The Guinea Pig Diaries Read Online Free PDF Page B

what she sent:
    Dear All ,
    Jacobs often receives mails from Colorado news, too often. They are definitely interesting topics. However, these topics are not suitable for “Esquire .”
    Further, we do understand that you have taken a lot of initiatives working on these articles and sending it to us. We understand. Unfortunately, these articles and mails are too time consuming to be read .
    Currently, these mails are not serving right purpose for both of us. Thus, we request to stop sending these mails .
    We do not mean to demean your research work by this .
    We hope you understand too .
    Thanking you,
    Honey K B
    That is the best rejection notice in journalism history. It’s exceedingly polite, but there’s a little undercurrent of indignation. Honey seems almost outraged that Colorado would waste the valuable time of Jacobs.
    Along the same lines, Honey wrote a complaint letter to American Airlines for me; the flight I recently took offered only shrimp for dinner, a dish I don’t eat. “ Since it has caused such an inconvenience, I demand reimbursement ,” she wrote. Don’t mess with Honey.
    Incidentally, Honey and Asha don’t know about each other. I’m constantly worried about getting busted for my infidelities, for my life of outsourcer bigamy. What if they run into each other at the Bangalore hardware store? What if I call Asha “Honey” and she thinks I’m hitting on her?
    •   •   •
    My father-in-law has come to town, which means a dinner filled with a series of increasingly excruciating puns. Asked whether he ever suffered gout, he replies, “No gout about it!”
    Damn, do I wish I could outsource this dinner. Where’s Honey? Where’s Asha?
    I’ve become addicted to outsourcing. I am desperate to delegate everything in my life but have to face the depressing reality that there are limits. I can’t outsource those horrible twenty-five-minute StairMaster sessions. I can’t outsource taking a pee. I can’t outsource sex with Julie. Not that I dislike it, but we’re trying to have another kid, which means a whole bunch of sex, and enough is enough, you know? It gets tiring. I can’t outsource watering the ficus.
    Still . . . every weekend, I place a dutiful call to my parents. It’s a nice thing to do, I figure—but it’s also a huge time vacuum. This weekend it’s Mom and Dad’s anniversary, so I can expect it to eat up even more of my day than usual. Mr. Naveen to the rescue. I e-mail Mr. Naveen—the YMII employee who will be on duty at the time—a few concerned-sounding questions and a couple of filial sound bites. Next day, I get this e-mail:
    I made an out bound call to Jacob’s parents. They very happily received my call. I first introduced myself to them. Then I wished them Happy Anniversary they both told me thank you. . . . I asked them how is the weather in their place. They told me that it is pretty nice temperature here and the garden looks beautiful .
    I won’t reproduce the whole report, but apparently my mom’s sprained foot has gotten better (though the rain does not help), and my dad’s law practice is going along very well. As forme, I had a good week, apparently. This was highly successful outsourcing, saving me at least half an hour of sweaty-eared phone time.
    My outsourcers now know an alarming amount about me—not just my schedule but my cholesterol, my infertility problems, my Social Security number, my passwords (including the one that is a particularly adolescent curse word). Sometimes I worry that I can’t piss off my outsourcers or I’ll end up with a twelve-thousand-dollar charge on my MasterCard bill from the Louis Vuitton in Anantapur.
    In any case, the information imbalance is pretty huge. I know practically nothing about them. So I e-mail them both to request a minibiography.
    Honey sends me a two-page file called Honey4U. She’s a jazz and salsa dancer, loves
Friends,
reads Jeffrey Archer. She has a boyfriend. She works from 2 P.M. to 11 P.M .