My Take On....

Life @ Ghost House... Well it's been almost a month since I've moved into my new apartment... the 'Ghost House' as we call it... why is it called the Ghost House??... simple... because there's a ghost in the house!!!... (or at least my roomies think so!)... so now it's living with a bunch of roomies, four to be precise... so there's the waiting-in-line-to-get-into-the-shower, finding your stuff mixed up, waiting for weeks and weeks till all of your roomies go home and your chick can 'pay you a little visit', and blah blahs...

Reel life n Real life... I was watching this movie recently in which there's this chick who's got Parkinson's and she's in love with this guy, who's got nothing... I meant, no diseases... and then they break up... and she finds another guy, and he wishes she were back... and then he talks to her, and then there's the female's tears of joy and BAM!! they're back together... daim!!!... it always happens... the couple break up... the female finds another guy, who's far too better (and richer with a much better job, in most cases) than the previous guy... and then one fine day, the previous guy shows up, and BAM!! they're back together!!!!............ DAIM!!!!....

Cars n Gals... I just figured out recently that cars and girls give you the same feeling (well, almost)... a new chick is like your new car... and the old hag you're trying to dump is like... well... your old car!... think about it... you drive around in the same car for a year or two... you start thinking that it's the most perfect car you can have... so far, there have been no glitches.... everything's been real smooth... and then one fine day, you get your new car, which may not be as grand and expensive as your old one... though there might be some features (that were present in your old car) missing in the new one, you still won't mind... just because it's a new car, and you can't hate it... and then one fine day, the car breaks down... and then, you curse it... you realize how much better your old car was... and you begin wishing you had your old car back... well, a car once gone, is gone for good... and.... uhmmmm.... ok next.... (I am so good at talking rubbish, ain't I??... I wish there were awards for rubbish bloggers!!!...)

Being Obsessed with Obsessions... I've always had some sort of obsessions throughout my life... when I was really young (we're talking one-n-a-half decades ago), I was really obsessed about studying... I know it's a really stupid thing to be obsessed about, but then, those were my days of stupidity... when I grew a little older (like a decade ago), I was obsessed about counting the number of manholes I came across when I walked on the roads (no, it's not a very disgusting thing to do... Muscat's manholes aren't half as stinky as India's!!...)... then in college, I was obsessed with my pictures... my phone had one of my pictures as its wallpaper... my PC had a tiled wallpaper of my picture... the chick would keep saying 'Dude, are you obsessed with yourself?!'... sigh... those were my Days of Stupidity Part-II... and then after the chick left, I became obsessed about serial killers... so much that I'd almost created an entire website on my collection of serial killers from the past century... well, my point here is... is... isssssss.... uhmmmm.... what could my point here be??.... hmmm... that everyone's got a secret obsession???... yess!!... precisely my point!!!... everyone's got a secret obsession!!!... some people are obsessed about Facebook, some are about new clothes, while others may be about Transformers toys, while still others may be about screwing other people's lives, or even reading senseless, mindless blogs!!!!... I would call all of that obsessions!!!.... oh... all you pathetic obsessed people!!!.... I take pity on you!!!...

Passengers n music... My taste in music has never been particularly appreciated by anyone... they always hate the music I love to listen to... but recently, I gave this colleague of mine a ride in my car... as usual, my 'favorite' playlist was playing.... but instead of asking me to change the music, this guy was totally enjoying the music... he even started showing hand gestures in appreciation... I was left totally clueless... to find out what was going on, I changed the music to songs which are universally hated by everyone... and then, surprises of surprises, this guy started headbanging!!!... my insides were aching because I was holding on to my laughter... and then, this guy got down at his place, and the fun was all over...

Hating kids... There has always been a reason why I've hated kids... though I haven't been able to find a core reason for doing so, I have a multitude of tiny tiny reasons... here's one... today's Saturday... the kids downstairs have been playing cricket for the past four hours... and guess what they've been using as their wicket... my car!!!!... I have half a mind to pick up a shotgun and go BAM! BAM! BAM! (oh, that's a lot BAM's in this post!!!... this post's getting way too violent... you better be above 18 years old if you're reading this one!!!....)... totally pissing off... I just crashed my car today and.... speaking of which!!!....

