old. you should be able to catch a glimpse of the scans here [1, 2]. later in the afternoon, when i was busy optimising my diffie hellman key exchange mechanism, monica said she wants to see the baby again. i didn’t realise she was *not* joking until she asked me "how much" one those ultrasound devices would cost ? oh boy !! well, i had to confess to her that they are quiet inexpensive and probably set us back by no more than 3 or 4 million pounds. since i am laden with easy money, i told her that i am going to the toilet to withdraw 4 million pounds straight out of my "you know what". kwazy woman !

porno pandas

see the new snapshot on the right ? that is my gorgeous, 4 months old niece, nina. she unquestionably has my brother's smile and nearly his face, but certainly not his hair or his skin tone!. if you ever attempt and look for either me or ragho, my brother, after twilight, make sure you carry a powerful torch light. you can by no means recognise our black faces otherwise. monica has her 12 week scan on wednesday the 23rd june. i am praying everything will be ok. monica has been scrutinising a lot of maternity related shows. i can't comprehend how she watches them as some scenes are off putting. The episode on foetus–in-foetu was particularly harrowing. anyway, i am delighted she watches them since all they ever talk about are "complications and how best we can avoid them".

i have a rendezvous with the nurse tomorrow for gauging my blood pressure. i feel fine and i hope it will be normal.

have you been informed of the porno pandas ? these chinese people are absolutely imaginative !! in china, some where in the forests of course, they exhibit mating scenes of pandas on a large screen time after time so that pandas can "become skilled at" or get excited I suppose. as usual, they claim staggering success. even a 4 year old female panda has been impregnated that way. evidently, these stupid pandas know nothing about the laws pertaining to under age sex !!

eric has invited us for punting in the river cam this weekend. he was my colleague back at nokia and we used to work on the SGSN [core network implementation] side of packet data. i was his project leader and i take enormous pleasure in pointing out that he was utterly useless. all he ever did at work was listen and sing along to songs by the [cheeky girls]. after leaving nokia, he some how hoodwinked cambridge university into accepting him for a M.Phil [that too with a full bursary] and fortuitously has graduated just a few weeks ago.

eric says we will have lunch at the [king’s college] mess hall before the punting. for those who have seen harry potter(s), i nudge you to recall one of the many scenes where they all sit in the common dining hall with floating candles. almost all oxbridge colleges have similar themes since most were constructed pre-victorian days. i will click some snaps [if permitted] and host them on my web site. i will pretend to be harry farter. i am certainly hairy and need i mention anything about farting ?

inge [the norwegian dilbert] and his lovely fiancé marie [from toulouse, france] called us a few days back. they are getting married on the 23rd of july 2005. i have warned them that i will gate crash if i receive no invitation.

my last day here at [Brandcomms] will be the 9th of july 2004.

coochi coo baby

can anyone remind me who came up with this phrase ? i think it is that telly savalas [kojak] guy although he might have wrapped that phrase from one of the kids on the road. anyway, i been taught two new words "woot" and "teehee" by the ever so useful yankees. my niece ammu [pronounced moose] is planning to do a doctoral thesis on wootology as the challenges in medicine and engineering are merely not there for her anymore. she has almost perfected the word "woot" as it can now be used as a noun, a verb and an adjective !! do not fret, more work is being done by her to extend its efficacy to other areas.

thanks to moose, now, we have the competence to say things such as "sorry to have wooted you, mr. i will make sure the woot will not bother you tomorrow. i have no wooting idea what i am wootin about. i am such a woot !". amusing yanks. but then, i heard something even funnier. a troupe of british people gather in the salisbury plains every wednesday dressed up like ned flanders from the [simpsons]. the leader steers the sermon and everyone says "okalie dokalie" instead of something analogous to amen. crazy brits !

okay, to serious matters: on saturday last weekend i felt some chest pains. may be it was psychological as i had come to know from my earlier visit to the GP that my BP was 160/110. my left eye was experiencing some soreness, in the socket. i have read reports before that when the BP is high, blood vessels in the eyes get pinched and rupture in extreme cases. i did not want to gamble. i went to addenbrokes accident & emergency at 9:00 pm. i checked in, told the receptionist what i experienced. they whisked me away immediately, positioned 4 electrodes on my heart, 2 each on my hands & legs and recorded ECGs for 15 seconds. they took my BP after that. 135/88 - a lot better than wednesday but still a bit high. they examined my left eye with an optical device and invited me to read a chart from a distance with my right eye closed.

everything was ok, the doctor said my QRS complex [on the cardiogram] looked perfectly okay and he did not see anything wrong with the eye either. he said he was not willing to prescribe any drugs, not even an ointment for the eye. he went away in a dash saying i should come back in a couple of days if the pain still persisted. i wasn't too worried about the eyes although the twinge remained there for a further 2 days. now with ECGs i know conclusively there is nothing wide of the mark with my heart.

