Racism on the internet

Ever wondered why many websites ask you enter random gibberish when you're trying to do something in a hurry? Blogspot itself is guilty of this. Want to read a post in a hurry and comment on it before the boss notices, sorry buddy; you've got to type "Ima-nid-iot" before your comment gets posted. Which in itself is forgivable since it protects the site from the scourge called spam. What makes it all the more difficult is the way the letters are scribbled and arrogantly lie sprawled across the screen at impossible angles. If your boss can't find out you're blogging from what's displayed on your screen, then the way you twist your face and hang upside down from the ceiling just to read the blasted code surely will give your game away.

I call it the monkey check, since you look like a monkey trying to read the code.

I only found out a few months ago that the monkey check was designed to deter spammers, until then I simply thought that was a cruel joke being played out on netizens by web designers. As spammers got more innovative, the text had to be more and more squiggly and unreadable. If a human struggles to read it, a computer sure as hell can't seemed to be the prevalent logic across board rooms the world over. I suppose the next step in anti-spam security would be to print out your comment, sign and date it, go to a designated building and hand it over to another human being who will scan the document and email it to another designated human being who would print the text out and get yet another human being to deliver it to the human being who posted the original blog on which the comment has been given. Wait a minute... isn't that called the postal system? The very system the internet is threatening to replace? I wonder if we are taking steps backwards here...

Without getting into the rather complex argument on backward steps, I should probably leave it to said occupants of board rooms to decide how to fight spam. The purpose of this post is different. It is to expose the true intent of this so called anti-spam check.

Like all other inconveniences, I often have a stiff upper lip when it comes to gripes and comply without complaining. I resigned to my fate and went about my fate squinting and groaning all the way. This morning, something pushed me realise the true intent of this check - racism. Allow me to explain.

I was, as usual, sneaking a peak at the good friend's rants on the Indian prison system and wanted to offer my 2 cents worth. I typed in a long winded comment and jubilantly hit publish, only to be confronted with this:

I thought, of course I'm a human you stupid computer, tell me which other animal can type so many words and click on publish and imagine what a coincidence it would be if the words mostly made sense! Never before have I actually been confronted with the truth on why the gibberish is to be entered, it took me completely off guard. And then the real truth stared me in the face - this check was born out of racist tendencies of humans. The designers of the internet wanted to future proof the internet so that only humans can comment on blogs and create email ids. Non-humans, i.e., animals and aliens, would not be allowed to benefit from the internet since this check is only for humans. I am ashamed and shocked! Innocent users, including myself, have unwittingly become accessories to this cruelty.

Having been scorned, I did what any human would do under the circumstances; I posted a blog about it and now more people can become monkeys to prove they are human!

P.S.: Should you want to post a comment, please enter the following text (and the text blogspot asks you enter):

De ja vu....no, this has nothing to do with Paris!

The news hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd seen this happen before a couple of years ago. Back then I wasn't worried for I was constantly around him and could see my 'touches' in a lot of his pranks, arguments and the way he wound my sister up like a tightly strung guitar. It all brought back some strong memories. Memories of my mother's strong hand to be precise. It was all very amusing and even a little helpful, for I could bust him just when he wasn't expecting it and in ways he hadn't thought of, for I had the benefit of hindsight and knew exactly what I, as a budding teenager would have overlooked.

I also knew that the moment I moved out of Dubai, my influence on him would diminish to some extent and he would go on to become a good boy and all would be peachy. The call from my sister proved me wrong.

I moved out of Dubai a few days into 2008. So, I haven't been around the fellow for a quarter under 2 years. He's only met me at my engagement and wedding subsequently. The import of that call from my sister was that he has begun eating thayir sadam exactly the way I do, almost 2 years later! I was, understandably shaken, but not stirred. I was secretly thrilled that my lineage will continue, that my eccentricities will continue to live on. Until last night. Now I can be openly thrilled!

