Ok, I had enough of it! I let it go for sometime but a couple days ago I could not stand it anymore! You know how there's one small minute thing that kinda annoys you a little bit? Not enough to warrant getting pissed off, but just a little that you feel pissed for like 3 secs, and after the 3 secs it goes away. Some of mine are people that have an urge to poke people, people that have just a really stupid saying that they say all the time, and people who leave the bathroom light on when not in use ... yeah I know it's weird, but this is my blog :)

Anyways, here are some things that have been pinging me for a while, and now it's made me very very angry >:-( drum roll please......Omni news. "WTF" you say? Ok here's the background, I watch Omni news (South Asian Edition), about 80% of the weekdays while I eat dinner with my 'rents. And I have noticed some things that you might want to look out for when you watch it. First off the male news anchor (Arjun Rana-ja-na-wala, I think that's his name) is such a thick headed dunce. Ok this is why he pisses me off now, you can have an accent and that's fine, HOWEVER if you are in the news industry there's some things that you need to be able to say, like ....oh ..... I don't know... the word "YEARS" that's right that's Y-E-A-R-S, there's a Y in there NOT what Mr. Ranajanawala says. He says "EARS", not muffled Y and "ears" or a cough before he says it, just a straight up nice and clean "EARS". This might not sound like a big deal, but it turns out on a given news cast the probability of his script that contains the word "years" is about 83.7%.

Ok, next up is while watching the bloody show, is the commercials. First off is the Canadian Tire south edition ads. How much I hate the ads, here's a quick synopsis:

Wife: Harvinder, so tell me something, we need to get lights, toilet paper, 
and malaria pills, before you're parents come off the boat next week. 
Do we have to go to many places to get them? 

Harvinder: No bechari...um I mean rani...my newly loving wife, I know you're
also new to Canada, so let me tell you something. At Canadian Tire, we can get
everything that we need. And given their lowest price guarantee, I know we 
won't be wasting money. Do you understand?

wife: yes....but they charge tax, how do we save money?

Last Friday while I was getting ready for work, I was wondering which cologne to put on (I have different ones for different moods or occasions). Now, I won't say which one I wear with what mood, or next time you see me, you'll be like "Oh....you smell like Hugo, I know what THAT means...nudge nudge wink wink" or "Oh... you smell like Swiss Army, wink wink nudge nudge". Ok but here's a freebie, sometimes when I really want to be FOB'ed out I usually put on some good ol' Cool Water (got the spray and after shave). But this Friday it was kinda different, I was in this weird, nostalgic mood thinking about somethings from my past. So that day as I was getting ready I saw my Cool Water, and thought back about the time/place/person/environment when I received that, and the chapter in my life that has passed. It's funny, how when we think back, we usually remember the happy times, and disregard the bad, but we always feel warm inside thinking back....it was nice. Take a moment now, and think back a few years, and remember something nice that happened to you in your own life.....doesn't that feel nice? Anyways, for me once I get back to reality I realise that I'm getting late for work, so I quickly squirt some Cool Water and jet for work......


....It's not till I was at work, that I start to feel sick, and I got a wiff of the Cool Water... it STINKS! I don't rememeber it stinking soooo much. Maybe I got used to my better smelling stuff, maybe since I haven't used it in 3 years, it fermented into this super cologne? I dunno but it stinks! and not "stinks good, like a summer drive in Malton" (see note at end of entry), but stinks bad. Now I know why I don't where Cool Water ... bloody nostalgia. Now I feel crappy because I miss that chapter in my life AND I STINK! Oh well, there's always the new chapters in my life :)


Quick Story: "Stinks soooooo good in Malton"
I have a saying that I founded, and it's "It's stinks soooooo good!". I had an interview up in the heart of Malton and was driving through Morning Star, and because it was summer I had the windows down and I had my bhangra blaring. As I drove through Morning Star, I saw the Sardar's having a stroll, little kids running around at the school (such a beautiful setting, Morning Star is a straight up pind). Anways, I had my windows down, and took a wiff through the residential area, and what I smelled was the thickest turka/masla; it smelled like a bloody restaurant from rexdale! Once I took a deep breath of that smell, I was just like "DAMN...all the jokes about Malton are true, this place does stink, but to me it stinks soooooo good!" To me it was soooo awesome...or maybe it was because I was hungry?

