How to drive away a Wasp

Two Saturdays back, I noticed a Wasp hovering around in my bathroom. Suspecting that wasps are voyeuristic, I shooed it away and closed the windows of the bathroom. I had noticed that the wasp had gone to a dark corner around the water heater and I checked it out. And I found that this creature had built up a 4 inch long “nest”.

I either had to risk breaking up that nest thereby letting lose some small wasps or I had to close the entry and exit for this wasp and let that nest wither away. The first option involved physical acts like stretching to reach a corner at an inaccessible height and on top of it, bracing oneself for stings from wasps. The second option simply necessitated the closing of the windows and door for the bathroom, though it had an inherent risk of asphyxiation. I chose the second option.

After about 10 days, I opened the windows and just two days later, last Saturday, I found the wasp flying inside the bathroom. Cursing my luck, I closed the windows again but within a couple of hours, I noticed the wasp flying around in my room even as I was undergoing a wardrobe change. Believe me, a wasp flying in the room while you are changing clothes is a scary thing. One can try to swat it, but then one runs the risk of letting it sting you. If you leave it alone, it could come harmlessly in our direction, but our senses get us to react badly and we would try running out of the room, an act that is quite impossible to perform when you have one leg inside one tube of your jammies as part of wearing it. Not that it happened to me, am just saying that it could happen to any of us.

Even today, the same wasp (what do I know, they all look the same) was flying around in one part of the room and I found that it had already built a small nest in one of the open shelves, where I had set aside some of my old and useless Cordless phones. I also saw that it was tagging along with it, a small green colored caterpillar like thingy – maybe it was its food or maybe it was part of its metamorphosis or whatever.

So, I now decided that I had to destroy the nest and send a clear message to the wasp that it had to look elsewhere to build its nest. I waited for nightfall and then bravely ventured near the nest. I rattled the phone a couple of times to ensure that there was nobody inside that nest. I even jiggled the wire on which that nest was attached and still found no sign of life. I bravely detached the wire from the phone and after a scary 20 seconds of trying to unwind the wire – part of the fear was that the green caterpillar like thingy may fall off the entrance hole of the nest and fall on my bed – I managed to pull out the wire along with the next. I dumped the whole set into my balcony and shut the door.

I am now hoping that the wasp won’t return, but just to avoid any unsavoury situation, can you please advise me on what I can do to prevent the wasp from entering my room; More importantly, the bathroom?

The Crow in my car

With the arrival of the Blue Eyed Boy at home, 3 months back, my Baleno has been relegated to the front parking spot at home. This evening, a small crow suddenly fell down between my car and the wall of the house. In our attempts to shoo it away, we only succeeded in making the crow take refuge underneath the car.

The next thing we did was to try and scare it by spraying water from one end of the car, with the hope that it would then totter over from the other side. But the poor thing got scared and somehow, managed to rest on the axle of the rear wheel on the right side.

I then tried kicking the tyre and shaking my car, hoping that the crow would budge, but it didn't I then took a rather long broom, reached in from the back of the car and tried to poke it out. And all that I managed to do was to bring out the best manoeuvre of the crow, which somehow squeezed itself on to the tyre of my car. As seen in the picture below:

I now hoped that since it was technically on the outside of the car, it would jump out. I continued to shake the car, albeit this time it was from the back. Again, no movement. I brought out a torch and checked whether the crow was caught somewhere in the gaps and had probably died. But even the dim ray of light from the torch showed that the crow was alive.

I gathered courage and tried poking the crow using the broom. Somehow, the crow didn't mind all this poking and I started to suspect that it probably liked the poking. Maybe it was getting a crow's equivalent of an acupuncture treatment.

I then called up my friend who is generally quite knowledgeable in all matters under the sun (also in the sun, over the sun and to the sides of the sun). But for some vague reason, he seemed to be more interested in talking to his brother in the US than even trying to find out why I was calling him in the first place. And in a twist of fate, his brother didn't continue the call and so, he called me back to find out the problem. And his solution was to start the car or honk it or both or for good measure, try moving the car slowly. I was quite petrified in doing any or all of it, but as any trusted disciple would do, followed my master.