Allow me to explain. I've mentioned before, that I have always loved writing, but until I started this blog, I've never had the discipline to sit down and write. As a teenager, the only writing I could get done was called homework or something like that, and that too only got done with a gun pointed firmly in my direction. The moment the bally homework got done, I'd be out of the house before you could say, "Jack Rabbit". My ultimate fantasy those days was to have a secretary to dictate to, who would write in my handwriting, while I played cricket or tennis or football or whatever it is that I wanted to play.

Unlike me, thankfully, my nephew is not a lazy bum and he has decided to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard as the case may be) and has come with this thoroughly likeable and frankly honest account of his trip from Fremont to Seattle while visiting my other sister. I couldn't help but reproduce it below:

"One fine day, my grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin and I set off on a trip to Seattle on the evening of the 3oth of June. We drove for approximately 2 hours before we reached our first destination - Red Bluff, where we stayed in a well-known hotel named Best Western. It was very comfortable. We stayed for the night until next morning when we vacated after a good dose of cereal, bread and pancakes for breakfast. Barely half an hour passed when we entered into a long stretch of scenery on both sides. Saumya chitthi took control of the car and we were heading along to the day's planned destination - Mount  Shasta followed by a visit to the famous Crater Lake.

On the way we spotted a Chinese restaurant in which we had an enormous lunch where I mainly stuffed myself with large amounts of  Tofu, a Chinese souvenir to show the expertise of American chefs on Chinese cuisine: they had made it so well. We resumed our journey (Chitthi still at the wheel) afresh with food, toward the beautiful snow-capped Mt. Shasta (formed due to volcanic activity). It was quite a long journey but we made it pretty fast and had lots of time to gaze at its scenic beauty with eyes glued to the pair of binoculars I had brought along with me.

While climbing up we almost went hurtling down the cliff if it had not been Chitthi's sharp eyes and a big boulder at the end of the road! We laughed heartily at the near escape and my granddad and I started piling up more rocks along the edge of the cliff. We paused for a few minutes to take in the fresh air and stunning view of the mountain from that area. We took a few pictures, imaginarily pushing the boulder which we owed our lives to. We were quite low in gas and made to enter a gas station as soon as we descended from the mountain into a small village at the base of the mountain. After refuelling the car we resumed the journey toward Crater Lake which is one of the deepest freshwater lakes in the world with a depth of about 2000 feet below sea level. Upon reaching there we witnessed the natural beauty of the lake and soon found out, that its diameter was 5 miles across and was created by the action of volcanoes not unlike the formation of Mt. Shasta. When we looked down into the lake from the magnificent vista-point provided, it looked like still water but it was actually a trick played on the eyes. After many pictures (Keena included in most of them) we tore our eyes away from it and continued the journey downwards.

I dosed off while Chitthi drove through an unnaturally silent and lonely road for 3 hours without any sight of other cars and reached the yet another cosy Best Western in a village called Rice Hill. All the pictures we took had been uploaded on the laptop by Sri Chittappa who had brought it along with him. Keerthana who had had a tremendous time (with the exception of a lot of visits to the toilets in different places!) and was jumping around on the bed apparently thrilled with the sight of the mountain and the lake. I too was enthralled by the visit to these two famous landmarks and was eager to visit more of the planned sites. So next day as per schedule we started off in the morning toward the big city of Portland where we saw a very large port with many ships and boats dotting the bay. The view was outstanding from atop one of the bridges that we used to cross the port and we could see miles and miles of water surrounding us on our sides. We crossed the bridge and entered the main city of Portland where we entered a store named FRYS ELECTRONICS where we searched for a suitable laptop for my grandparents since there was no policy of tax in the state of Oregon in which Portland is situated quite unlike the regulations of San Francisco. It was the 4th of July, widely celebrated as the American Independence day."

I've not edited anything other than breaking it into a few paragraphs. At his age, I know I suffered from a horrible case of bad spellingitis and it warms the heart to see a clean essay from a hyper active photocopy of myself. Keep it up Sid! I'm proud of you and keep eating thayir sadam the way you are now!

P.S.: I can't help but notice the emphasis on food in his essay. Yet another trait of mine?

DON'T do that!!!

