Orchids Gone Wild!

Let me confess something. I’m not a square-jawed six-pack-abs hulk who wears his metrosexuality on his sleeve flaunting Prada and Calvin Klein. I’m just your boy next door who loves his sports, beer and his share of action movies and skin flicks. And yes, there are places guys like me dread to tread. Cinema halls to watch a Karan Johar movie or art galleries to admire French impressionist paintings, for instance. Flower show was on that list too, but got scratched that fateful Saturday when I attended my first (and pray last!) orchid show. Here’s how it went down…

Last week while chatting with my friend's wife, she casually mentioned that they both were contemplating growing plants and flowers at home. Of course this was the same friend, who after marriage decided to turn over a new leaf and dedicate entire Sundays to mastering the nuances of chicken and shrimp cooking. So I didn’t exactly fall off the chair in shock imagining my friend tending to roses in the garden.

“What kind of flowers? Like roses and lilies?” I typed.
“No. Actually Orchids.”
“Orchids? Aren’t they like endangered or something?” I asked, still amused and puzzled at my friend’s sudden interest in flora.
“No. They are exotic and extremely beautiful” she clarified.

Now I am no plants-and-flowers guy but roses were the closest I could get to. Orchids? Never would have thought of that in a million years. I agreed to checkout the orchids fair in Santa Barbara, provided she draw up a detailed list of what orchids to buy and how many of those she wanted. My plan? Produce the list to some vendor and smooth talk him/her into filling my bag. If all went well Operation Orchids would be over hassle-free in less than fifteen minutes. As is the wont I was to be proved wrong. Again!

Finding the campgrounds after driving around 100 miles from Los Angeles wasn’t difficult, since Highway 101 was clogged with SUVs, campers and BMW convertibles atleast a mile before the exit. Snaking through traffic I parked my car almost a mile away and lumbered to the entrance to be greeted by a “Orchids Gone Wild!” banner. Not exactly an A for originality, but it did raise my hopes a wee bit of having some fun inside. A cacophony of voices hit me as I stepped in. Boisterous kids, disinterested husbands with a I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing-here look on their faces, and seventy-somethings intently checking out every single orchid on display. People representing every possible demographic seemed to have a date with the orchids that day. And enjoying it too! I realized much to my dismay that I was probably the only unsupervised soul present.

One of my tried and tested theories is that any such congregation entails free food of some sort. Could be oatmeal raisin cookies, apple cider, pizza or even home brewed beer for that matter. My ultra sensitive food locating antenna launched itself into high gear and sure enough picked up a sizeable crowd thronging around a booth. Making a beeline for the center of the table and without looking down I said,

“Yeah… I’ll have a spoon of that.”, trying to sound casual.
“But.. this is orchid food”, a cute Asian girl stammered.
“Oh! I know that. Just joking.” I replied with an embarrassingly hollow laugh and did a quick about turn. Good Lord! I could feel atleast five pairs of eyes staring strangely at me.

Minor setback notwithstanding I decided to give my theory one more shot. I spotted another crowd at the end of the aisle. This time around it was mostly middle-aged couples, which perked me up a little bit. I mean guys don’t mill around orchid food or fertilizers unless there’s some freebies or some hottie lecturing. Right? With a little bit of shoving and some “excuse-me’s” I peered down slowly.

I just couldn’t believe my eyes! There were atleast ten people around me transfixed to an orchid barely a fist high and held spellbound by a heavy-set man who looked like a washed-up Indiana Jones. Popping out cameras, taking notes, posing for pictures alongside it, everyone except me were going gaga over it. All this for a prima donna that wasn’t expected to blossom for the next one and half years. Oh wait! She comes home for a whopping $250! Holy Mother! That’s two Lakers games nipped in the bud!

I’m never short of life truths and here’s one more. Second to grapes (and that includes wine) orchids are probably the next biggest thing to have hoodwinked humanity. Call me crazy or whatever, but forking up a fortune for a plant that wasn’t going to blossom until end of Fall 2010 is downright ridiculous. Me? I’d rather buy an inexpensive plant from Walmart and pawn it off as an “exotic orchid” on my unsuspecting friends.

Whew! Fifteen minutes gone by. No free food. No love for orchids either. Gathering myself I proceeded to a less active booth manned by a old man with a I’ve-seen-it-all-for-the-orchids look on his face. I sincerely started my monologue explaining my illiteracy, why I was here and what I wanted. He took all of two minutes to process that, which made me wonder if I should have spoken slowly instead of rattling off like a shotgun. He calmly picked up a plant (thankfully bigger than my earlier object of hatred), explained that’s what I was looking for, also caring to throw some light on its maintenance. And redirecting me too for the next item on my list. Cattleyas.

I liked these Cattleyas immediately. For starters, they looked like real plants, had more attractive flowers and showed less attitude than their much shorter cousins. Plus, the over eager salesgirl helped me pick one in a jiffy. With a happy sigh I ticked off the items in my list. Dendrobiums and Cattleyas were now in the bag.