I started my car and released the parking brake, with the hope that the little movement in the wheels would get the crow going. But no. So, finally my parents and one of their senior citizen friends who was talking to them at our gate, strongly advised me to simply walk away from the car. The reasoning behind that idea was that the crow was bound to get bored and walk away.

I accepted this option and lo behold, the baby crow started cawing in a couple of minutes. This attracted a couple of bigger crows in the vicinity and finally, one of them bigger ones came down to ground. It inspected the source of the caw and from the manner in which it was running around the car, cawing back and forth with the younger one, I am strongly inclined to think that this bigger one was the Mother Crow and right or wrong, I am going to refer to this crow with that title for the remainder of this post. The usage of words like Mother Crow and Baby Crow may make you think that I am reading too many children's book, but rest assured that it is not the case. You can see the Mother Crow's work here:

The cawing continued and the Mother Crow started jumping towards the Baby Crow's perch, to try and pull the Baby Crow out. It didn't really succeed and moreover, the Mother Crow also started getting quite concerned that I was standing in the vicinity.



Initially I was only trying to take a video of the whole rescue operation. But I felt that with the darkness increasing, the crows may probably not be able to execute their rescue plan correctly.

So I took the torch and started shining it towards the wheelbase, though I was at least some 5-6 feet diagonally away from the front-right side of the car (as should be evident from the pictures). But the Mother Crow somehow didn't like me acting like the Nightingale With The Lamp and started approaching me with louder caws.

Communication, as you may have heard in multiple forums, is not just about what you convey in your language, it is quite often about what you convey without saying anything, using your body language. Similarly, in this case, while I didn't understand what the Mother Crow was cawing to me, I sure did understand from its rather aggressive approach towards where I was standing,  that it didn't want me to shine the torch at it or its Baby.

After a couple of more attempts, the Baby Crow finally decided to budge out of its hiding or resting place and actually jumped out of the wheelbase to the cemented ground below. The Mother Crow came close and somehow egged on this Baby Crow to fly up, though the flight was just a high jump of 3 feet, into the branches of a tree nearby. You can see this video here (Apologies for the poor quality video):



All in all, it was a rather interesting evening for me. I found the drama that unfolded in front of me, quite charming actually!

You can see both videos here:

Video 1
Video 2

A thief entered my parents' bedroom

On Tuesday, the 21st of April, a thief gained entry into my parents' bedroom. We are not very sure as to when he actually came in. But, the fact of the matter is that he was lying down under the bed, right below the side where my mother sleeps.

She had gone to sleep around just after 10:30 PM and within 5 minutes or so, she felt something move below the cot. She got up and looked underneath the bed expecting to see a squirrel or even a rat. But she ended up making eye-contact with a man stretched out in a supine position.

She immediately raised an alarm. I was downstairs at that time and by the time I understood that it was my mother calling for me, I also hear some footsteps from the floor above. I still thought that perhaps it was my mother having some kind of health related issue and ran upstairs.

On reaching the first floor, my first thought was to go towards her bedroom. But I saw her on the floor near the main door of the hall and she was shouting that a thief ran away towards the balcony. I rushed out to the balcony, but found no one there.

I gave a general "daei" shout from there. Then called the watchmen on duty in the house diagonally opposite ours. My mother joined me in the balcony by then and told me that a thief ran away from under her bed and out of the balcony.

She was, quite naturally, in a total state of shock. I was mildly shocked myself and checked with her if she had been hurt. She had tripped on her own when she tried to follow the thief on his way out and a tooth had moved out of its place and cut the lip. There was some minor bleeding.

The watchmen who were now at my gates kept asking as to what happened. I gave them a brief narration and asked them to look around the compound to see if anyone was there. After their quick search, I asked them to wait and went downstairs with my parents (my father was also in the ground floor when my mother shouted for help, but he was in the loo and joined us upstairs a minute or two later).

I let the watchmen inside. I left my mother with my father and went with the watchmen to the first floor. We looked around the house. All rooms. Shelves. Cupboards. Lofts. Just to ensure that there was no one else. After they gave us the "all clear" signal, we decided to call the Police.

My next door neighbor Mahesh who also came in by then, insisted that we inform the Police. I called up 100 and passed on this information. But it was almost 11:20 by the time I made this call and so a Patrol van came by around 11:35.

