March 2005 Archives It's Chirri in IthacaMarch 05, 2005 — During a trip to Ithaca a few weeks back, I got to be the surprise guest. It was a rovery weekend complete with chilli cook-off, Wegmans runs, Ithaca White, bowling, and even a little karaoke. For those of you asking for the Shutterfly versions, here's the link. Otherwise, the here's the link to the gallery:  March 05, 2005 — Work has been pretty hectic recently but the system I have been working on for the past year and a half is now in Production. For those of you who don't understand this bizarre term, it means that people are actually now using the Web site we built. For some reason, we call this going to Production even though in actuality we are not producing anything. I think the term is just a throw back to so-called "brick and mortar" world where perhaps you might spend a lot of time designing a car and then one day you go to production in the sense that the cars start coming off the assembly line. It's kinda like that. But not really. It's more like when people actually start driving those cars that were produced. Anyway, I'm pretty proud of what we did and feel fortunate to work with such a great group of people. In fact, during a recent dinner celebratation we even did Tartan-champagne-style toasting. It was classic. Well here are some recent pictures of some random activities around town with the work people.
March 18, 2005 — We finally made it out to Philly to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. There were T-shirts. Here are some pics.  March 28, 2005 — There are two things I really hate about getting new glasses. The first is that pesky little puff of air they shoot into your eyes. The other is the process of people noticing and making comments. Most people feel the need to make a comment the first time they see you in your new specs. It's usually some obvious and pointless statement like "new glasses, huh?" This interaction is even worse than "how was your vacation?" Vacation small talk has a half life of less than a day. It fades away. No one's going to ask you about your Thanksgiving in March. But with glasses, it could be weeks or even months before everyone sees them. And that means a lot of "Yup. New glasses." Since the first day at work is always the worst, I spent some time getting mentally psyched up for the inevitable. But the reaction was actually rather surprising. Several people asked me when I got glasses. After some discussion, it became clear that the word "new" was intentionally omitted. I received several confused looks and questions along the lines of "you used to wear glasses?" I even got a "Shut up. You never had glasses before." So I explained to these people, who I see on a daily basis, that I have actually worn glasses every day for approximately the past 17 years. Sure, the other ones were partially rimless and these are darker. But still. Come on, people. Before giving people too much crap over not knowing what I look like, I started thinking about people I know and tried to mentally visualize them. To make things easy, I took my team from work, which consists of approximately 15 Indian men. I went through the team and asked two questions - Glasses? Mustache? I didn't do so well. Since this started getting interesting, I decided to start parting my hair the opposite way as well. Since most people saw both the hair and the glasses change on the same day, it was hysterical to see how difficult this proved to be for people. They knew something was different but couldn't pick it out. Two people even thought I dyed my hair. The other thing I've noticed is that people will generally only make comments about positive or neutral changes like a new pair of specs, a hair cut, or a post-vacation tan. No matter how obvious a change might be, there are some things that people just don't typically point out. Only your best friends will give you a "huge zit on your forehead?," a "finally shaved that unibrow?," or a "big booger in your nose?" You also don't often hear things like "got horribly disfigured?," "new tits?," or "shit your pants?" |