My car losing its virginity... Yes... though it's had a few bumps a couple of times before, this is the first major crash... so it's the official loss of its virginity... I was running a red signal, and BAM!!!... (again!) I crashed into an autorickshaw... since I was at fault, all I could do was speed off... and now, there's a crack in the side view mirror... I guess the car will have to live with it for as long as it stays with me!....

Indians... Now these are some people who need to get themselves a good mirror and look into it closely (well, I'm talking metaphorically of course... those who can figure it out, go figure!)...

Ok, this is not really a part of this post, but... Chowder was down in Cochin couple of weekends back... was a big change to have an ISMer here... it always is a big change having an ISMer home... anyways, this time round, we were off to Vagamon... was a pretty good place... so good that we think it would make a good and cheap replacement for Munnaar... I have few pics on my phone, but due to some technical snitches I am not able to upload them... so, I guess I'm done for now... but before I leave, let me remind you... it's 'Studying Bells' for me... we might have a second chapter of Chennai in our hands... keeping my fingers crossed.... ciao!

July - Over and Out!

So finally July is drawing to a grand close as well!!... right from the month of April, i've been hoping that the following month would be interesting... and this time too, i'm hoping for the same... this month has been quiet an eventful month though... firstly, the FIFA WC is finally over... and with that, at least 30 of my 200-something friends on Facebook have nothing more to talk about for the next four years!!... no more of the infamous OctoPaul or the 'listen-to-it-more-than-5times-n-ur-sure-to-get-irritated' Waka Waka (i hate to admit it, but my alarm tone is the 'Waka Waka'... my policy is that irritating music in the morning tends to wake you up much faster)... i had supported many teams this time round, and watched them fall one by one as well... Italy, England, Brazil... all of them... and finally, the Oranje... Now that the Commonwealth Games are coming up, i hope the indians don't come up with the indian version of OctoPaul to predict who's going to win what medal!!...

Then, there was the Editorial day out at The Park last week... the only thing that amused me during the entire course of the event was the menu... i wasn't really doing a good job of holding myself back from cracking up when i saw 'Chowder' listed under the soup section... Chowder and soups... haha!!!...

Has it ever occurred to you that Gmail constantly monitors your mails??!!!... yes, they do!!!... that's what i think... there was this instance when my colleague sent me an article about Viagra for editing (i work in a health mag... we come across a lot of such stuff very often...)... and then, for the next few days, i constantly began getting advertisements regarding Viagra brands!!... anyways, off late, Gmail has been monitoring all my 'flirtatious' moves and has now begun sending me marriage proposals from girls across the country... yeah, on an average, i receive about 3-4 proposals in a day!!...

There used to be a time when back in school, sometime around the tenth or eleventh grade, almost 70% of the people in my school were die-hard fans of Linkin Park...  i have no idea why... i used to like Limp Bizkit more... again, i have no idea why!... i guess i was just sick of the way the guys @ Linkin Park act cooler than they are supposed to be... Mike Shinoda the 'Sober Guy'... Chester the 'Genius who can Scream'... the turntable guy who was the 'Asian Dumb Vegetable' (talking about Asians... i was talking to my friend who recently migrated to the UK... and i asked him whether he'd made any indian friends yet... and he replied saying that he was yet to make indian friends, but had already made quiet a lot of Asian friends... i've always wondered why non-Asians consider only people with slanting eyes as Asians... we indians are Asians too, damnit!)... and while we're at it, here's a video for all you Linkin Park fans out there!!!.... yenjaayyy!!...



and... here's another one!!!... lol...



