The crown and the frown.

Beauty is much over-rated. So was Miss Universe 2006. I wasn't even aware, did not care, until Ms. M introduced me to the event on Saturday. I was advocated on the opportunity of patriotism. Influenced, I decided to watch the grand finale. This decision meant I was willing to halt my LOST-1 marathon that was going on non-stop from Friday night.

It was going to start at 8 pm and I was all ready. Only a Spanish channel aired the preview and I was glued to the TV (despite the stupidest ads ever and audio that I had no clue of) just to catch the glimpse of our star participant. Miss India, Neha Kapoor. But they missed India and didn't show her at the preview!! What a disappointment. Bummer. *Frown* (this is where I stealthily make the title that rhymes count - its almost like this in IT. We invent a fancy acronym and then plug in the expansion). After this unruly act, all of a sudden a collection of pageants looked Indianish! In true spirit, I started extending support to sorta Indian looking babes Ms. Bolivia and Ms. Columbia while Ms. M totally disapproved it and accused me of being a traitor.

9 pm and the real show was on. There were a few learnings from the program:

1. New countries are being formed every day and beauty pageants are the most effective ways to announce it to the rest of the real world.
Quoting Ms. M, "St. Martin sounds more like a school than a country :p"

2. Starting this year, they allow laaaaarge costumes so you can legally block the view of 16 contestants behind you.

3. You can ALWAYS count on Ms. Venezuela.

4. Africa has more countries than you think.

5. The 800 diamond crown is worth $250,000.

6. You can send flowers to the pageant of your choice from $19.99 to $399.99

7. The Official Swimsuit Poster of Miss Universe 2006 is yours for just $5. No, I did not buy it. Not yet.

8. Beauty sells.

Overly under-rated hidden talents of India.

There's something we Indians are really good at. Coding. Ya, but take another guess. Slogging? Ya, but that's not what we are looking for.

Thank God we can copy-paste, at least the other continents can change their mindset that we are all about snake-charming, tiger taming, gorilla tickling, etc. People, there's more to India than what you see in the documentaries. And no, we don't go to work on elephants wearing a turban.

There's something else Indians are really good at but extremely underrated by the IT buzz. Eating! Yup, eating.

If you aren't Indian, do not underestimate your Indian lunch pals. They may just seem normal, regular people at the lunch table. Not by choice.

The equipment displayed here is what we carry food in - called tiffin carrier. Yes, you heard it right, not airline carrier or cellphone carrier, food carrier. We take food carrying very seriously. How the hell is this thing supposed to make it through the office security? Its kind of hard to convince that 9.25 layer tray (there is a small tray for 'achar' or pickles) full of colorful exotic ingredients contains food and food only, not a home beta project of a bomb maker.

Ok, if you find it hard to believe me, invite yourself to an Indian home. You are sure to find 279 varieties of spices, non-spices, more spices, natural flavors, rare botanical specimens, ground powders, leaves, bark, roots, stem, xylem and phloem of several extinct species of plants. You probably never heard of all these, but we grow them all in our backyard. A kitchen is nothing short of a factory. Our concepts of supply chain management and ERP start in the kitchen.

History talks for itself. Theres got to be a reason why the British East India Company, when they targeted India in 1600 (By far the only 'date' that I got right in my History papers. Luckily I was born on the 16th and I drew 00 under my shoes) laid hand on our spices. Not gold, not money. "How to take the Indians? Hit their most valuable asset. Food!"

I digress as usual. Now lets jump to specifics. Eaters in India can be classifies into 2: Southies and Northies.

South Indian Style

The early southies were very cliever. They realized that serving all the food we manage to produce at the food factory would take a platter of about 4 feet long and 2.5 feet wide and need about 30 lbs of metal (we don't like to import chineseware from China, we simply don't like them competing our population explosion initiative). This platter would also be impossible to store, wash and maintain - hence we resorted to leaves that grew bigger than the trees, plantains. The one size fit all solution to the platter problem. A few smart ass Southies did manufacture the platter. Later on they found use as armors in civil and barbaric wars.

What you see here is the first of several "laps" of food consumption exercise. Five "laps" of continuous eating is Southie's own version of work-out-as-you-eat fitness program.