So I got this novel titled, "Family Matters" by Rohinton Mistry. Great Canadian author (bonus) and he's a desi (double-bonus). His novel really brings out some of the desi "tendencies" that we go through. Of course, I was thinking...it's not really that hard, to write epic sagas that show trials and tribulations. I mean, I think that all desis can just sit down, and explain to someone the sh*t that we go through. I really think that if you grabbed a suit that worked on Bay St, and sat him/her down, and just said somehing along the lines of the following, I think they wouldn't believe such a story, whilst tears run from their eyes, could happen to anybody.

My Life as a First Generation Canadian:
I was raised by indian parents and I went to grade school where there were 3% brown people, so yeah I felt like a minority and an outcast. So there I was 7 years old, scrony (have you actually seen a fat beefy 7 year old vegitarian before?...well I know you have but that's not the point) with a head full of coconut oil. AND on top of that since I was indian, I had lunch made for me, but no it couldn't be just normal sandwhiches, but like really indian sandwiches like cheese tomatoe sandwhichs with green chutney, or pokoras. AND I had to wear dress pants instead of jeans to school, DRESS PANTS!!!.

I think that's good enough for a prologue for another best seller, maybe I should Fed Ex (tm) this to Rohinton Mistry.

Alright there is a great passage from his book that I think are just so sweet and reminded my of India, that I had to put it here:


"A trian was leaving completly packed, and the men running alongside gave up. All except one. I kept my eyes on him, because the platform was coming to an end.

"Suddenly, he raised his arms. And people on the train reached out and grabbed them. What were they doingm he would be dragged and killed, I thought! A moment later, they had lifted him off the platform.

"There he was, hanging, his life literally in the hands of strangers. And he had put it there. He had trusted them. More arms reached out and held him tight in thier embrace. It was a mircale - suddenly he was completely safe. So safe...

"I waited to see more trains. It was then I realized that what I had witnessed was not a miracle. It happened over and over: hands reaching out to help...

"Whose hands were they, abd whose hands were they grasping? Hindu, Muslim, Dalit, Parsi, Christian? No one knew and no one cared...what I saw told me there was still hope for this great city [Bombay]



hmmm....maybe I should put this into another section of my site, maybe it's time to create another section called "quotes", not to be confused with the "quote of the day" located at the bottom of all my pages.

It's been a while since my last post. There were some highlights in the past month, but I think the biggest must have been the Ravi Shankar concert at Roy Thompson Hall on Oct 13, 2005. It was once again just amazing! For the first time, Anoushka Shankar was just breath taking (I think she played better than her dad!). Ravi was playing kinda slow and not really into it, but when he had to he did kill it! Anyways, I have to run now, besides that the rest of my life has been boring, except hockeys' back and I'm doing well in my pool!

Hey yaar......drop the cricket bat and come here...I SAID COME HERE YOU STUPID PATHAN!...check it out......hurry yaar....I haven't seen this in 15 months...Look at the bloody TV....they're not showing my favorites like world poker tournment, 5 pin bowling, or even Kabadi (see attached photo)...they have those white guys skating on the ice again!

That is what was heard throughout all the houses in Malton and Rexdale Central, as thousands of yaars from all walks of life, and by all walks of life I mean all...from like Beck, to Co-Op, to Diamond , to Royal, and even the idependant cabbies were in an uproar (Oh yeah ...mad props to the Airport taxi crew, their cars are the smoothest rides ever!). Oh and before I forget I don't won't to leave out the other desi who own their own business whose business name start with "A-1"..... Ok jokes aside....after 15 months we can finally get back to what Toronto does best and think that even though we don't have the best team, we are going to kick some serious ass this NHL season. Now we can do all the other great things as well including:
- going to watch the game after work
- rooting for the leafs in the first 2 periods of the game
- calling Pat Quin and other Leafs players stupid when they mess up in the 3rd
- cheering Belfour if he gets a win
- calling one of the following players idiots {Antrapov, Berg, Leeb} through out the game
- chanting Montreal/Ottawa sucks even though they have better teams then us
- a chance for the city to start to have some life
- a chance for the city to jump on the bandwagon when playoffs come, maybe not this year though :(