Eureka! It struck me like a bolt of lightning. The magnitude of the conspiracy boggles the mind. The clever deception by Church authorities and naïveté of the public which fell into the trap with their eyes open truly is something to admire.

No, I'm not talking about the latest book by Dan Brown.

What I am talking about is how the Church at Notre Dame is trying to shake its "Hunchback of Notre Dame" image. The Church belongs to an elite, elusive and nearly extinct genre of tourist places in Europe - one where entrance is free.

On approaching its hallowed grounds, I was getting ready to whip out the dusty old wallet and dish out the dough, just like I'd done at every other place in Paris. In return for this eagerness, I was greeted by the icy glare of the attendant at the entrance who muttered something in French, which I initially understood to mean, "You don't have enough money to sniff the air around this place, let alone coming in and looking around." The insult hit me so hard, I brought out the plastic in response - I'd rather live the rest of my life in debt than be insulted by you! Same icy glare, temperature reduced by a further 2 degrees.

Now I was perplexed. This was the first place since the road-side dhaba on NH47 just outside Perundurai that refused to accept a credit card. My super fast brain quickly deduced that the attendant must be trying to convey something. I frantically looked around for help and found it in the form of a notice pasted on the wall, in English, that said "Free Admission." Aah, the bloke was actually saying I can walk in for free. Nice.

Just below that sign and all way into the main Church hall, there was the symbol of a camera that was struck off. My keen sense of observation told me that this means, in return for letting you into the Church for free, you agree not to take any photos and peace and happiness prevail in the world. This was confirmed by another notice in writing that said so in as many words.

Those who know me would agree that I'm a stickler for rules and abide by all laws, as long as they are convenient to abide by, so the camera was promptly dumped in the bag. That's when problems started. Apparently, either I was eagle eyed to have spotted 4 million signs saying you're not allowed to take photographs or every other visitor in the Church was blind as a dingbat. The place was swarming with cameras, all with flashes blazing. Good thing this was Church, were it some other place, all it needed was some music for a new entrant to think he'd entered a discotheque of sorts with funky strobe lighting.

Stifling the urge to start dancing and controlling rage is an exercise I wouldn't recommend. That's exactly what I did. I began questioning why (mostly) honest, (mostly) law abiding citizens would want to so blatantly ignore the photography ban boggled the mind. When the dust settled, I concluded by blaming digital cameras behind the outrage. These small, handy little blighters almost talk to you and goad you into getting click happy.

However, even after I returned to London, I was searching for answers. This morning, I hit the jackpot. As I was sitting on the Tube, travelling at 5 MPH, it struck me. Tell a person there's wet paint on the wall and they will always touch it to make sure its wet. Telling a child not to break the window is the most certain way of making sure it is broken. Similarly, after being taunted for years about the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Church suddenly found out that nobody wanted to take any photographs of an ugly thing. So, at a brainstorming session, one bright spark must have come up with the idea that putting up signs of "No Photography" would certainly result in photographs being taken by the millions, simple, clear reverse psychology.

So, while everyone else came back with this:

I came with this: 

There is a problem with my theory though. The hunchback of Notre Dame might be trying to re-invent its image, but what about the Lido? The exact same thing happened there the previous night. There is a photography ban at the Lido while the show is going on. Fair enough, considering the show is exotic and a work of art, you don't want it all over YouTube. Further more, the last thing Lido authorities want is for a dancer to get distracted by a rogue flash and trip over his or her step bringing the house down, for all the wrong reasons. All clean, undisputable logic.

However, here's the important part. While the Church at Notre Dame has a reputation to correct, Lido is no hunchback, Lido is associated with beauty, among other things. Thinking about the Lido shattered by theory on reverse psychology, somewhat... until I had a hard think about the Lido's runaway photographer - he was Indian. Then it all made sense again. They were two separate incidents, Notre Dame is still trying to shake its image, while at Lido, the photo was just an Indian thing - we don't follow rules, simple!

Follow up: I now save £20,000...every month!