The square meal is unheard of in India. Its either a humungous ellipse (refer the image above) or a mammoth circle (North India is coming right ahead). We only eat 9 to 13 times a day, depending on whether we are dieting or not. Every celebration is accompanied by the bandwagon of foods that need to be cooked to mark the occasion. Or the Gods would be angry, you know?

Our specialties are rice, rice and rice. We have invented some 1227 dishes that are rice based. From sweet to extra hot dishes. Whenever we invent a new recipe, it is immediately tested by mixing it with rice. Since Southie food is so complex, it is beyond the realm of what forks, knives and spoons can handle. So we eat with our hands, which upset the table etiquettes of a few hundred countries, but we don't care.

North Indian ISHtyle
(what, you North Indians can mock at our "Yumm" and "Yenn" and "Ellow"?)

Northies aren't to be underestimated either. Instead of rice, they chomp of tons of wheat. Lucky b@$#$#@% though. They eat a bit healthier than the southies.

They compensate their healthy lifestyle pretty well with their sweets loaded in ghee, cashews, sugar. A typical North Indian lunch food starts with a dozen desserts. Three dozen chappatis (wheat bread) or Naan (flour bread - the kind you get at Kabab places or Indian restaurants) with 20 side dishes and then ends with desserts again. Note that the picture here depicts 1/7 serving for one person only.

If you need to gain weight, you don't need to wait. Just go to a food festival in North India. These places are identified by Jigines weds Sonali. Its a never-ending explosive spread of food that immobilizes you for a few hours after you eat and perform a complete stress check of your digestive system.

So, thats the story. We don't like to display "Nutritional Facts" on our food products. Anything that comes in the way of invading huge quantities of delicious food without guilt is not tolerated. Furthermore, computing the calorie count in our foods would require a project with a lot of funding.

I love us!

The finding of Bachelor Cooking.

We have this potluck at work. The last time I had potluck I was in luck. My aunt and my cousin came to my rescue and made delicious Pav Bhaji and Chicken Tikka. It actually made me popular at work despite the bad reputation I had - hard earnt with my stupidity and practical jokes.

What do I do this time? Popular categories like cups, plates and sodas were gone before I could put my name on the intranet.

Oh ya, intranet. This time there was public humility at stake as well. Who invented this concept of potluck? I sigh.

After eons of deliberations and sleepless nights I found the magic.

Badam Kheer. Thanks to MTR.You got to love the recipe.

Badam Drink (Hot and Cold)

Add 2 tsp (about 15g) of MTR Badam Feast to 1 cup of hot milk (150ml).

Add sugar if desired.


Stir. Serve hot or chill the same for cold badam drink.


So I registered to bring Badam Kheer (Almond Dessert Drink, I proudly translated) and prepared 2 gallons and put it in the fridge. Other than minor "not really my fault" incedents like boiled milk spilling all over, paper towels catching on fire, discovery that aluminium foil is a bad substitute for funnel, etc. the preparation went on pretty well.

My dessert is chilling at home. Potluck is tomorrow. Now for the garnishing part. I search recipes for Badam Kheer for garnishing ideas. I bumped into this Indian cooking site which had several categories like breakfast recipes, chutney recipes, rice recipes etc. Much to my surprise I saw a category "Bachelor cooking".

If you are a bachelor, stuck up in an isolated place and missing your mom's cooking like anything, browse through this section for some quick and easy recipes. Yes, contrary to popular belief, plenty of bachelors around the world can whip up lovely delicacies in a jiffy, with whatever's available in the house. Conversely, many a married guy makes for the worst cook. However, bachelor culinary expertise is fast becoming an artifact these. days, thanks to frozen and take-away foods. Whatever be the ambience, check out these quick delights and have a rolling time.

Interesting!!

Reverse fashion.

Often times fashion repeats itself. Looks back in time.

My dad used to say "parallel" pants were reincarnations of good old (old, I get it, but good old?) "bell bottoms" and that fashion comes back at you after you dispose off your old-fashioned stuff. You buy the same thing again and the process repeats. Abercrombie for instance, I can never tell if its a new clothestore or an old warehouse. Unironed clothed, unneatly kept. At unrealistic prices. Thats when you know its new clothes. Or newest, because its fashion!!