OK so yesterday was the Leafs home opener and Sundin get his annual puck to the face ( Background info can be found here [9th paragrph] ). It seems that during the opening period in TO, somehwere in Pittsburg, Ric Jackman hit a slap shot sooooooo hard that it bounced off the post straight up into the air and launched into orbit, finally gravity pulled it back and when straight into the ACC hitting his former captain Mr. Sundin right in the face and putting him on IR for the next 4-6 weeks.....DAMN! now that's a story, I mean I feel sorry for Sundin, but like honestly, Ric Jackman, can really bring it home (literally in this case!).

Finally, for all the yaars out there Super Series of Cricket is on. For all those interested you can check my RSS cricket feed under the RSS menu.

You can now resume playing cricket and watching OMNI. Oh and by the way, as the NHL and NHLPA love to jam down our throats.... "Thanks for being a fan."

My whole life I have been tagged as having a baby face (which was fine then, but it's kinda hurtn' now, when you kinda want to look your age). Through out, my life (esp at uni), I was always taunted that I couldn't grow any facial hair (which is true) but on the plus side I only had to shave once every 3 days or so. However, I figured that I'm now 26 and I might have to start looking older than my 21 face, so I started to grow some facial hair. For the first time in my life people are telling me that I actually look my age for once! ...the only thing left to do is start to act my age (and that's the hard part).

The reviews are in and almost all people have liked it. I was planning on keeping it until 5 people* told me that it looked bad. So far only 1 person said that I looked better clean shaven.

I don't have a good pic of me with facial hair, so I hired an artist to give their rendition of me, I hope the sketch looks better than the pics I have.

So now that I'm 26 I have to act like it, does anyone what the hell I should do (.....besides getting married)? All suggestions can be sent here.

*Note: by "5 people", I mean 5 people whose opinions I value.

Next time if you run into me you might ask, "Hey Bobby Patel, what's that bulge in your pocket?", that's right baby, for my birthday I treated myself to an enlargement in size........I moved up from a 80 minute Sony (piece o' crap) MD (TM) player, to Dell's DJ(TM) with 30 GB of space. Oh yeah...bigger is better. There is no encoding to another format, (unlike Sony's ATRAC ), so transferring files to the unit is tolerable. Also, I can also port other files on there like really big 1 Gig Files, esp. useful when you need to take that really big word doc for your office presentaion, you're like "damn, it would take 711 floppies or 1.46 CDs to copy this gig file". Ok if you're a real geek you would argue, "that is correct however you could just press a DVD", my rebutal "yes that is correct, SHUT UP! , I'm trying to hype up my unit". Speaking of my unit, it's sleek, solid, and dense, you should ask to feel it in your hand. Touch it... one time. If you still think I went over board getting 30 gigs, and you think I only got to over-compensate for my other inadequacies, then yes you are right.....because Sony's Net-MD(tm) sucks.

Anyways, I'm straying... so the other benefits is that I got it for $100 off and free shipping! Also, I wanted to treat myself for my birthday. The last of my birthday magic wore off this past week, and now once again I'm a normal 26 year old with no birthday super powers.

NOTE: I'm not really a normal 26 year old anyways, I think I have been assessed to have a maturity level of a 22 year old! Which is great since for the longest time I was tagged at have the level of a 16 year old.

Oy! It's my birthday! actually it was on Sep 1, but I had to work/party on the 1st, recover on the 2nd, and now I have some time to write an entry.

So, let's see, on the 1st I ended all conversations with "...it's my birthday", and by all I mean total strangers, like cab drivers, people on the street, people in my office buiding, people preparing my food, it's great. I learnt that they will take you word for it without question, so I figure every few months if I'm bored I'll just walk around TO, saying it's my birthday!

I have to bolt now to go to Welland with my parents this weekend, when I get back I'll put in more details.

It's been a while since I posted but I'm back. My site was effectively out of commission for just over a month and I've been busy with work, that I haven't had a chance to work on this site. Most of the site has been migrated to a new server, and now it's functional (well as much as it was before).