Orders executed to a T, a thought suddenly struck me. Why don’t I call up Miss M (my girlfriend-turned-ex, in case anyone's curious) and ask her if she wanted one of those? Judging by what I had seen it looked as if orchids were on women’s top ten list after all. I left her a message and she called back in a few minutes.

“Oh my God! What on earth are you doing at a orchid show? That’s the last place I imagined you to be.” she said, laughing hard.
“I know! I am doing it for my friend and for the record am sleepwalking through this.” I replied, trying hard to maintain a straight face.

Turned out M was fascinated by orchids. “Surprise me”, was all she said when I asked her what she wanted. Groan! Another of those grocery lists would have made my life easier. “Once bitten twice shy”, they say. This time around I decided to dispense with all tomfoolery, went back and straight away picked one which promised to blossom into vivid colored flowers in less than three weeks. “That’s one less thing for her to stress about” I mused.

Operation Orchids was finally over and I couldn’t help but pat myself on my back for a job well done. Admittedly it wasn’t as bad as I feared, though with a better knowledge of biology and an infinitely higher aesthetic sense and patience I could have gushed afterwards that I was in paradise.

Lakersobium Champsanum ‘Kobe’ 2010

In case you’re still wondering, that’s an orchid that’ll bloom in June 2010 when God a.k.a Kobe Bryant wins another NBA championship for the Lakers.

Peace out y'all!

(MIS)STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

It was one of those lazy Friday nights. Sprawled across the couch, nursing a beer I was watching yet another rerun of the ‘98 Bulls-Jazz Championship game. Past 2.30am already and my brain had already begun to shutdown when suddenly my phone shrieked loudly. Getting me and possibly my neighbors too to rapt attention. “What the #$%^” I hissed and kept staring at it for a few minutes hoping my phone would get the point. No! Whoever was calling was determined to reach me at all costs. “I’m coming!” I yelled and with superhuman effort made the few step trek to my jeans that’d been flung all the way across the living room.

“I need you to edit my SOP”

“Well… Hello to you too…” I started off to my girlfriend thinking that even a credit card representative would’ve got better treatment. Apparently she wanted me to edit her Statement of Purpose (SOP) document at this unearthly hour. The one with which she was planning to apply to schools for her PhD.

“Who’s going to be admitting you?” I chuckled.

“Quite a few actually. I sent it to you now. Check your mail” she curtly replied. Seemed to me that my humor was way off like Jordan’s jumper than just clanged off the rim. Now, the girlfriend and I were in a nebulous phase, where it’d been decried that I still had to do a lot of “things” to make us more forward. Which meant statements like “I’d rather be doodling with watercolors than editing this s**t” were out of the window. And so I put on my “brave warrior” face, worked on her document, trimming down the fat (which was in quite a few places, like a 30 something Bollywood actress) and came up with the gold standard. All in less than 3 hours and getting back a “Thank you! I’m tired and I’m going to bed now” in return. That was supposed to be my reward for resuscitating my brain cells in the middle of the night and missing Jordan’s miracle last second shot. Again! “Some #$%^in’ night” I cursed myself as I rolled off to sleep…

A few days back I chanced upon this *cough* masterpiece *cough* when it struck me “Why can’t I spoof this up?” That set me on an ego trip for the next 3 hours at the end of which I felt I’d sufficiently (dis)established her credentials. Maybe because the both of us aren’t an item no more OR I was plainly bored and thought her SOP had serious comedic potential. Whatever! And maybe any fans (Ok! people) reading this could use it to perk up their day…

P.S.: Since my ex sometimes envisions her as a supermodel whose privacy is sacrosanct I’ve been forced to delete all references to anything living or standing. Not that should matter, right?

(MIS)STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

“All of life is a journey - which paths we take, what we look back on, and what we look forward to is up to us. We determine our destination, what kind of road we will take to get there, and how happy we are when we get there.”

Excuse me if I just sounded like a bus driver, but for some inexplicable reason this long drawn quotation (probably from the Department of Transportation!) fits me like the perfect hubcap. Winding through graduate school into my first job I thought I’d found my destination only to be hit smack dab across the face (by life, that is) and said these were in fact life experiences! I was cool, except that my dad almost passed out realizing that he’d paid a busload of money just to get me a “life experience” in college. If I may, I’d certainly like Take Two on “The One at Graduate School”. Mid-afternoon breakfasts, midnight pillow fights with roommates in our underwear (Kidding! Never happened. Seriously!), walking around with a devil-may-care demeanor among other things. Who wouldn’t want that? But I’m 28 now and feel if I want to continue my “Chinni Jayanth” act my next step ought to be a PhD. So yes master, please put me down for that one.