Almost seems like technology is doing the dirty job again. How many old rotary dial phones do we still have at home? If you found one, it probably found its home mom's cupboard of useless things (where floppy disks, black school shoes from grade 3 through 11 times number of kids in the family, 386, 486, clothes that don't fit anymore but hoping the 20lbs holiday weight accumulated 6 years ago would melt away, overstocked free stuff, or even dad are sometimes stored) How about offices that have typewriters? If offices have one today chances are that they are government, bankrupt or museum - so lets give them a break.

Here they are - reinventing themselves again. What you see here: a cell phone and a keyboard. For only $499 you can get the cell phone. the ugly annoying ringing is included for free!!

From the inventors/freaks:

My wife suffers from repetive stress problems in her fingers and wrists. Sometime in October we were talking about different keyboards on the market for people such as herself. In the course of the conversation she mentioned that she finds old-fashioned mechanical typewriters much easier on her fingers because they offer gradual resistance rather than the feeling of moving through air then hitting a wall, like most computer keyboards. Ah-hah, I think to myself! At last I know what I will give her for Christmas. The first weekend after Halloween I went out and found an old Smith-Corona and got to work.

All you have to do is open the phone, insert your SIM card, and turn the unit on! The unit will utilize your phone number and account minutes. Phone dials out like normal through the rotary. Incoming calls ring the original, loud, gong style metal bells. Please note: As with all cellular phones, there is no dial tone.

The description reminds me of a friend who just came back from her vacation to India - "Your (cell)phone is not working. There's no dial tone!!"

Don't let those geeks be idle!

Red means go

One might wonder with characters like Ms. S, that girls have immense foresight and are always looking ahead. Except that Ms. S is an exception.

Scene 1:
You are on the passenger side and a girl is driving the car (and/or your fate, actually!!). Its all good, the car is cruising at 40s, nice music. What can possibly go wrong? Wait until you see a red light. So there is this red light staring at you. There's a reason they chose red. Its blaring, can't miss it, red is danger, right? You wish. This car has no intentions of stopping, steady, still at 40, like red means go. The surprise quickly translates into a shock. You go "Hey, hey, red, red, hey you.." *car breakkkkkkkkkkks*

"Oh I was looking at that next light, it was green.. hehhehee"

Scene 2:
Shopping mall, wildlife sanctuary, ship, prison, no matter where, as long as there is a door with a sign "DO NOT USE THIS DOOR." you can bet $90,000 or more that a girl will use that door. Or try hard to if its not cooperative. Its as if they suddenly they lose their 18 years of literary ability. They can't read.

Letters or colors. They can't read. Unbelievable! We tested this on 12,211 female subjects. 12,210 subjects demonstrated the above behavior. Oh, 1 was a guy dressed as a girl.

Note: If you are a girl and I don't open the door in front of you, its only because some experiement is in progress, not that I'm not gentlemanly.

The Geller effect

I have a "Monica type" friend. Ms. S. Of course she denies it but here are a few sample activities:

1. Her movies at home are arranged in alphabetical order.
2. Her clothes are organized in the order of rainbow color shades. I'm sure she's got one of those complex looking physics lab "-scopes" to maintain accuracy.
3. Most things she buys undergo initial antibacterial, antiviral treatments before use. Yes, we are talking about new things. Manufacturing facilities these days, you never know.
4. When you visit her you most probably get a complementary supply of germ-x and a napkins.
5. Recently she is researching on how cleaning products can be cleaned.

Reminds me of F.R.I.E.N.D.S,
Monica is vacuuming the carpet. Then she uses a handy vacuum to clean the vacuum machine and goes "If only they had smaller vacuums to clean this one."

You get the idea.

Ms. S' latest classic:
"I would bring you the DVD but I already packed it.."
"Oh you found a place? Where are you moving to?"
"No, but I started packing" (D'oh!! written all over her)

Other suggestions:
You can wake up before you sleep.
You can get off work before you go to work.
Etcetera. Etcetera.

(updated)
Spotted at Ms. S's:







Yellow sticky to Ms. S read..
"Now you wanna be Ross? What's with you and the Gellers?"

Note:
One may not trust me with my bad prior history of rare, mild exaggeration of things, but I swear this is true.

Observed absurdity

Ok, here's a pet peeve I've been petting for a while.

Scene:

A meeting at work where the conference line is open.

Seen:

Admist heavy discussion whether it would rain heavily this weekend or would it be sunny.. Oops that was going on in my mind. I waver every time we have a meeting and I can't get enough from 8 people repeating the same thing 8 times. Well, I mean I waver every time we have a meeting.