Ok, so the good stuff. I got a new job doing JAVA! My life long wet dream as a comp sci student back at uni finally came true. It's cool... I like it, and the "new car smell (TM)" of the company hasn't wore off yet. I'm finally doing things that they taught in school which is a good thing ... since I'm getting some head way at closing off that bloody 22K loan I owe OSAP (it would really suck if I paid off my debts and I was still doing BS work, instead of some BSc work ). Anyways, the new company is called Uptime Software, and it's in the fashion district and close to Portland (yeah, people on the d/l know what's at Portland).

Anyways, it exciting to see this site back up and hopefully I'll be spending more time getting this site up to date.

2 weeks
10 working days
80 working hours

I gave my 2 week notice today, and I'll be working for a software company downtown. The company's decent, and I had the good fortune, of them finding me as opposed to me hounding them...which feels sooooooo good when you're a programmer (it doesn't happen to often). I will miss my friends at the company, and the army that I slowly built within the walls of the company.

You know how people get, when their on the brink of one season and just waiting for the next season? Like in Spring when you wait for that day that you can strip the jacket off to wear t-shirts...yeah well that's how I am.

I don't know when "spring" will end, till next Monday, I guess it's if a groundhog (or was it a weasel?) see's his shadow or not this weekend.

Anyways, I'll write the rest next week.


Deep question for today: If a weasel has no soul, can he see his shadow?

"Congratulations, you've put Ruby on Rails!", so there it is! After trying to install it 3 times (twice on Fedora Core 3 and once on Gentoo), I got Ruby on Rails running on my FC3 box! So what's the big deal? Nothing really, except now I have the ability to create web apps in a tenth of the time it would take, if I wrote from scratch. Course the sys admin for that server will have to install it on the server, so unless you run your on box, or you have liberal or kind sys admins, that'll never happen. So what's the big deal? Well Ruby is fresh and new, and at some point might be hot, but the problem is that it will take some time for people to adopt in a production environment.

So what's the big deal? Ok fine, there is no real bif deal about Ruby (unless you're a nerd), but to me is something cool and new, and fresh to put on a resume. (Plus I need to put something up on my blog, since Google dropped my site again.)


On a side note, I have been going through some difficult times these past couple weeks. I didn't want to do much of anything like update my site, or work (like that's new). However, it's times like this that I get a quick check on who my friends are and what they do for me. Thank you. Of course even my friends, will tell me that this blog entry is a waste of cyber space, "Ruby? So what's the big deal?" :)


If I have time, I might install it on this server that www.BobbyPatel.com runs off of, and maybe create an app under it, maybe this blog or one on the new features that I want to add.

Well I went back to work today, to find out that last week all hell broke lose in the office. The highlight being that our servers over heated and collapsed. I was fortunate to miss that :)

Course it's Monday now, and as such had to put the yellow cup away, and strut with my "I'm-working-hard-that's-why-I-carry-a-silver-with-no-handle-mug". This mug's got no handle, so you can't dangle it on your finger nonchalantly, when you carry that mug you mean business (or at least it looks that way). The yellow cup, has a handle, and you just let it dangle. It screams, "hey man look at me!!! I'm not even trying to work or even trying to look busy!".

Here you can see a shot of me working hard with the yellow cup, course today's a no yellow cup day. If you look further down you'll see my monkey in training Pablo-Sanchez-Julio-Gonzalos, posing with my yellow cup. There, you can see that I'm teaching him how to slack off.

So I had this week off, and on the 24th I went down to the ROM with a friend. It seems that no one really goes to the ROM on a Tuesday afternoon except little school kids.....and losers like me. While I was there, I took the opportunity to make some art for the wall, I was trying to draw a dinosaur I saw, Pys-tch-olo-sys-iosis. Since I have never been there before, it was nice, to experience something while the sun is up and NOT on a patio.

I figure, since I have to start thinking about settling down with a nice girl that I should go out, and experience other things in life as well. So going to the ROM, was a cultured experience, making me a better person. I don't get why people say that you're not cultured if you don't go to museuems or art galleries. I mean, seeing fossils or artificats are cool, don't get me wrong...but when you have dozens of kids running around and yelling, that's not...cultured or sophisticated. Also, do I really have to be cultured? I mean I'm brown, I have culture, I immerse myself in my culture. I think for me to be more cultured, I'de have to learn to make 'chai' and 'roti'.