yesterday, i was searching for my certificates [graduation certificates] from my suitcase upstairs. i had been watching almost the entire england & france football game along with monica. though i do not like or enjoy football, i had predicted a 1-0 score to england before the game started. the game was almost over, so i went up and glanced for my certificates. i was there for barely a minute. i take notice of monica saying "oh God" and i was worried. i called her name from upstairs and enquired if she was feeling ok. she said, "yes man, no worries". 20 seconds later, she again said "oh my God" with a bit more emphasis on "God". i was apprehensive, came down to inspect her. what happened was that france had scored twice in roughly 2 minutes and had beaten a poignant england 2-1. i had gone up for only 2 minutes, the game was over and utterly turned around !!

this only reminded me of tyson & michael spinks super 88 match up. the hearsay goes like this. spinks's wife comes down the MGM grand elevator along with spinks himself, kisses him "good luck", informs him that she will return to the room and watch the match live on the TV. keep in mind, spinks has a 30-0 win-loss record, with 21 KOs. she sees him enter the ring, the lift's door close, reaches her hotel room [which is in the adjacent building] barely 1 minute later, turns the TV on and catches the referee pronouncing iron mike the winner !! spinks is on the floor and neither him nor his wife knew what hit them. the poor woman never saw her husband spinks fight ever again. spinks retired with a record of 31-1 [21 KOs], the only ever blemish was his loss to iron mike in a world record time of 91 seconds.

that is what i felt like. even the replay of goals by france can never tell me how it exactly happened.

oh yeah, i am resigning from my work today. i will serve out my notice period of 4 weeks starting tomorrow. the idea is for me to park myself at home and take care of the baby once delivered. monica will be the bread winner for the family while i hang about at home cleaning, cooking, lawn mowing, shopping, washing clothes, disposing diapers etc. i and monica talked about this a lot and we both decided this is how we wanted things to be.

bollocks !! monica will never agree to this twaddle. i wuz zust zokin [wootin], i am joining a new company in cambridge middle of next month. more details later.

what about bob

i went for an examination at the local clinic on wednesday evening. i was already asked to bring a urine sample and the first thing they did was test for diabetes. i do not comprehend how they do it using just a urine sample, but the good news is that i am not diabetic. next the nurse strapped some contraption on my right arm and at the push of a button the thingamajig started squeezing my biceps as if i am receiving a brilliant massage for no apparent reason. may be they delight non diabetic people with a rub down at this clinic !! alas, my relaxation stopped when i heard intermittent beeps. aha, i realised it was a blood pressure monitor !

i have high blood pressure, 160/110. the nurse took the reading twice, a 10 minute break between the two. i produced identical reading the second time around as well. now, i have been requested to see the nurse again next friday, 1 week spot on from today. the nurse said if the blood pressure remains that high, she would scrutinise my blood pressure for an additional week, thrice a day. i think i can regulate my blood pressure back to normal. i neither know the reason for this high blood pressure nor do i feel any transformation in my physical or mental health. i am not troubled too much. i am sure it will settle down satisfactorily sooner rather than later.

i called fazal at maldives today to find out how he & sheena are doing. i did not give any name when i called, fazal thought i was bob – i wondered who bob was. fazal maintains he has a friend bob in maldives while i am fairly confident it is not a common name there. sheena got promoted and she is a project coordinator at the president's bureau. sheena often tells me that i would take delivery of a red carpet welcome if & when i visit maldives. i have no doubt about that.

a propos my work, i have some news which i will indeed make public on monday [14/06]. monica, i and yovita had dinner at a vietnamese restaurant today as monica desired to have something soupy. i had some spicy vietnamese curry that had mock abalone [made of soya] and ladies finger [okra]. i must acknowledge, it was nice.

a shocker from fazal

i received dreadful news from sheena yesterday that she had lost her baby on the 1st of june. she noticed some bleeding and set off to the doctors' rite away and there they observed no foetal heart beats. the perceptible cause was a urine infection which, her doctor insists, almost certainly came about from cat faeces and rain water collected from the inclined roof tops. maldives, being an atoll, must gather potable water from all practical sources, rain always a splendid option. as you probably know already, ground water is high in salinity in islands, atolls and such.

the news upset us and some of our ex-nokia colleagues since both sheena & fazal were looking forward to this baby very passionately. i hope they will be on the mend quite soon.

we had out first visit from the midwife today. she stayed with monica for an hour and gave more information than what we could have imagined. monica informed me that the midwife was au fait with ideas and went about patiently elucidating what monica needed to know. monica also couldn't resist taking a swipe at my inability to show patience when it mattered.

the woman has been watching a new series on the telly although i won't be able to tell you what the label of the show is. it is about a competition for "desis" in the UK who would like to make it big time in bollywood. you find mamas, aishwarya rai want-to-be, kamal hasans, paandu hawaldars and most significantly mamis who are bloody damn fat that they require the services of two cameras to caputure them into a single frame !! at least the background songs are nice. oh !! let us not utter a word about the over acting.

i have prepared my tax forms already. the tax man wanted me to do the tax forms for the last 2 years. in the UK, you need not do a tax return / assessment unless the taxation office specifically demands you to file for a particular year.