Well the actual discussion was about "should we update something in one place or update something in both places". That's not important here. When someone says something seemingly important, the caller on the conference call goes "I can't hear you, can you speak up please?" and at least one person sitting by the phone relentlessly INCREASES THE PHONE VOLUME
ON OUR END".

I just don't get it. What does the person increasing the volume think in his head??

"I can't hear you"
(Increasing the volume) "Well, we can hear you, and now we'll hear you better now."

"I can't hear you"
(Increasing the volume) "Oh here we go, pushing up the phone volume increases the vocal chord pitch of every one in this room, how cool"

"I can't hear you"
(Increasing the volume) "Too bad for you, now at least you can hear yourself louder"

"I can't hear you"
(Increasing the volume) "Oh let me do a magic"

I am not kidding, I have observed this absurdity at least 11 times by 11 different people. Common sense like they say, is so uncommon!

Dude, wheres my car tags?

I am a practical guy. I am a funny guy. (This claim comes from the opposite gender treating this as a #1 quality in guys. Not good guy, not a teetotaler guy, but ya, funny guy. I was late to know that, not too late to evolve funniness in me) That gives me a lot of opportunity for practical jokes.





Alright, this was a few weeks ago. Had a busy day at work, I was listening to music and staring at the computer like I do every single day. My roomie, Mr. S shows up and goes "Why are your number plates on your bed?". Well thats a quality, more like a virtue, imbibed by years of religious ignoring of my dad's advise, warnings and orders to "keep things where they are supposed to be". Can't believe he used to say that. The world would be so boring, so predictable. Ridiculously ideal. No need to search for anything, no Google, no GMail, imagine??

Anyway, I tell him "Didn't you see the apartment notice near the mailbox?"
"What notice?"

"There was a notice for the residents. Yesterday someone stole the licence plates off 20 something cars"
Puzzled, "Wwwwwwhat??"

"You didn't glance at the other cars when you got off, did you? Everyone's walking around with number plates in their hand."
"No, I didn't notice"

"Hmmm, yes, so until they respond to this incedent by putting security into the apartment they advise us to remove the number plates and take it with us"
"Are they crazy? Who an earth will remove the licence plate when we get off the car? It's not the key to bring it with us when you get off.. Wait a minute, you are kidding, right"

"What kidding, they aren't kidding. They even quoted a clause from the lease by which the management is not responsibile for your car while parked in the apartment premises"
"What lease? What crap? These people are crazy I'm telling you. I am going to sue them. This place is hell."

"Well I took my tags off. You might want to take yours off, you don't want to be stranded tomorrow morning"
"Are you telling me I got to screw and unscrew every time I want to use my car, this is ridiculous"

"Up to you"
"Let me go and read the damn notice. How dare they..#^$%&@" mumbling and fading away as he walks downstairs.
Me goes ROTFL. I couldn't believe this guy buys my stories. Could not guess I changed my licence place from my moving from MD to VA.
Oh he's back from a quick fun trip to the mailbox "Damn it. Idiot. #$&*@^$&#"

50 paise presents Laddoo Shop

Oh I'm falling in love with this video. I think the venue of this shoot from the Patel Bros at College Park. This is probably a DC Desi team !!!

Beauty "lies" in the eyes of the beholder

Thanks to people who forward crap. And stuff like these.

Machi machi too muchi!

Two kinds of people will benefit from this post.

1. Thamizh pesum nallulagam - "Tamil speaking fellas" will reassure themselves of their innate potential to tolerate the mass destruction and gang raping of every Newton's, Pascal's and Rascal's law by mass media. In the name of cinema. You identify and relate to the hero code-named "Captain". Seen that, been through that, but its never enough. Watch it one more time and get enthralled.

Be Proud.

2. Folks who have no clue what I am talking about. You never know what you have been missing all your life and previous births. Man, you just got to see it to believe it. Three never-before-never-after historic clips of our Captain's original talent have been hand-picked for your own viewing pleasure. Our own reply to Star Wars, Matrix and Spiderman put together. Presenting the best of "Captain" Vijayakanth for your viewing pleasure. With subtitles for global outreach. Fasten your seat belts.

Be Baffled.

