Dear Bloggy

...Ages since I talked to u...or rather scribbled on u...But have been busy,u know.Been fighting a bloodless battle so that I can get back home..And all foes are slain or banished and I wear my battle scars with pride...By now ppl are so puzzled by my insistence that I wanna go back to India when they are giving me u-can-live-in-US-and-work-ur-fingers-to-the-bone chance,that I have stopped trying to explain why inspite of loving USA,I still love India a lil bit more...So these days when someone asks me "But why are u going back?" I reply "Oh,I just have this incredible craving for a bajji,u see".

Inspite of all the grumbling I do on a regular basis,I love my job and love being here.I do.I really really do...Though there are days and things that make me wanna pull out my hair,scream loudly,bare my teeth at the boss and screech in his ear.This is very tempting considering he sits right next to me and is one of my favorite fantasies when he insists on driving me up the wall.Imagining him fall off his chair in fright is even better and is a great stress buster.But then the one thing that really gets on my nerves and makes me extremely crabby is that oncall mobile fone.

The oncall support mobile fone is a black colored cellfone which the boss presented to us and is the one thing that really brings out the team spirit amongst the members of my team.Yes..all of us hate that fone with equal passion.I can literally feel my heart sink right down to the region of my knees when I hear it ring and am sure S and P hate it no less than I do.And at some point or the other all of us have contemplated the idea of throwing it as far as we can without dislocating an arm.But none of us has worked up the guts to do it.This phone has been given to us so that those miserable souls who insist on working the weekends and have no life whatsoever can contact us when they are in the mood to make our lives miserable.It is also for those blessed ppl, sitting on the other side of the globe,to contact us at an hr which wud be just noon for them but unfortunately for us is the dead of the night.

When its my turn to carry the oncall mob,am invariably woken up early on Saturday mornings.People just dont understand that Saturday mornings are sacred..Sometimes the calls are from ppl who need to get some work done and are rather apologetic abt it when they hear my sleepy tone.And maybe cos they are apologetic I rarely feel inclined to be cross with them.But then there are those unapologetic sadists who insist on calling people up at an unearthly hour on a saturday morning and are careless enuf to dial a number which is anything but the right number and to top it all,is my oncall phone number..Owing to the number of callers who insist on speaking spanish and cannot understand the simple words "wrong number",am somtimes left with no choice but to hang up on them. I have had a guy ring me up 3 times continuously to find out that he had the wrong number.The third time I hung up on him and the fourth time I didnt answer the call.Then we get calls from a number which plays an automated message telling us that our auto insurance is expiring and that we are to press 2 if we dont want to be called again.Am telling u I have tried pressing all the numbers from 1 to 9 and we still get calls from them.
But my favorite wud have to be the lady who woke me up at 6 in the morning and said "Lola?"
Now am rather used to lotsa ppl telling me "Hola" and even if I havnt picked up a lot of spanish I do know that Hola means Hello.So I assumed that she must have said "Hola" and politely said "Excuse me?".I was trying to make her realise that I needed her to speak English.She repeated "Lola" and even though I heard it as Lola,I thot she must be saying Hola...and repeated "Excuse me" a bit more loudly.But when she said "Lola/Hola" for the third time,I lost it.And crossly demanded "Do you speak English?"
Pat came the reply "Yes,I do"
Though I was taken aback for a second,I took a deep breath and said "Ok.Tell me".
And she asked "Can I speak to Lola?"
"No.You cant.But u can talk to Laloo.Just wait a minute while I get him out of the loo".
Ok...I didnt tell her that.So dont faint,mama.


to be continued!!!