What is the worlds deadliest job? Is it fire fighting those deadly forest fires and homes ? Is it highway patrol? Is it hunting in Africa? Is it cleaning the mosaic of a sky scraper or radio towers on top? Is it owning a fortune making business in latin america with the potential to get kidnapped and killed? It is drug dealing? or is it preaching gospel in the third world ?

If you saw the stream of discovery episodes on Thanksgiving atleast for a few minutes, you know the answer by now! Apparently, it is Alaskan crab fishing !!

More than once, I found myself sitting at work and wondering what could be more demanding than this while I knew I could not be more wrong!

Alaskan crab legs are a delicacy known throughout the world. Few people know, however, that an year’s worth of Alaskan crab supply for the world is caught in a week’s span. The location is the freezing deep sea waters of bering sea (between Alaskan islands and russian peninsula). Its winter time. Temperatures are below freezing. Its time to catch the King crab and rake in $5 per pound!! crab fishing teams are getting ready to sail into the fishing grounds some 100 miles east of King cove, AK!!

They know that if the 19-40 foot rogue waves of the sea did not sweep them off the boats and hypothermia did not kill them in less than 2 minutes, they are 100% likely to suffer injuries while handling one of the 800-pound steel cages called crab pots that they use to trap crab! Oh, and medication is not far away…they will get medical help once they get back to the shores which is not before the hunt ends!!

Still, the bounty is big enough to entice a hand few fishermen every year to try their luck in this risky proposition! Nearly one man (out of the hand-few on those boats) dies every week but those 5-days of work at sea could be worth upto 10-20 grand per deck hand!

Its kind of disheartening for these adventure lovers that the ration system will kick in from next season. So, every boat gets a pre-fixed piece of the pie, thereby reducing the risk that these people tend to take to grab as much as they could.

Next time I get my work jitters, I can take respite in the fact I am not an Alaskan crab fisherman who spends that week of deadly winter in Alaska on one of those boats that rake in 2 million pounds of Alaskan crab in a week’s span.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
(Aristotle)

Its one thing to live in a country that you did not grow up in. Its a totally different game to raise kids in such a country whose values, culture and verbiage are so west of where you first said “jaa”! Its not even the same ball park!

My mom shared this interesting story once about my first word/syllable - “jaa”! It meant nothing in my native tongue apart from sounding very close to the first syllable in last name (jarajapu - spelt as ‘jar-a-jap-oo”) but my parents successfully decoded what I meant based on the context! For example, if it was meal time, “jaa” meant I was hungry. if it was evening and dad just got back from work, it meant “play with me”. if it was hot & stuffy and someone was brute forcing me with their show of affection, it meant “get your hands off me”. if I said it when I smiled, it meant “I am happy”. if I said it at 2 in the middle of the night, it meant “you better get me out of this cradle now or I promise to start crying in 5…4…3…2…1….COL (cry out loud)”!

Parents who raise kids in a culture & context that is alien to them donot have the luxury of such simplistic interpretation! Forget when they are months old, I found parents coping up with the language of second-generation kids even when they are several years old! check these conversations out .

kid : “mom! I am starving to death and I could use some food”.
dad: “you better stop saying that you are starving because you donot know what starvation means! you never even faced it and I dont want you to either!”

“Dad! dont take it so literally ..!?! All I meant to say is that I am really hungry . Seriously, I feel like I could eat a horse”!
..sigh…”look at this guy! I was brought up a pure vegetarian and he already talks about eating horses, pigs and anything else that crawls, walks or breathes? what is next? rats & snakes?? (lowers tone, looks at me, smiles) God! what a place did I choose bring up these little devils”
…”stop talking like you come from the purest land on earth! I heard that people kill animals in temples and eat rats & snakes where you come from!”
“who the he..(looking at mom) are you telling him all these stupid stories?”
“nah! dont go bursting your anger on her..it was my friends”
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kid (yelling): “mom! get me my dinner…”
dad: “is that the way you talk to your mom? you have no right to yell at her . she wont bring your dinner if you did so”
kid: “ofcourse she will..you would have died of starvation long back if she didnt”
dad (anger ..with a display of parenting patience) “ok! I never talked to my mom like that.. I would always go… get my dinner please.. thats a polite way to request..and I want you to learn it..you know …say things like thank you! please!”
kid : OK (smiles)
dad (hints of vexation) : “ok..thats nice. be a nice boy…! I want you to say the magic word!”
kid “mom! can you get me my dinner NOW?”
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kid: “dad! where did I come from”?
now the parents were new to parenting but they were prepping up for this question for sometime now. Now that their little girl is 4 yrs old, they showed pictures of her birth, the video of her birth and explained to her how she was born.
the kid listened to all of this and went..”this is fine! but my friend angie says she came from poland. where did I come from?”