Bonus material for Orkuters:
Includes kadhai, thiraikkadhai and vasanam in Thamizh for Captain's new movie ideas.
http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=736207&tid=5531050
http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=736207&tid=10324066

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#2


#3

Hello this is Chad Chowdary, how may I help you?

Friday night, all of your friends are out partying either becuase they are plain lucky or because you just suck. No one home, TV just does'nt do it tonight. What do you do? I don't know what you'd do but this is what I'd do. Call any damn Customer Service after 9 EST and if your insurance provider, cellphone operator, plumber or the cleaning lady is smart enough, the call will be directed to a few continents away. Hamara India.

Time to pick on our call center friends.

If you get serviced by the right guy or girl, you got free entertainment. Keep some stock of popcorn, pop and pizza. How often can you call your family and friends paying 12.9 freaking cents per minute? (0r 6.9 cents per minute for one way conversations) Here you talk to someone in India not necessarily family, but hey! make friends dude!

Ok, I don't do that every Friday night, but I could. This post is dedicated to this guy who I am holding on right now and many others whose primary aim in life is to entertain me from thousands of miles away. As it happens, this is a genuine call to straighten some of my car insurance stuff, but waiting till 9 EST was quite some match-fixing effort.

Some of the salient entertainment features of this call: (This salient word was such a doh! every exam had it and I just hated it)

1. I was placed on hold the first time so he can do some "research" on my policy information. That research took a while, here I am chatting, thinking and fishing for million dollar ideas and getting more hungry, I only hope his research went on well and he got his PhD degree out of that.

2. He came back to me and asked me the same questions he did when I first called. I perfectly understand that he had to make sure I was not drunk since I last spoke to him, sober, could recite the alphabet, recide poems and capable of giving the same responses each time I was questioned under scary and extenuating circumstances.

3. It made no difference to him that I had a Honda Civic. He just kept referring to it as Honda City all along. I am sure that was premeditated to make me feel 'at home on Indian roads'. It made me feeling like I was honked at from all directions.

4. After one of those "can I put you on hold so I can discuss this policy with my superior" (the closest I could think of is supervisor) expeditions, he came back and said "I have good news, Sir"and reported that the policy amount actually went up. Since when did money become a bad thing? You can start to feel happy when they rip you off.

5. There was this one problem he could not help me out with. He says he will give me a call tomorrow to discuss the same and asks for my number and best time to reach me. While he was at it, I'd so much appreciate if he can conference call my mom. I'll try asking him tomorrow.

It used to surprise me why they use American names and fake accent while we have our Indian signature underlined and bolded in our accents. Nowadays you hear the Indian names itself, Chowdary talks to you instead of Chad, Navneeta instead of Nate. Quite a relief. Think about it, we learnt English from the British, we do business with Americans, but we invented our own Indian English and stuck to it. Pretty cool.

This post is meant to be taken in the lighter sense only, no harm meant to anyone. If you still feel you have been hurt, just get over it, truth hurts ;)

What's so Bunsen about the burner?

I was going over this article about UML and RUP and principles and methodologies and processes (Ok, ok, for non-technocrats with no prior Dilbert exposure: this is supposed to be the tactic by which I impress upon my mundane, 'any damn guy can do' job.. don't tell the any damn guy, I could use lesser competition.. by the way 3 letter acronyms are becoming less popular and less techie, need to invent and use more 4, 5 and 6 lettered ones until they sound like words themselves).

I was presented with a cartoon that shows how different 'stuff' reacting together to produce new 'stuff' (non-technocrats, here is the part where you stand up and appreciate my stepping down the elite geekiness). They used a chemistry lab depiction where this A+B+C -> D happens. And the reaction was sponsored by our own, the one and only Bunsen burner. (I had to squeeze through the nine years of chemistry I forced into myself to remember this Bunsen guy.) This post is not aimed at avenging Bunsen for the two points I lost because I could not remember his stupid name. And no, he was not the only one who contributed to my hatred to Chemistry. He was just one and I have reasons slam him today.

So I ask myself, whats so Bunsen about the burner?

