Earthquake and aftershocks

I am sitting on a bench. Behind me a group of senior citizens are discussing earthquakes.

This is the 4th time that I have used stairs to come down from my 11th floor flat. The first time that I came down, I was half asleep and did not have my sleepers, mobile phone or wallet with me. I was lying down on my bed and felt that I was moving synchronously with floor. Simultaneously I heard knocking on my door and was informed by my flatmate that there is an earthquake and we should be moving down. I half sleep walked behind him.

I have had mild experiences of earthquake before but this really shook me. I asked my friend to search for news and there was nothing much available online. Later we came to know it was 7.8 scale earthquake that was centered in Nepal. After about 30 minutes of us going back into the flat, we again felt a major tremor and came down again. Since then it has been a series of aftershocks.

Night was a different matter altogether. I had plans of attending a friend's wedding and I should really be in Bareilly right now. I'm not sure how it happened but somehow I have managed to not attend it and live this moment of scare instead. I think it was a case of communication failure between me and another friend who was in charge of organizing the trip.

Taking about communication, I ported my number to Vodafone and feel disappointed already after facing same reception related problems. In the aftermath of airtel trying to keep me with them, I got the calls from different people saying that they will fix my problem. I also felt that call quality was relatively better on the last week with airtel. Anyway, I gave already written to Vodafone and hopefully they will respond. Getting a customer care representative on their customer care number is impossible.

I also wrote my first YouTube comment last night. At about 2 at night I realized that I could not sleep. "How do I know that I am not in middle of an earthquake right now?" I was experiencing an augmented reality where I felt as if I was in middle of a continuous earthquake. Finally, common sense prevailed and I decided to focus my energies to the ceiling fan. If it starts shaking like a pendulum then I know. I also decided not to force myself to sleep anymore and instead, waste time on YouTube. That's when I came across Tara's channel. She was reading comments that she had on her other videos. She plays video games and reviews them. She is also very comfortable taking about her sexuality and its importance in getting her the views. I know you know the mix of comments one expects on YouTube videos. You have funny ones, full of hatred ones, nonsensical ones, disgusting ones. It's like a democracy in its most efficient and representative form.

She was funny while replying to comments. She could really work with accents. She was smart and she could see through holes in arguments. Most of all, to me she was reassuring and a connection to sanity.

So I wrote a really boring comment on one of her videos thanking her. I do that quite often these days. Whenever I see someone doing something good, I leave a message thanking them.

Earlier this week, I also went to Noida to give a job interview. It was very conversational in style and I loved it. The person interviewing me had Mu Sigma roots too so it was really good to look back at a time worth remembering. I was honest and funny and philosophical.

Noida is really far away from Gurgaon. I woke up at 6 and reached their office at 9:45. On my way, traveling on the Metro, I  thought deeply about my value proposition. I went through few answers that bookmarked on Quora and that helped too. I also met B waiting to be interviewed. Talk about coincidences.

I am also deeply into reading History of India by John Key - I have read first two chapters on Vedic Era and Epic Era and it was really interesting. However, I am struggling to continue 'If on a winter's night a traveler'.

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