Anyways, I'm glad that I went to the ROM. At least now I can say, "What? What do you mean, you haven't been to the ROM? What kind of FOB are you? Even I've been to the ROM!!!"

So, today I'll leave this for you to think about, what does it mean to be cultured?

Just got back from the long weekend, and starting my week off. So we went down to the falls and Port Delhoise, and kiiiiilllllleeeeedddd it. We had a wicked time at Port D, and doubled up our fun at casino, we're I cleaned up quite well. Also, it was Ali's birthday, so we partied hard as usual.

Also, I came online and found that Google finally put my site back for the term "Bobby Patel". Not number 1, but second (which is fine, cause the number 1 spot is associated with me anyways).

This will test the blog entry with a picture.....as you can see it works!


That's my new friend at work his name is Pablo-Sanchez-Julio-Ganzolos. At work, alot of people are going down to Panamana to train them to do our work, since they work for a lot cheaper and work 5.5 days a week. So in an effort, to continue this process, they have sent Pablo-Sanchez-Julio-Ganzolos to come up here so I can train him at "Panama North (tm)". As you can see he's having a breaking with a coffee and sh-moke, he's smokes "Panamaian tabacco" we call it wacky tabcky, (notice he's big stoner eyes).


So.....how's your Panamaniese?

My First Entry in my Web admin for my blogs. Within 2.5 hours I created an admin from scratch, and it looks decent. I can add and edit blogs, but no support for images yet. slowly this is coming together. Need to work on form processing, so that I can get friggn' line breaks.

I HATE MY JOB !!! I always yell that while I'm at work to muse myself and my co-workers...but after putting in an 11 hour day, I really hate my job. Anyways, it's not just an 11 hour day, it's this past week. We'll see how next week goes. I'm thinking of taking a day off within the next couple weeks, I want to get out of TO for a while, if anyone wants to do the same, drop me a line.
Besides that I have been checking out this online Indian marriage site. I figure, my life is getting a little too scripted, so I think I might throw my hat into the ring, or more appropriately throw my kurta cladded self into the fire (....mandap ).

Well I spent the past 2 weekends watching the Pakistan vs India ODI. I had the great pleasure to watch the match with pure bred desi's from Pakistan, these guys were so desi, that they defined the term paki. Anways, being the minority Indian supporter was not that bad, since most of the jokes they made about me were in Urdu, so I didn't understand them, and just thought that these guys were pakis.

Eventhougth India lost I did enjoy hanging with the Pakistan crew and learnt alot more about cricket. I also think that I want to be a cricket commentator, the guys for the Pak-Indo match were just horrible. They said things like "For Pakistan to win they must be hitting more runs, giving them a higher run rate", I was just like "get the f*ck out of here, I'm washed and I know that!".

But the main thing is that this match did accomplish a higher goal, the unity of Pakis and Indians. So in closing , I'm not sad that India lost to the pakis....really I'm not sad....just bitter. <rant > I mean come on..... India loses to Pakistan! Our batters were just not hitting at all. Tendulkar, couldn't even hit more than 10 runs in a game! And did you see Pakistan's captain, he's this fat guy always yelling at his team for showing no hussle, while he eats a piece of chicken whilst playing.</rant > Ok now that I got that off my chest, disappointed with India, cheers to the pakis.

This is the second entry. The MUX architecture has made adding sections pretty easy to my site. Course there's lots of room for improvments. I could work on it when I'm at work, but too busy watching movies then. Oh yeah, Fat Albert in Spanish rocks! Or as Fat Albert would say, "Gordito Alberto!!!!"

In employment news, my contract expires at the end of the month, but I'll be a salary employee for the eCommerce company in the new month. It's a pretty sweet deal. It's sad to see my fellow work mates leave, however getting hugs from the girls at work fill the void :)

This is my first entry, and testing out the blog layout.<br>||| I got bumped off of Google because I was cloaking the URLs. So now I have to revamp my architecture. Argh!

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.- Groucho Marx

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