Some guy was creative, insightful and thoughtful enough to prove for the first time that a burner that you use for other everyday essential activities like melting used plastic pens, lighting cigarettes, scaring pets away, heating up the chair before the teacher sits on it, etc. could also find use in a chemistry lab. Good job! Great!! Thanks!!! But people, get over it. That didn't even deserve calling it the Bunsen burner for like an hour. Or all of Bunsen's life. And by no means we should address the burner like that forever into the future. That makes me so wild. Here we are technologically unchallenged, with the invention of CD burner, DVD burner and the Dual DVD burner and still who wins hands down? Bunsen Burner! Damn it! Lucky B#$^@%. I mean, lucky Bunsen!

I would be so damn pissed if I were Edison. Freaking people, after spending the whole of my life inventing light and discovering other things which no can ever see - like the electrons (thats the beauty, met anyone who questions the very existence of electrons?). And you people honor Bunsen. All I get is a city in NJ where Indians spit at my invention in every direction. How are we to convince Edison that we don't mean to tranish his image, all we are trying to do is to preserve our heritage.

Oh Man, thanks to Wikipedia, I found this article that adds fuel to the fire. Or Bunsen fuel to the Bunsen fire.

Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (31 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He perfected the burner that was named after him, invented by British chemist/physicist Michael Faraday, and worked on emission spectroscopy of heated elements.

So technically this guy did not even invent the burner in the first place, all he did was "perfect" Faraday's burner. There are no references in the article about the killing of a German chemist by a British chemist) A stitch in time could make history. Faraday Burner could potentially become the Bunsen burner. This Bunsen guy sure had phonetic advantage. May be Faraday should have tried Faraday Funnel or something. Oh, he did do something! He probably got mighty pissed when Bunsen stole the lamp, wiped it clean, painted and wrote the word Bunsen on it (read as "perfected"). In his own capacity, he earnt credit for the unit of capacitance, the Farad.

Well, after all, this Bunsen guy had something. For people like me, who cannot find the time to invent stuff admidst several social and antisocial commitments, this guy is a true inspiration. I am on the look out to find something I could perfect. And the world shall gloriously have its own Sri range of products:

Sri Satellite, Sri Sky, Sri Shoelace.. What's the S word? Any suggestions?

Its so true, necessity is the mother of invention!

There are two kinds of people in this world

Ok, theres something with the recent Hindi movies I saw:

Bunti Aur Babli
"There are two kinds of people in this world, those who lead and those who follow. I am of the first kind."

Rang De Basanti
"There are two kinds of people in this world, those who die screaming, those who die calm. And theres the third kind."

My Story
"There are two kinds of people in this world, those who buy shirts that fit them, and those who buy shirts that they want to fit them. I am the second kind, so there is a shirt I bought, and to fit into it, I need to get fit. Fits my plans!"

The plan A is,
in 6 months I would get into the shirt more easily it without stretching the the hell out of the buttons

Oh theres always Plan B!!
in 6 months, at the least get into the shirt without breaking the buttons.

This is the latest resolution - to lose some pounds I could afford to lose without having to give self incriminating disclosures like these:

Ms. P: I weigh about 100 pounds. I've been like this for 10 years.
Me: (Damn it! Now stop making me feel bad and skip lunch. And overeat dinner)
Ms. P: Shri, whats your weight?
Me: (Ouch!!. How do I escape this conversation?? This has got to stop!)
"Somewhere between 100 and 200"

Girls, if age is just a number, so is weight!

Worst pickup line.... like ever

It was mine. :D

Back in 1992. "So, you take French?"

For God's sake it was only on the phone, so technically I could take advantage of the fact thay she had never seen me! (That IS an advantage, believe me! Whenever I fell in love at first sight, the girl would yell at first sight ;) ) Hmmm..... So that was my line - "So, you take French?" And she replied "Yes." And then, doh! it never went anywhere.

After religiously enquiring about all the other courses she could have possibly taken, and passing a few desperate moments in absolute weirdness, I hung up. She hung up.

However it was my first pickup line, and of course, I did not pickup anything! I dropped some things though.. like my self-respect, the chick magnet image that I managed to build within myself ignoring all laws of nature and common sense. As you can tell, most of my crushes and deep loves were one-sided and short-lived.

My misfortune had to do with me. And my screwed up schooling in a boys' school. Ok, I had no choice there. I'd rather blame it on fate.