A lady S.I and a constable came in. We narrated the incident. Took them to the scene and gave a detailed narration there too. They asked us to relax and gave us a lot of assurance. The lady was especially very supportive. She gave us her mobile number and asked us to call her for anything anytime.

After all this dust settled, we all retired back to the confines of my room where all of us have been sleeping since that night (Thursday night is going to be third straight night).

I have just narrated the incident so far. The impact it has left on our collective psyche is unimaginable. My mother is very much in a state of shock/fear and so is my father. I want to write a lot of things, but I first need to calm myself. I thought it would be easy for me to write it, but I got goose pimples while typing some of the lines here.

It is just the prayers and good karma that has helped us come through this incident without any loss or impact, except the psychological one of course. We can only thank the almighty for saving us in this time and also my gratitude to all our friends and neighbors who have dropped in from last evening, once the news spread through the local grapevine.

Pearl Anniversary of Fort Knox at Besant Nagar, Chennai

30 years and one week ago to this date (March 8th to be precise), my parents (and their slightly grown bundle of joy) (that was me in case you didn't catch the meaning) formally shifted to this house in Besant Nagar, where we have been living ever since. The house and the neighborhood have undergone dramatic changes since that time.

I was rummaging through some old pictures, but couldn't find anything that actually captured the house in its early stages. There were few pictures of me, when I was probably 5 years old, standing with a cricket bat in my hand. That place has over the years become the place where my Maruti 800 is parked. In fact, in that old picture, one can even see that on the eastern side of our home, there was no house built and it was just a vacant plot.

There were also few colour pictures - taken with the first camera that was given to me in 1987, the Agfa Snapper 35 - of my terrace and the sunshade in the front of my house. That sunshade area is of course now the most attractive portion of my house - the balcony / veranda / sit out (or upparigai as a neighbor referred to it).

So to celebrate that great day, my parents and I went to Mathura for lunch. Since it was their house built out of their hard-earned money, I let them treat me on the occasion! :)

And in case you are still wondering why I call my house Fort Knox, you can have a quick look at the last portion of this post.

WiFi at Fort Knox

Thanks to the ever helping Raghu, my house is now a wi-fi enabled zone. The upgrade happened over the last weekend. The wireless router has been setup in my office room and yet, the signal strength in my room upstairs (at a near-diametrically-opposite place) is fairly decent enough for me to be able to browse at reasonable speeds.

The most important aspect of this whole setup is that, I am finally able to use the new laptop I purchased last January. You see, this new laptop came with Windows Vista and the USB modem that I was using till last week, was not being recognised by Vista. Main problem was the incompatible driver and since the USB modem supplied by my DSL internet service provider was manufactured at a remote village in Taiwan or Korea, the service provider had categorically told me that an upgrade of drivers was not possible.

I had no option but to go the WiFi route, but at that time, for some vague reason, I wasnt willing to shell out the money. So 5 months of deliberation and wasted hope later, I finally pushed Raghu to buy the equipment last weekend and he did the needful after going through a lot of hardship (which actually he seems to like!). He also came home and installed it in no time. I couldn't thank him properly that day, because of major plumbing issues at home.

Anyways, I am now posting this blog from my new laptop and using my WiFi connection. This is only the second post with this combination; the honor of being the first, goes to this post.

P.S.: Just in case you are wondering what Fort Knox has to do with this post, please be informed that we refer to my house as Fort Knox due to the security arrangements which to a normal person would appear too complicated, but in truth is not.

Painter Man

Ever since I read the story of Tom Sawyer painting a fence, in my primary school days, I have had this desire to take up a paint brush and color some wall or table to something of that sort.

After a couple of decades, I finally got the opportunity to fulfill this wish of mine. There are 2 cane chairs (the hanging types) at home which are now around 10 years old. Other than the regular washing and cleaning, they have not had any other special treatment ever since their manufacturer applied some form of varnish on it.

We had tried to get it painted by the folks we had hired for painting the house recently, but somehow they got away without painting these 2 chairs. But they did leave behind a container of paint they used on the doors upstairs. My mother tried goading me into painting it last week, but I promised to take it up this weekend. And as usual, I stuck to my promise and went out with paint, brush and other paraphernalia to start the painting of these 2 chairs.