All through my academic journey I was focused and meticulous. Synonyms such as nerdy, geeky and boorish can also be used. These adjectives propelled me through my undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering garnering accolades along the way in technical paper presentations, when the rest of the general population was blissfully living it up in Pizza Hut, Geoffrey’s and Elliots Beach. Perhaps my overall obnoxious behavior towards my fellow classmen sprinkled with a slight penchant for research landed me a senior project at IIMC that turned me into the first of its kind from our college. Not that nobody cared, since friends and faculty alike were pretty relieved to see me leave. Several interesting electives and lecture-seminars (that I had no clue about) made me realize that my calling was Environmental Science/ Engineering. That at least is the official version. Unofficial version? Two days into my stint at IIMC I fell violently sick after gulping down some muddy “drinking water” in the canteen. “Who on earth can manage to live without proper water treatment?” I was thinking when I was recuperating and thinking of getting a water filter for the canteen at the same time. Two weeks later and ten pounds lighter I staggered back to campus only to be told that all the cool Chemical Engineering projects were taken. All that were left were the crumbs, which consisted of Prof. Bhatnagar and his thick worn out coffee crusted folder. “Beggars shouldn’t be choosers” he brusquely remarked when I nervously broached him about Material Science. And just like that I fell in love with water treatment and the overall study of Environmental Science/Engineering!

Post Eureka moment, I applied to several graduate schools in all earnest. Unsurprisingly (according to my dad) no one bothered to acknowledge except the who offered me a full graduate scholarship and a research assistantship. A fact that shocked (well… flabbergasted) my father since he’d already begun making plans for me to work at the local Metro Water office as an “engineer”. “What am I going to say to Mr. Kumar now?” he loudly wondered. I couldn’t care less and had a blast with all the courses and research work. A week’s worth of brainwashing my more intelligent fellow project mates that nothing was right about the USEFA landed me the role of research worker over there for a few months. Keywords: Unlimited Gold Coin apple juice, peppermint brownies and discount tickets to Bengals games (read 70 yard line).

Picking up a few “technical stuff” along the way I managed to complete my MS thesis: “An exploration of neoteric insolvent extractants: Applications in the removal of phospates from solid surfaces and regeneration of automotive catalytic converters”. Irony is it took me more time to come up with the title than their contents. Cardinal rule in thesis writing: Make up a title like those Hindi movie names in the 90s. Extra length and taking a lifetime to pronounce. Of course, confusing the heck out of anyone to make them think right away that you’ve like split the atom inside. Obviously I’m not going to say no one bothered to turn the pages and it just lay there gathering dust in the top shelf. So yes, mine was the next best thing to happen since sliced bread so much that Dr. Saravino even gave me a $50 gift card. “Go buy yourself something pretty” he said, before he left. My dad was thrilled too and sent me a card where he didn’t fail to mention that Mr. Kumar was still asking about me and was prepared to throw in an office as well…

Girl with two degrees don’t work in no Metro Water office. So with much back door machinations I joined in May 2007 as a Design Engineer III. My work involved process, civil design, hydraulic analysis, cost estimation, writing technical reports, specifications and technical memoranda in projects involving wastewater treatment plants. Wow! If that was that, I certainly didn’t get that memo. No sir! And I’d thought that all a Pretty Young Thing (like me) had to do was act coy, get Mr. Andrews’s coffee, answer some calls and gossip around. After all isn’t that what Pam does in “The Office”? Thanks to Mr. Andrews’s constant prodding (sarcasm implied) I managed to obtain my Engineer in Training (EIT) licensure after several aborted attempts. I was also part of the sustainability core team and worked on climate change initiatives devising Greenhouse Gas (GHG) footprinting methodologies and calculation templates. That’s what driving around for pizza for Jim, Mack, Stella and Youssef and fixing Stella’s hair for her date with DeAngelo Matthews does for you. Get you “part of a team”.

“Curiosity killed the cat” is how my dad would deadpan when asked about my inquisitive nature. As for creativity, he’d just shrug and point to the living room wall that carries like a few hundred coats of paint. Thanks in large part to my desire of balancing equations and solving chemical problems in front of the family. Two such burning qualities in a girl, it’s a crime to let them gather rust, which is why I think a PhD at is the best solution.

On the record,

a. It would open new horizons for progressively responsible positions in R & D in various research institutes, non profit organizations and possibly the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). First USEFA, now UNEP. Girl can dream big, can’t she?

Off the record,

a. I’d be the first chick at Metro Water with a PhD. Now you might think nothing of that but in my country that’d mean I’d be having more powers than the President. How cool is that?

b. I’d be called “Dr. ”, which also happens to be my dad’s name. Gullible relatives (like “Cheenu Uncle”, “Shekhar Perippa”) would think my dad earned himself a PhD after 60 raising his stock through the roof.

c. I plan to get married soon and these three letters would ensure my future husband wouldn’t think I possess the IQ of a 6th grader. For crying out loud, every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to be getting his Masters these days, more common than a GED!

On a serious twist, for two years I’ve been exposed to nothing except wastewater treatment, soil remediation, water treatment & reuse. And for some reason I can’t seem to get these courses like Sustainable Development, Environmental Policy and Deregulation out of my darn mind. Which are offered only here. Which is why I need to get into this PhD. Capisce? Yes, I’d be working with an exceptional faculty, honing my skills and contributing to cutting edge research (gulp!), that’s a given.

I can continue to drone on why I’m Miss Eligible (ambition, communication skills et al) but quite frankly, after all this baloney I’ve thrown at you I’m certain you’re ready to quit your Admissions job and head off to the Himalayas. I will not let you do that. Without further ado, I’d like to conclude thus,

“A known devil is better than an unknown angel”

Ms. YYY.