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some are protracted & some verbatim ..but I was witness to them and I could empathize with the frustration of a parent that comes from the unwitting ‘battle over wits’ that they have to fight with their kids …in an attempt to look smarter, older & stronger than their counterparts that grew up, went to school and now work in the very same country (sometimes same city) that were born in. Its not an unfair equation considering the fact that these kids get the best of what is out there and a bite at the free world that their parents struggled so hard for and now savor! But it would definitely have been a different ball game if they were raising kids in their native place!

I love quick fixes! I didnt approve of them at school, at work or in my own private life but I love them! Reasons? mmm..let me think…they are quick, they get the job done and 9 cases out of 10, they are the equivalent of 10 days of WHAT-WOULD-I-DO-INSTEAD effort bundled into one hectic day!
….plus … They have this semantic & ideological correlation with ’strike the iron when its hot’, the sort that Sean Connery had with James bond! Its not the same thing, but you think of one thing, you inevitably think of the other !

Sort of makes me wonder which is probably why I see such countless (..wondering if baseless too!) claims of get-quick-rich schemes taking over the Internet after their not-so-old victory over traditional media like TV and mouth-to-mouth marketing!
The other day, I lived past my more-than-fair share of those ‘you could make-a-mill-in-a-month (and wake up to Roger riney or schwab calling/begging you to take care of your investment portfolios)’ commercials on TV !!

Typically after midnight, they strike, one after another, in methodical precision..!!
.. and mostly after all those commercials about the latest hot.flash.skin episode of ‘girls gone wild’ and more-than-you-can-handle proportions of celeb gossip. Now, not a lot of people are watching TV after all that direct pandering, and I know I want something “more” out of life in general and my TV in particular when I am done with the daily mass of kitsch kichidi!

Probably the best time to pick a middle-aged voyager (thats right! strike it when ‘hot’) like me who knows there is no point going back and no fun moving forward in life…and so ends up looking for that ultimate ‘quick fix’ to patch it all up … to become the next da-awesome who can eat like a pig and still look a deer because …….(s)he is rich !

Seriously, I am glad there is so much in my life that I can fall back onto, much in my relationships that makes me feel loved but I wonder what if I (for that matter anyone) did not!

Then, is that not a subtle line that I cross when I make that eager attempt to “Sell it!! and now!!” to someone like that..?
when I close that deal in a rush, or use that extra twist of aggression (ah! I wish I could) or those by-now-famous ‘take-back’ clauses (”may be this is not for you”, “I could show you something from the less expensive range”, “This is the high end..but who has the money to buy it..right?”) instead of doing what we know is right but probably takes longer??!!

rrrrrr…My fear of death is eating me up ..and if you will excuse me, I need to go get some breakfast..before I starve and end up there ..and I gotta do it quick ~!

Its not easy being an external employee. It sounds fancy, the travel part is definitely exotic and I myself did it for a couple of years (fortunately without too much travel as I worked for only 2 clients from a remote location in MI) but its nearly not as exotic!

Imagine the plight of responding to the calls & wants of a boss who is not your boss because your true boss and his feedback depends on this boss-not-so-boss! Its like the classic two-wives-one-neck situation!

A couple of my friends who were consulting in the bay area decided to talk about how it sucks to be an employee and how great a ball they have as they consult ! I nodded heads throughout the conversation and as I tried to come up with points to support their claims, I realized that the grass is not exactly “pale yellow” on my side of the turf!!

I recall the general agreement at the end of the conversation was that the question - “how much change can you take on a daily basis over a year’s span?” really answers your penchant for the ultra-white color work! well, all consultants donot exactly show up in ultra-white colors to work while a lot of my buddies who contract definitely feel the need to do so..but in the end, I guess it comes down to whether you like being in the inside and still like it!!

As one of those funny quotes says “funny being inside, isnt it? because when you are inside, you are actually outside the outside!!”
ah! the world of relativity!

Rise and shine campers!
Day’s weather forecast.. cloudy and scattered showeres !?! but we were lucky though.. it was a very bright sunny day.