With good help from my mother, I went about my task. I didn't have too many mishaps during the painting and things went peacefully. By the time I was done with the first coat on both the chairs, 3 hours had gone by! I prefer to think that this duration is on par for an amateur painter and that too for one doing it for the first time.

This is how the chairs look now:

Return of my AC

As complained in an earlier post of mine, a squirrel had built its nest in the AC my room.

I further noticed that for the last 2 weeks so, I didn't find too much of squirrel activity there. Today, we finally got hold of a service mechanic to open up the AC and he cleaned up the AC.

PFA the picture of the squirrel's nest!

Its better to be back

2 weeks back, I blogged about how it was good to be back. While I continued using my bedroom to setup my Internet connection, the lack of a proper table-chair setup meant that I couldn't spend too much time with the laptop.

But now that the painters have handed over the house to us, albeit with a few minor pieces of work still pending, I was able to return to my office room this morning. I setup everything the way it was and have actually gone a step ahead in installing the Cambridge sound system that I have, in one of the shelves.

Yesterday, I hunted for a piece of plastic pipe which I planned to use in the table. The purpose of the pipe was to let most of the wires run through it, just so that the table looks less cluttered. I got hold of an old mop and cut out an 8" piece. I put it to use this morning and instantly realised that while my idea was probably good, it wasn't great. Most of the wires connecting to the power outlets had huge plugs or connecting points that wouldn't go through the tube. Similar was the case with many of the wires connecting to/from the computer.

In the end I was able to put in some 4 wires into the pipe. Moreover, the 8" length doesn't seem to serve the purpose either, since I still find a whole lot of wires strewn around table. I really hope that some day I can live in a world without wires!

But at any rate, I feel happy that I've returned to my office room!

I have not converted my Tamizh New Year and other points that don't really warrant separate posts

A couple of months ago, the "illustrious" (sic) Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, introduced this new bill,seeking to change the Tamizh New Year to the first date of the Thai month in stead of the ages old tradition of Chithirai month.

Ordinary folk can afford to make errors due to senility, but letting such individuals be a head of state is bound to cause such official jokes. While he may have his own linguistic chauvinistic reasons to make this change, he basically ignored the religious sentiments of the Tamizh speaking Hindu community.

I don't want to get into more details of this bill which will soon become a law, but to me, my Hindu New Year falls in the Chithirai month. I am least bit bothered about what the Government decides is the New Year. My religion, my tradition, my culture, my customs dictate that my New Year starts with the Chithirai month and I am not planning to deviate from it!

Anyways, this puthaandu started on a relatively low tone at home. The reason was just that with all the painting work going on, things are still not in place (quite literally). So in terms of the Vishu kanee, it was nowhere like usual and definitely not like last time.

And this must be one holiday that I have spent at home without watching much of TV. Once again, the blame is on the painting job and it was only in the late afternoon that I reconnected my Tata Sky to my TV.

Other than that, I have spent quite a lethargic Sunday. Of course, I washed two loads of clothes and still have some left over, but other than that, I didn't do much at home. I did help around in re-hooking many of the screens and putting them back in place. But in general, I guess I was probably I am a bit tired after my outstanding performances of scoring 56,51,64 and 64 in consecutive Hoops games at City Center. I now have around 350 tokens and from next week onwards, I can probably think of redeeming them. I bet its gonna be QUITE embarrassing having to exchange tokens in the midst of kids, but just because I am bigger than some of them, shouldn't make me feel out of place right?

Also, my newspaper agent came by to collect the first month's prepaid coupons for my Times of India subscription. He says it will start tomorrow. Eagerly waiting for it!

On a sad note, the father of one of my superiors in office (in the same unit, but not my line manager) passed away yesterday - may his soul rest in peace. I didn't see the message he sent me and only when a friend of mine called me later, I came to know about it. We couldn't visit him yesterday and today being the festival day, we couldn't go today either. We planned to go tomorrow, but my mother says that the "Dhukkam" rules allow me to visit him only on Thursday. I will decide on the course of action after consulting with my friends at work tomorrow.

Squirrels at home

I may have mentioned in some earlier post of mine about how there are a lot of squirrels in my house. They have been roaming around in our house just like how a bunch of squirrels would roam around (sic) when they have full freedom.