Sheeeeesh!... that's it for now... August is coming up... a lot to look forward to... i hope i get lucky this month... my luck and intelligence have always been two quantities that are inversely proportional to each other... right now, at this point of time, my intelligence levels are at a decent high, which is why i am going through a bad patch, thanks to my bad luck... thus, the least i can say is, i'm hoping i get back to being stupid again pretty soon!!!... lol... ciao!!!...

Oh... and amidst all the excitement, i managed to bump in to Mr. Sunny Thomas as well... seeing him brought back all the memories of all the "hunndra parcent suare" questions that we used to have in our math papers!... ciao again!...

The Great Indian Bargain

Two reasons why the Indian sales department will never do well enough...
1> the 'take-it-or-leave-it' attitude...
2> creating special offers that never encourages a customer to come back...

Something that has always ('always' not as in throughout my life… hmmm… but yeah… somewhat close to that…) left me wondering is whether the Indian salesmen are the best, or the worst, in the world… now, salesman could be anybody… the guy at the car sales showroom… the guy serving you chicken at KFC (grrrr…)… or even the milkman who leaves a pack of milk outside your doorstep everyday (in India!)… they know it… we don’t… all Indian customers are stupid… no matter how much they manage to bargain and how much they know about the product… sales outlets come up with offers like ‘Buy 2 Get 1 Free’ or ‘Win a Trip to (blah blah)’ or ‘50% off’ and the customer gets easily suckered in… the offers look very attractive and decent on the outside… but a deeper look into it would reveal the cheap and dark side of the ‘offer’… think about it… you shop for 5000 bucks’ worth and then ask about the free trip to Sri Lanka, they tell you the offer is valid only on Tuesdays… you get into an Adidas showroom which offers you a 50% discount, but you can’t find a single item which comes with a 50% discount simply because they are short on stock of items which actually have the discount on them… the fault lies with the Indian customer… the ‘we-came-all-the-way-now-we-gotta-buy-something’ attitude… unless we learn to walk out of the store, if we don’t find what we’re looking for, things are never going to improve…

Bet you’re wondering why the utterly senseless post, out of the blue (??)!!! (not that all my other posts made much sense, but still…)… yep!... I got punk’d too!... as recently as yesterday… I was having a dull day (certainly not the first instance)… and was a little under the weather… weirdly, I felt having some chicken might make me feel better… and off I went to ChicKing… one of the many local equivalents of KFC… since I’d got an e-mail about the ‘offer’ two days back, I was very sure about what I wanted to buy… it was the ‘FIFA offer’ (FIFA offer… like duh!... in a country whose football team has never even qualified for the qualifiers!! (or have they??)… and that too in a state from where a certain ‘mentally challenged’ cricketer is the only person to make it to an international sports arena!)… you buy two wraps and you get two mini-burgers free… (perhaps I missed the ‘oh-here’s-another-FIFA-offer-dumass’ smirk on the face of the guy at the reception)… it was only when I reached home and opened my package that I realized the horrors of horrors!... the wrap was barely thicker than my middle finger… the burger was worse… at a distance of about 15cm, the brown-colored fillet seemed non-existent, and the brown color that I saw here and there made me think it was because the lettuce was wilting!!... sigh… yet another stupid Indian customer… sometimes I do think that Russell Peters was perhaps right (though I still maintain that he’s a ree-tarrrd) when he called Indians ‘Cheap Stinkin’ Bastards’…..

PS: for those who missed it, I've uploaded the Munnar video in the previous blog... since both Chowder and me have the reputation of not having a 'crystal-clear' speech, I've added subtitles as well!!!... how caring of me!!...

The Two Big R's

I guess by now we are familiar with the only two big R's that have any significance in this blog - Road trip and Random thoughts (!!!)...

Yep... road trip...  with Chowder...
My friendship with Chowder goes a long way back... close to fifteen years... back in the days when he was called Prijo... the days when we made the television for our annual science exhibition in the fifth grade, and watched the TV getting flung across the class (by Leena Rajiv, our social science teacher) two days before the exhibition!... sigh... those were some days...




Anyways, off we were.. to Munnar... in Chowder's brand new Fortuner...