It is common knowledge that I saved £9,970 (£10,000 depending on how you look at it) by buying an, ahem, 'not so original' Rolex watch. Some might argue that it's not a big deal and that by buying an air ticket as opposed to buying the plane itself one can save somewhere in the region of $19,999,000 (assuming the plane is a small second hand exec jet and the ticket is a long haul one. There is no real upper limit on the amount you could save. However, you can sell the jet after the journey and recover some money out of it and the same can be said about the Rolex.

This week, I discovered I've been saving around £20,000, on average, EVERY month, for the past 288 months, that's around £5.76 million. With that kind of money, I should be richer than my wildest dreams... to date. Sadly, I'm not. This is a matter that's worth some deep introspection. And introspect is exactly what I did. Why didn't I save that kind of money? Where did I go wrong?

Some really deep analysis later, I realised something profound. In order to save money, you should have not spent it on something and in turn, in order to have the choice of not spending money on something, you should have had the money in the first place - present or future, which, sadly, I do not. Having made peace with myself on my shortcoming, I decided to spin a tabloid isstyle tale to the world (kuppura vizhundalum, meesaila mannu ottalai and all that) on how I am saving the money.

On a related note, have you heard of the Russian billionaire* who gets into a limousine in Moscow, gets stuck in traffic going to the airport, jumps into a jet and flies 6-7 hours to London Heathrow airport, gets onto another limousine, gets stuck in traffic coming into central London for a couple of hours and 2 hours later does the same thing all over again to return to Moscow?

For just two blessed hours, this monumental idiot spends around a day in travel! What does he do in those two hours - he gets a haircut. That's right, he gets his mop cropped and to do that, he comes to London all the way from Russia. Makes you wonder:

• Is there a serious dearth of barbers in Russia? Have all of them gone digging oil wells to make said moron richer still?
• Does this guy have anything at all to do in life other than getting his hair cut?
• Is this barber better than Veluchamy who used to trim my mop in school?
• Don't even get me started on the 2 hour long hair cut. If there was a way to burn my hair in a controlled manner that would rid me of extra hair in 10 seconds, I'd willingly burn it, without a second thought. I can't sit on a barber's chair for more than 15 minutes (of which I nap for 10).

The haircut itself doesn't seem too over the top to begin with (pun intended!). The reporter of one of the newspapers that came out with this story took it and in his before and after photographs, I can't really make out any difference, it looks like the hair wasn't cut at all, and it had additionally been tumble dried for good measure.

For the money you pay, according to the barber himself, you get his services for the whole day. I immediately have problems with that:

• not to be offensive, if I wanted to hang out with barbers, I can do it for free with any of the barbers I've had so far right from Veluchamy to Imran, thank you.
  
• if a Russian oligarch wants to hang out with his barber rather than his I'm-a-bigger-snob-than-you golfing partner, there is a slight problem with society at that level.
• Not only is the guy (the barber) being lazy by only servicing one client the whole day, he's actually minting money out of this!
  

Apparently, one of the highlights of the 'experience' is that you get to eat the meal of your choice WHILE your hair is being cut. Who does that? Tell that to my parents! They don't let me eat anything AFTER my hair is cut before I shower, let alone while! Imagine this conversation:
Barber: "what would like to eat, saar?"
Me: "I'll have a caviar salad, thank you"
Barber: "Will that be with or without dressing, saar?"
Me: "Without, please"
Barber: "Wokay saar, but you do realise that we cannot avoid garnishing it with hair?"
Me: trying not to be sick.

* while I could find the link to the £20,000 haircut story online, I couldn't find the link to the particular story I've referred to here. Please bear with that

P.S.: We very often tend to dismiss the work done by hairstylists as petty and demeaning, it is not. Having said that, a barber by any other name is just a barber, just like a bean counter by any other name is just as boring. What offends me is the obscene money that is spent on the act of keeping said mop clean.

P.P.S: I admire this bloke for he is making more money doing over the top work than any of ever will! Who knows, for one day, he just might engage my employer to audit his company's books with me being the audit manager, so might as well suck up to him :)!