On many a weekend, I have been woken up in the mornings by some squirrel that used my body as a launching pad to jump from the middle of the room to the window on its way out. My parents have had their siesta disturbed for similar reasons.

We have found squirrels building tiny nests all over the house. Give them a gap in the lofts for more than 3 days and you can bet your life's earnings that they would have occupied the place.

We have had to put a specific wired shield around the A/Cs in the house (on the outer side) just to keep these animals out of the A/C. This was a lesson learnt after we switched on the A/C after a long break and heard shrieks and wails emanating from the unit. I don't exactly remember if they were killed or they escaped, but we were being cautious nevertheless.

But as a sign of adaptation, the squirrels have started new ways to get into the A/C. As you all should be aware by now, the standard window A/C has a vent to blow the cold air inside the room. This vent is providing enough space for one of the squirrels that visits my room, to enter and exit the main A/C unit. I have been hearing noises from the unit for quite some time now. And last week, I actually saw a squirrel come out of the unit through this vent and a couple of days later, I also saw it enter the unit through this vent.

Now, I am not sure if it was the same squirrel or if they were squirrels belonging to the same family and building a nice house for themselves or if the squirrels were simply using the A/C as a hotel. In effect my A/C unit has once again become a place for squirrels to take rest.

I wanted to catch them in the act of entering or leaving the A/C. So, I spent some 40 minutes of Monday night at a strategic position from the vent in the desperate hope that i would be able to capture the squirrel that was inside, come out for fresh air. The squirrel actually got camera shy and whenever I saw it near the vent and pointed the camera at it, it used to run back inside. I even switched off the lights in the room and waited for 5 minutes hoping that it would come out of the unit thinking that the coast was clear.

I even went to the extent of asking my father to stand in the room, when I needed a water break. This was to ensure that the squirrel wouldn't run out since it saw someone near the vent. But all this effort went in vain. I felt like the camera person in a Discovery Channel program who waits for hours together hoping to catch a lion make a move to kill a zebra, but ends up facing a lion resting after a hearty meal!

Anyways, when I returned from work this evening and entered my room, I heard the by now familiar noises coming from the A/C vent. I was able to detect the presence of a squirrel near the vent. I quickly setup my mobile camera and sneaked up to the vent. I took a quick picture before the squirrel could escape and my friends, I present it here. Look carefully around the left hand side of the vent between the 2nd and 3rd horizontal bars from the bottom and you should be able to spot the body of the squirrel.

We'll not be calling the A/C mechanic until the painting job completes, so I have one more weekend at the minimum to get a better quality picture of the squirrel. Wish me luck....

Its good to be back!

As part of the painting job that's going on in my house, I had to pack up my "office room" on Wednesday. That in effect meant that I had to dismantle the whole computer setup I had done in one portion of the room. Speakers, Webcams, Keyboards, Printers and some stuff that I didn't know that I possessed - all had to be moved to a box.

But the most important thing that also went into the box was my modem and the ADSL splitter; in other words, I was unwiring myself from the Matrix!

I did all this under the assumption that they would move to that room on Thursday and get out by Saturday. Unfortunately, there was a change in plan and it was decided to take up that room as the last one in the house. And the work on that room has started only around 4 PM Sunday (few minutes back).

The point to be noted is that since the painters took over the hall as well, I lost out my Tata Sky connection too. So, I had to spend a good portion of Friday night and Saturday browsing through the Tamizh and News channels available on my cable connection upstairs. (To be honest, the presence of Tata Sky would have given me some 15 more channels to browse, but still.....).

I got totally fed up with no Internet and no TV. So, this afternoon I opened the box where I had put in all my computer stuff and took out the aforementioned modem and splitter. Came to my room and hooked it up to the telephone jack. Connected it to my computer and voila, here I am, back on the Internet. I am feeling so happy.

But, it also makes me wonder how bad a life I am leading. Just 4 days of staying away from the Internet and 2 days of staying away from a DTH connection is making me feel that life is empty. Bring back the Internet and I feel like getting a shot in the arm.

As usual, this is a tussle between the brain and the heart. And as usual my heart wins!

Escaped cheek pinching

We have been hunting for a helping hand for maintaining the house. That term is of course a euphemism for the probably politically incorrect "servant maid".