There were several other things in life that I myself voluntarily messed up. Since my schooling was spoilt (I wasn't, thanks to the stupid freaking school again) I did not have anything useful or useless to do and resorted to studying. I ended up with a decent score that gave me the luxury of choosing a school I wanted (not ANY school I wanted, IITs, Anna University and the the like got filled like months before my turn came) And that is when I screwed up again. Grave, grave, grave. Chose Mechanical Engineering. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, as if I was born to invent some creepy engine tha will run on water or something. Damn It. Even God won't pardon me for that.

That was Boys II of my life. (Since it involved a lot of 'man'ual labor, it is very uncommon in India for girls to take Mechanical) Not a single girl in my class. I am not saying there were no single girls, there were NO GIRLS. All through my four years of undergrad, ALL my senior classes had samples of womankind, ALL my junior classes had some representation of girls. So I was a loser all along, teaming up with a bunch of other losers who claimed that we wouldn't see girls anyways, since we didn't trust girls, girls were a waste of time, girls were mean and any other false propoganda we could think of to defend our weakness with the weaker sex.

Thats a lot of cribbing. Anyways I have evolved as a better stud after those days, got better towards the final year... On Valentine's Day, I cut out hearts and distributed them to the good looking girls (its very hard to use plural here, but anything for my dear college girls), used the hollow heart shapes to give broken hearts to the not-so-goodlooking ones. And forced a foot long rose to a junior girl, etcetera, etcetera.

During my masters I did a lot better, cut off all my guy friends and strictly spoke to girls. So now I have better pickup and keepup lines but still ain't happening, may be its not just the lines.

Dhanalachumi, Velu and Muthupandi in Titanic.

This is a freaking hilarious version of Titanic in Tamil.

What do you think this is?

What comes to your mind when you first see this?
I thought it was a laundromat

It happens to be the <<hard disk>> of yester-generation!

Interesting composition of <<hard disk>> evolution over the decades with pics on CNet.

Call Centers in India - Pretty funny!

As seen on NBC.

This one is was kinda whacky! See if you like it.

The dude on the pic asks if he can bring his PC to the customer service to fix his popup ads. And she says shes in India!! And whohooo, hes flying to India. To meet "Sharon". Theyv'e mocked at us Indians big time, but pretty well ;) We can always retaliate with our own Russel Peters.

YouTube is one place where 1000s of amateur videos are getting housed. "Hey, I uploaded the wedding video" age is coming soon!

Dog'ku vandha vaazhvu.

Bumped (literrally) into this mobile pet salon! US la dogku vandha vazhvu!

Its amazing how royally pets are treated in the US. They share the car, they share the bed, now they could get a shower and soaped on-a-call.

This dude is hilarious as hell.

Some people are uncanny. You got to read this.

I wanna hold your hand... NOT!

He crafts an amusing screenplay from a one line story / fact / news.
Funny guy.

Find your life partner - Sponsored by MSN.

If only life was so easy!!!

Get up now: Dorky clocky

Another invention out of the MIT labs!.

Kinda stoopid, kinda clever. Kinda cool, kinda hot!
Kinda boon, kinda curse.

This alarm clock buzzes in the morning. You better get up. If you snooze it, it loses it. The internal motor of this wierd looking creature triggers random direction and distance functions and keeps rolling until it hides in some random corner - while annoying you with a "Get out of bed" voice. So you have to actually move your ___ to look for this creature around the room while the peace and luxury of sleep swiftly bids adieu.

So you lose sleep. You pay for it. This invention is coming soon to your neighbouring stores. For 30$.

For more, www.clocky.net. Was featured in Discovery Channel a while ago, very interesting.

Check this exercise out!

1. Go to Google.
2. Type in the word "failure"
3. Click "I'm feeling lucky" (to pull up the first search result)

:)
Thanks Varun

Kids are Kids!

Stolen from Sangeetha

Kids are so funny. Just when you think nothing they say can surprise you
anymore something like this comes along and says, “Think again!” Sometimes I am
amazed at the things they come up with.
Last week I was walking down the stairs with this teacher who is in the family way.

A chubby cherub walked up to us and asked the teacher: What is the matter teacher? Your stomach seems to be growing everyday!

Teacher: (squirming uncomfortably) Err... God put a baby in my
stomach.

Girl: (nodding her head wisely) Oh! So you are reproducing…
We really had to exercise super control over our facial muscles on this one!

Walking Posters

I caught this one in New York City, two advertisement channels engaged in a conversation!