The drive up was quiet steep, with Chowder expertly maneuvering the vehicle...

it does get pretty tiring after a while, one wrong move and you could end up falling off the cliff and tumbling down the hill (just as Ajo 'predicted')...

once we reached the top...

we went for a little mountain climbing...

...and then we got back to the hotel, and set about doing what we are good at!...

The weather was quiet pleasant... though it wasn't really good... guess Munnar isn't the right place to visit at this time of the year... but surprisingly, I began shivering at night... the temperature: 18 degrees!!!... i guess i'm getting a little too used to the average 40 degrees temperature, that anything below 20 degrees has the capability to freeze my ass!!!...

That's pretty much about it about the road trip... my ability to describe events has begun wearing off... that's why i don't remember much... and it's been ten days anyways!...






Now comes my favorite part of the blog!!!... the Random Stuff!!!... i love this section because whatever i write in here doesn't necessarily have to make any sense!... the name itself implies it's senseless!... bah...

• the other day i was talking to Ajo... oh i talk to him everyday!!... (we are that deprived of 'work and company'... or let me rephrase it... 'enjoyable work and enjoyable company'...)... and now, if talking to him at night weren't enough, he calls me during lunch as well!... he was telling me about his roommate... named 'Dhanpal' (which did get a certain close friend of ours very excited till Ajo began regretting telling the name!)... we were discussing the mindset of Tamil parents when they go in to name their kids... stark examples: Karuppusamy, Neil Armstrong (yeah!.. that was the name of a professor in my college!), Lingasamy and so on... but the name that did get us thinking was "Kuppasamy"... hell! that's equivalent to naming your kid "Shitlord"!!!... how cool is that?????!!!!!.... what do these people call their children at home??... "Kuppa" (Garbage!!!)????????.....

• on a weekend i was traveling from Trivandrum to Cochin... and there was this guy sitting next to me, who apparently had a very very strong head, literally!... the guy was sleeping the entire time, with his head resting on the bar behind the seat in front... every three minutes, due to inertia (bah! scientific ol' me!) he would slowly move backwards (in his sleep), and then, (due to Newton's some law of force/motion... ok ok... i'm not that smart!) he would come back to the bar with full force and.... THUDDDDDDD/CRUNCHCHCHCHCHCHHHHHHHHH!.... his head would crash on the bar... every time he did that, i expected his head to crack open, and his brain to start leaking out (due to some pre-conception, i consider the brain to be made of a slimey semi-solid material... such that, if a hole is made in the head, it would start leaking out)... but it didn't!!!... it did remind me of my own college days!!... back in those days, if i sat in a particular spot for more than two minutes, i'd immediately fall asleep (except at nights... when i could stay awake for all i wanted)... so the same used to happen in college buses as well... i used to fall asleep... and every three minutes, i'd be briefly woken up by a skull-cracking THUD (caused by my own head hitting against the bar)... perhaps that did contribute a little to my becoming retarded!... :P

• oh... another bus story.... again i was traveling from Trivandrum to Cochin (guess that's pretty much the only traveling i do these days!)... and i came across this lab, that tests your, errr, stuff... and right outside the lab, a board read, in bold, 

               "********** LABORATORY
                  WE TEST YOUR PHLEGM, STOOL, URINE, BLOOD"
  
i thought that was really, really gross to write something like that in a public place... won't people understand if they just mentioned that it were a testing lab????!!!!!!.......

anyways... i'm off for now... got a few good things lined up for me to happen... if those things don't happen, boy, "somebody gonna get a-hurt real bad!".... ciao!....

28 Days

"And then I saw Him, face to face... I could almost hear Him breathe... He looked at me, right in the eye... oh, the darkness!... and then a flash of bright light... twin sources... like the eyes of a monster... snapping me back to reality..."

