Octagonally speaking

Alka tagged me, asking me to divulge eight things about myself and to forward this to six other people. Since the rules are not so well defined here, I'll go for a mixture of good and bad things, plus some third party opinion as well. So without much further ado, lets begin...

I dabble a lot before I can come to a decision about many things, but once I have decided upon it, I go all the way. So, I wavered a lot about whether I should try for the MBA or the GRE; but once I had decided, I put in my heart and soul into it.

When I have a fight with someone or if someone accuses me of something, I begin with the assumption that I am wrong and then try to see if there is something that may actually point to the fact that I may be right. This proves to be good in many cases, because this helps me build fool-proof arguments and convince the other person if I am actually right. At other times, if the other person can successfully feel sufficiently indignant or outraged that his/her point of view is THE correct thing and that I am being arrogant, myopic, etc. I tend to accept that opinion temporarily and go away cowardly. Never mind the after-hour shocks of realisation that I was actually right and was either blackmailed or that I really chickened out.

I believe in palmistry, and am an amateur palmist myself. The way I look at it is that the statistical correlation is very high, although the relation may not be directly or even indirectly causal in nature. So while it may be easy to interpret patterns and see empirical or historical evidence in what similar people have had in their lives, I don't say that it happens just because certain lines are present or are missing from their hands. I never tell a person that he/she is intelligent because the head line is of a certain type, but that the head line is strong and bold and long suggests to me that the person is intelligent.

I bond easily with the staff at any place: not the regular/official people for whom the place has been built, but those who keep it functioning! So at all hospitals, schools, hostels, departments etc that I have ever been associated with, I am always welcome back with open arms by the only people who form the almost permanent features of the place. And I am almost always at home with them... somehow I find my way into their good books :)

I am told that I am the dream customer someone would expect to call at call centers: especially the techno ones. So the other day I called up Dell support because the drivers they gave on the CD set were not complete, and the person at Manilla who answered the call was extremely happy that she did not need to explain to me how to check the device driver settings on advanced properties etc. and that I was extremely co-operative and polite. Sometimes these calls (even with phone companies, credit card call centers, etc.) leave me wondering about the kind of other people who call them up and how they behave so that politeness is actually judged to be a blessing!

Speaking of third-party opinions, most girls in my age group who I know personally have at some time or the other expressed their heart-felt desire to strangle me. Yeah I know that I take pranks and leg-pulling to a different level at times... but I just can't help it. Sometimes people are just so great subjects to pull a fast one on: and I am never short of devilish ideas. And the look on their faces or their reaction over the phone when you do these things... ahh, priceless!!

I am ticklish... not the under-your-armpit or over-your-belly tickling, but I have a knee-jerk reaction on almost all areas on my body to soft light touches --- the feather-touch tickling variety. So while a great deal of thunderous rubbing on my ribs will not do anything to me, you just need to run your finger lightly over the same area and I'll go quiet and tense up, etc. My sisters use this to their greatest advantage: especially to have their revenge on me for any of the pranks I play on them, mostly when I am about to fall asleep. Oh, talking of 'stupid' jerks and knees and their reactions to feather touches, a lot happens over a cup of coffee, you know! ;)

Finally, I love to fix and repair things: especially machines, electrical appliances, electronics and computers... almost anything! I just get the kicks out of trying to fix broken tape recorders, cassette players, even old coolers and other things people would normally classify as junk. Also, fixing software bugs, trying to link up databases and web servers, fixing bootup/performance problems on desktops and servers are extremely enticing to me. I guess I am really an engineer or a mechanic at heart: I love to tweak things around and explore other possibilities in them: to make them useful, somehow!

Whoa! That almost needed a full day of introspection to come up with. Well, as a dutiful blogger, I'll tag six people to carry on this meme and divlge stuff about themselves. So lets spill the beans for

• Grafxgurl
• Hari
• Life Lover
• Prerona
• Selma
• Thennavan

So, what do you think?