Anyways, just out of the blue, some 10 days back, my parents got a visit from one of the maids they had employed in Indira Nagar. This was in fact around the time that I was a few weeks/months old. And apparently, she was a big help for my parents at that time and she also got good marks for her conduct, quality of work, reliability etc. And it turned out that she was in need of an additional job.

So she was hired right away. The funny thing is that, she has visited us once in 5-6 years, but every time, I have not been home. I was either not in the country or not in the house. When she visited us this time too, she was enquiring about me but I was not present in the house. And the time she works in my house is in the late morning hours and so, she didn't see me till last weekend.

To be honest, I was actually afraid of meeting this lady after so many years. Don't get me wrong, but invariably, whenever I meet someone after many many years, there is quite a lot of "enna ivlo maarittaan" or "appadiyay irukkaan" etc. This I can tolerate, but quite often the latter remark is followed by a heavy pinching of the cheeks.

The cheek pinching display of affection may have stopped a few years back, but I used to experience it even as I was leaving college. There is this grocery store at the end of my street and the "manager" of that store used to do the "kannam killardhu" till I got a job. He used to do this even if there were 10 other customers in the shop. For a boy in his teens, nothing is more demeaning than being treated like a child in front of other members of society. That too, when the members could include the girl he is sighting or her mother!

I don't know why everyone likes to pinch a fat cheek. If you really think someone with a chubby cheek looks cute/sweet/adorable, why on earth would you pinch the cheek? Isn't pinching done as a punishment? Then why commit an act of punishment when you are experiencing emotions affiliated to the love and affection category? Is your emotional circuit cross-wired or is the emotion not real?

Anyways, I was re-introduced to this lady last Friday (I was on leave) and thankfully I didn't have to experience anything embarrassing. Like I said, she last saw me as a baby and however young I may now look (sic), I don't think she was able to relate my present form to what she last saw of me.

Homework

I didnt go to work on Friday since there was a need to clean out rooms in my house, as the painters were expected to move to the inside of the house.

I cleared out couple of shelves in the cupboard of my room. These were basically being used by me as a glorified dumping yard. Some of the things I was able to recover from these shelves included:
* 2 tennis racquets (one is my friend's)
* 1 small cricket bat - free compliment for buying Boost
* Carrom board coins - an entire set
* Chess coins - entire set
* Nylon hammock
* Some 100 ruppees in coins, stored in a box
* A wallet I used in College - it became dust when I touched it
* A backpack I bought in USA - it doubles up as a stroller
* Voltage converters - 220->110 or the other way actually
* Lots of used clothes ready for disposal

Thankfully, I don't have much evidence left of my teenage years (if you know what I mean), so I didn't have a difficult time in involving my parents in the clean-up process. Yesterday too, there was a lot of cleaning work that took place in my room and also my parents' room. I lugged a lot of things from the lofts upstairs to the loft in my Office room downstairs.

Today, as a continuation of the process, I was handed a big stack of papers to be shred. These were basically a collection of horoscopes that have been sent to us for our perusal. We do this exercise quite periodically and this one was done after a good gap of almost a year and a half I think. I managed to fill up around 80% of a 20 litre bucket, with the shredded paper.

I took a self-timed picture of me in my cleaning mask today. If I'd taken a picture yesterday, it would have had more impact on the reader since I was sweating profusely and had strands of cobwebs on me. But today was more of a sophisticated cleaning and I wore the mask only to avoid the paper dust.


And btw, this is how my house looks now after the Primer. Makes me think if I should leave it like this itself.

Ideal/Idle start to 2008

I actually didn't do anything today. Not that I usher in a new calendar with much pomp and gaiety, but this time, I didn't even step out of the house.

Even at home, I didn't do anything other than eat, browse, watch TV etc. Usually, my parents and I go out shopping and get something or the other. At the bare minimum, we buy a gold coin.

But this time around, it was nothing. So at some level the idle start sounds like an ideal start!!!

And here's wishing all of you a very happy 2008.

For the record

Like most of the other posts in this blog, this one is being posted just to record the fact that I have been taking lunch from home for the past 10 days. It has sent mild shock-waves in my circle of friends.

The deal I have brokered with my mother is that she should make only one rice and one side dish. We have now settled on Curd Rice and a side dish. Health and weather permitting, she might indulge in some other rice variety as well.