monkeys on the road

i came to halt on a red light at the regent street & hill street junction. although i was gazing straight ahead waiting for the lights to turn green, i could sight some hand movements to my immediate right. it was from a man, about the same age as me, sitting on the passenger side of a suzuki vitara. i rolled down my window to find out what he was trying to articulate.

as soon as i did that, he says "you drive fu&%*ng slow". although i was offended, i offered him the reason "my wife is pregnant mate, that is why i am slow". for those who do not know cambridge, the roads here are fairly narrow with plenty of pot holes and make shift repairs. the quality of the roads are perhaps a tad better than those at madras. i could hear this idiot’s wife/girl friend at the wheels telling him to simmer down as i had a compelling reason. he was either too drunk that time or he had a very bad day. he did not stop. he continued, "yeah .. but you are too slow, go on hide behind your wife". since the monkey repeated what he already had said, i replied "i will drive as slow as i want to and that's none of your business". with limited vocabulary and flying high on coccaine he said, "yeah this is not your fu%$ng road". i give him a middle finger acknowledgment and ask him what his problem was. i was rolling up my window and i could hear his wife/girl friend scream at him with clenched teeth to "stop it". so i wondered who was, if truth be told, hiding behind his wife. monica and yovita were in the car doing absolutely nothing but listening to two idiots in a street fracas.

the fact is, even when monica is not in the car, lately i habitually clock 26mph on a 30mph zone and approximately 55 on a 60 zone. i merely was not aware of that until today when i made a conscious effort to monitor my speed. i can remember sparkal telling me about him having to drive unhurriedly when arati was pregnant. even when monica is not in the car, i endeavour to avoid bumps, pot holes etc. i can emphatically say i won't drive any faster than what i want to when monica is there in the car but i speculate how many people would be incensed by my driving before the year end. the answer i guess is "i don't care".

at last, the midwife has called. monica will call NHS to organise her 12th week scan. i will go with her on all her visits. i hope everything will be ok.

my living room looks like a pig sty. everything is reasonably shipshape except for the coffee table. now it is a coffee table, a library shelf, a VCD rack – you name it. i wanted to clean last weekend. well, the weekend is over already.

breathing space

i am still unwearyingly waiting for the mid wife to call on us. my anxiety is manifold and if and only if i could know what the immediate future holds, my nervousness might loosen its clutch on me. i would like the tests to be done soon to confirm both monica and the baby are doing perfectly okay. krithi, my sister, says scans and blood tests will give the doctors a realistic indication of when the baby will be born. as per my own reckoning, the baby will be a capricornian.

in the mean while, susan miller, the famed american astrologer, advices me a lot of caution. she says september 2004 is when i can expect pleasant times to come back. i read the outrageously amusing novel holy cow by sarah mcdonald in which she makes it sound as if all the soothe-sayers in india make accurate predictions. i must admit i have been knocked for six by some of the predictions made by astrologers in madras, but much of what i have heard in india are jabberwockies. anyway, this one clairvoyant in madras noted 2005 will be the start of, what he termed, sensational twelve years. to corroborate, this guy also revealed numerous things that in fact have happened in my life. when a person can confidently declare what had taken place in my life, many of them personal, i can only assume he is no bullshit artiste. it was as if he was asserting facts, not predictions. so, susan miller with her september 2004 calculation might be striking the right chords.

work was ok today. i have assigned myself 6 bugs from the bug tracking tool. my hair is growing out of control. i am planning to shave it completely this weekend as summer is here to settle for a while. my mother once suggested if i could have my head shaved once every year, i will not go bald. i have been doing it every summer for 5 straight years now and i am beginning to think she was correct. i am sure my brother, ragho, will concur with me ;-)

i have some shopping to do tonight before going home.

days are slow

as you can see, i have not posted a blog in 4 days. although i have been busy at work, i can't really say i enjoyed it. i am quite dispirited as i cannot assure myself that the work i do at the moment will be of any use in the future. if it wasn't for the money, i am sure i won't force myself to wake up at daybreak with any urgency.

monica has been eating like a rabbit - far too little but far too often. she has become very audacious, adding a lot more zing to her food. annie, my colleague, says if a pregnant woman craves for "sour" things, then the baby will be a lad. "spicy" on the other hand would undeniably mean a lass. so, "annie", i ask, "you must have been partial to spicy food since you have a daughter"? she says, "no bollocks. it didn't work for me".. hmm. i wonder why she mentioned this to me with some assurance ? although i & monica much prefer a baby girl, i query if monica's fondness to food with zing-amahoochi these days signifies a girl !

i read monica's blog today and observed what she said about "not coming across as a motherly figure" to most people. i must insist, she really does not. worse, i cannot even see her as a teenager !! my warped imagination sees monica in the play room wrestle with my baby over what dress barbie should be sporting and how many "barbies and ken" they each are allowed in their respective collection ! I should stop watching those horror channels in the night.. [no eric, not those channels you are thinking about]

last weekend went faster than superman on dope. just when the tranquility was settling in, the alarm sadistically trumpets it is time to go to work. it is a very dangerous attitude. i have to stop sniveling and put up with my work for a few more months...