***

Woooo.... zhoooop!.... that's how Feb has gone by!... a lot of travelling... some 'chilling'... of course the most notable was the trip to Wayanad... a learning experience indeed! ("learning" i might say!)...apart from earning the tag of "Last Minute Freak", there was the pleasure of chilling with the Adivasis (:P)!!... hmmm.... Last Minute Freak does remind me of my Pondicherry trip with Chowder... was in my second year of college, i think... yeah... i recollect Chowder waiting outside my pink house... i'd just returned from college... "Dude, pack up.. we're goin' Pondy" was all Chowder could afford to say... i packed up, we left, we reached Pondy... only to realise that it was Shivratri or some other "ratri", and that all liquor shops were closed!!!... and what's more... we didn't have enough money with us to stay in a room!... we ended up sleeping on the beach!... talk about LFMs!!!...

There!!!... that's us!... our small Pondy entourage... that's me on the extreme left... sigh... those days i used to look pretty younger and less doped than any of my friends!... take a look at the remaining five dopes!!... oh the 'uncle' on the extreme right is Chowder! (hope Chowder isn't reading this!)...

Then, of course, there was the meetup with Abhi... at Sandunes (where i happened to meet my blog's biggest fan [ :P ] and also where i made friends with my school's headgirl... (of course, not the present one! the gurl who was the HEADgirl from our batch) )... i have no idea why, but this pic (as plain as this!) did seem to stir up a lot of literary ideas,on Facebook, from a couple of great minds, including mine!... ah but it's Facebook... hell, i'm beginning to find FB annoying!... first, it's the whole 'fan' thing... you can become a fan of just anything under the sun... open the newspaper, in some corner there'll be "Become a Fan on Facebook"... open any site, in some corner there'll be "Become a Fan on Facebook"... ha!... then there's this new thing in which our 'friends' answer questions about us... and to view what their answer was, you have to answer a zillion questions about the 200 or 300 odd friends in your friend list!!!... how so very "not-annoying"!!!

33 degrees!!!.... that's how hot Cochin is at the moment... sometimes i wonder whether Chennai was hotter, or is Cochin the hotter one... tough one! i wish i had one of those pyjamas those foreign tourists wear... those real baggy ones... almost look like skirts... those are definitely Indian, but i wonder why we don't see Indians wearing them!... sighhhhhhhhhh... will it ever snow here???!!!... why can't there be Global Freezing, instead of Warming??... the whole place white... that's be pretty... ever wondered what an Apple accessories manufacturing unit might look like?? (the company that makes the iPods.... not the fruit!!!)... everything'd be white... white men... white jumpsuits... white gloves... white helmets... white walls... white machines... even the products they manufacture are white!!... ewwww... that'd get real blinding!!...

ah... then there was the drive from Calicut... almost lost my life there!... luckily the bus driver decided not to run over our car and disturb my sleep!!... sigh... lucky me...

ah goda sleep... work tomorrow... sigh.... this is when i miss my college the most... i could stay up till whatever time i wanted, and if i were sleepy the next morning, i could just miss college and go to sleep... i wasn't getting paid for going to college!!... ahhhhh..... sighhhh.... hhhhhhmmmmm.... the system needs a change... for sure.... ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...................

Trip 2 Chowdy's

phew!!!!... i'm back from a very much needed trip.... a trip to reinvent myself....
and who better than chowdy aka chowallax aka choxxx!!!!.... ha!!!.... apart from the fact that the guy looks significantly much older, he's still in the league!!!!.... apart from the trip there were couple of "trips" too!!!!.... know what i mean right?.... there... that's chowdy for you on the right......


apart from that, the whole trip was kinda jinxed.... getting caught in the middle of the night by cops and narrowly escaping.... the heavy rains.... and the biggest of all, the car's tyre getting blown right in the middle of nowhere!!!..... the threading simply fell out of the wheel!!!!... how cool is that???!!!!









and then chowdy had to change the wheel...




by then we had had enough and decided that the roadtrip was not meant for people like us and headed straight back home, and got back to doing what we're good at!!!!.... lol!!!.... oh.... another highlight of the trip, i had buffalo intestines!!!!.....

yummmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!