Udit’s World

Friday 18th February 2.15 pm - Me at work..phone rings..I don’t recognize the number.

me : Wachovia..This is Udit
Lady at the other end (L.A.T.O.E) : Is this Mr. Maaahensaaria?
me : Yes, mam..speaking
L.A.T.O.E : I am calling from Prefferred Parking (This is the lot where I park my car). Your car has been in a wreck. I’ve been asked to call you to go there immediately.
me : (silent for few seconds) umm..oooooook…Do you know what happened? Is my car affected by the wreck?
L.A.T.O.E : I am not sure sir. I have been told that you should get there immediately.
me : thanks for calling. I’ll be over there immediately.

So now my heart is racing..not sure what the fuck happened to my car…I park in an open lot and my spot is basically next to a busy street with no protection between my car and the street. So anyways, I start walking to my car..(its 3 blocks away) and then I start running…(not sure why). As I approach my car, I see that the car is mostly intact.(breathe a sigh of relief)..but there is some visible damage to the front bumper.There is a tow truck with 2 cars on it..smashed up..there are 2 cars across the street..smashed up..(including a brand spanking new gold BMW). The SUV parked next to me also got hit..The honda accord on the other side of me lay unscathed..(talk about lucky). The COP asks me for my registration and while he is filling out the insurance information for me, I ask him what happened? He says that a guy broke a red light at the intersection. In doing that, he collided with a car that was coming in the other direction. That car hit the 2 cars across the street and one of those cars bounced off a pole and hit my car and the SUV parked next to me. He said I was lucky to get away with just bumper damage. Yeeaaaah..I’ll take that.

The guy who broke the red light looked like one of those people with a big beard, dishevelled clothes pushing a shopping cart in the street begging for food and money. I am no one to pass judgement, but I let out a string of curses in hindi in my mind.

So I got back to my desk..called up my insurance company..called his insurance company and found out that he DID have insurance. Atleast, thats what they have told me so far. (Maybe the BMW person hadn’t called in yet..and the 4 other cars he caused damage to). So, we’ll see what happens on Monday with regard to getting my car fixed.

Talk about a nice way to get your weekend started.

The state I live in is going nuts!! So here’s the deal. I was doing my tax return for NC and they actually have a section for filling out the value of goods you bought over the internet or from a mail order company. Obviously, if you bought something out of state, you didn’t pay tax for it. So our friends in NC want the tax that they would have got if I bought my shit from NC. That is ridiculous. If I buy shit online, its probably because I’m saving money and its much more convenient. Why the hell should I pay NC the tax on that??

Another thing: I was watching the local news and they are proposing taxing motorists by the Mile!!! Thats right, depending on how many miles you rack up on your car, they will tax you on that. Right now, the tax is included as part of the gas you buy. So basically, the state is saying that I don’t care if you have a SUV, or if you have a Toyota Prius, if you put 15,000 miles on your car, you pay the same amount of tax. So much for trying to encourage the people to buy energy efficient cars.

Interesting statistic ….3 out of 5 times I have gotten a ticket, there has been a girl in the car. Not suggesting anything..but just a mention.

Been almost 2 weeks since I posted. So here is an update on my life so far. Miami was good. Short trip actually. The weather wasn’t all that great. A bit chilly for my liking.(especially since I had prep’ed myself for the warm weather). We did some sight seeing, shopping etc and I flew back to Charlotte on Sunday Morning. So didn’t miss the Super Bowl after all. Actually had a little impromptu get together of friends from work, so that was nice.

I got a TIVO this past weekend. For my marketing class in grad school, my project group chose TIVO as the company we would research and develop a marketing plan. For those interested, here is the deck we created. Anyhow, I was somewhat fascinated by having a little hard-drive record shows for you..in a smart way! I had some issues setting it up because TIVO requires a landline to download some software to do the initial set-up. My Vonage connection kept on disconnecting probably due to packet loss. I was about to take it to a friends place where he has a traditional land line connection until I realized I could do the set-up over my ethernet connection. So off I was to best buy; bought myself a USB ethernet adapter which hooked into TIVO and after some backdoor tweaks to my TIVO, I got it to work. Now, I can schedule programs to record over the internet which makes a good excuse for working late!!

Yes! I am heading to Miami this weekend to spend some time with family/relatives.Looking forward to this trip for quite sometime now. The weather in Charlotte this past week has been downright depressing . Gloomy skies, off and on rain all week..just a mess..Sunny skies and mid seventies forecasted for Miami this weekend..Not too shabby I say.

The only bummer is that I’ll be flying back when the superbowl is going on..I’ll try to see if US Air can put me on an earlier flight so that I won’t miss too much of it.. Hopefully it will work out. Otherwise, I’m sure the pilots will be nice enough to update us on the scores as the flight goes on. I was flying back on a sunday evening once, and the pilot rattled off the scores to all the football games..(roughly 15 games!) during mid-flight..Talk about sports crazy pilots!(or the travelling public..depending on which way you look at it!)