We all got up around 8 a.m and made a plan to go to St.Helen’s mountain which is near the border of Washington and Oregon . It was a 4 hr journey from Bothell to Mount St. Helen’s. We were all set and then our car gave a problem.. the battery was down. We later realised that the previous night we forgot to switch-off the headlights, so we had to give a jump start to the car.
Phew !
Finally we hit the road.. had some snacks.. played anthakshari..
The game rules:
1.if you dont sing a song in 2 mins ;you are out of the game
2. no teaming; which bhabhi and me wanted to pair up, but then bro and uday didn’t want to do that, they said ‘its no fun’.
They finally made us agree ! Frist, it was Uday, he started off with a telugu song.. and then it was my turn.. lol! my mind was blank.. well thats not true.. i didn’t wanna sing thought i would escape slowly.. but they were too clever.. made me sing some song. We were singing and singing.. after few rounds..it was my turn again.. i’ve been getting the same letter and this time too i got the same letter .. seriously I was out of songs ( was not escaping this time)! 2 mins were over and i was out of the game
They continued singing while I was busy taking pictures .. The drive was just amazing with valley’s, lakes and lush green trees. The valleys were astonishing !
Here are a sample snaps which I took on the way to Mount St. Helens :

After a 4 hrs of driving we reached Mount St.helen’s visitor center.

Wow! amazing, astonishing.. these were the words i started using.. You must be wondering what’s all about St. Helen’s… well its a volcanic mountain ‘an active volcanic mountain’ to be more precise. I was thrilled to see an active volcano never ever I saw a vlocanic mountain that close.. I could even see the smoke coming out. We took a couple of pictures of the mountain..the national volcanic monument center had a 30 min show describing the events of 1980 volcanic erruption of Mount St. Helen’s ..here are some picture :

So, we stayed there for an hr . and drove back to home.. we were all tired.. and dropped the idea of shopping in portland.. I slept for a while and .. was I snoring ? yea I was . lol! None of us had the energy to go home and cook something and decided to go to the Udipi restaurent… but later we ditched that for the Mexican restaurent which is know for its salsa and chips. At the end we all were full, couldn’t stuff more.. we decided to pack it and take home.

We reached home and all of us were sitting and chatting… Uday was the first person to crash.. ‘coz he was the one who has been driving all day and needed a good night sleep… me , bhabhi n bro were still tallking … talking about meditation and reiki ..some seriuos stuff .Then i started explaining them what is Reiki.. how it is useful in life.. and was giving reiki healing to my bhabhi n bro.. was telling my experiences about reiki… never knew time would fly fast.. it was 2:00 a.m ! No wonder they say ” Sleepless In Seattle .” Some how you dont sleep early when you are in seattle.

And finally we hit the bed, but my bro had to go to the office as he had some work to finish… and I slept like a log.

A beautiful state with lush green trees and during the fall season the Washington State looks all the more beatuiful and colourful ! no wonder they call as ;The Evergreen state’

The next morning was an early morning..a bright sun-shiny morning! the only sun-shiny morning that we saw in seattle !!

We had to rush to the Canadian embassy and beat the rush-hour traffic from Bothell to the city. So, we started with my brother early in the morning. On the way, we ran into a few weary Friday morning commuters on the 156th avenue in Redmond, the home of Microsoft.

We reached the embassy sharp at 9 am. To our surprise, there was already a truck load of people waiting for their turn and none of them had appointments! So, we waited our turn. It was refreshingly different in the sense that people were allowed to bring in their electronic equipment, cell phones and even laptops into the embassy! We went in their with a small folder of paperwork and had just each other to pass time with.

Three hours and a couple of visits to the nearby starbucks & an ATM (embassy wanted exact cash) later, we were finally granted the canadian visa!! By the time we got out, the only thing we could think of was a good noon-time nap! So, after a quick trip around the downtown we started heading back to Bothell .

It was around 1:00 p.m in the afternoon, people around me started starring at me.. I didn’t understand for a while and then I said to Uday ‘ I don’t know why but people are starring at me.’ So I asked him, ‘ do my eyes look red?? sleepy??’ He then replied ‘ Yes, they are !’ .. and I really was feeling sleepy.. infact we both were feeling sleepy.. We had some more coffee on th way.. thought i might feel refreshed and wont feel sleepy. But it proved wrong, I was feeling even more sleepy, as if I took a sleeping pill. I was totally confused, coffee makes you refresh.. not sleepy ! While we were driving back to home , we had a debate about ‘coffee making you refresh and not sleepy.’ Anyways, we were near home and made 2 quick stops, one at Quzinoz sandwich store and other at the chinese reataurent.. I ordered a sandwich and he ordered a spicy chicken, both to-go. Went home.. had our lunch and off to sleep.

We woke up to a call from my brother inquiring about our visa. To our big surprise, we found it was evening already! Could not believe our plans to go visit a few places around that noon got swept over by our siesta time!

Evening came, we picked up our brother and finally had some good evening chit chat. A few hours later we landed in Tulalip, an Indian casino close to a reservation area and had some fun time there. A few hours and a few lost rounds later, we came home and crashed. we were determined to make the most of Sunday, the next day.

Thats the Tulalips Casino