Hair raising issues

The birds are chirping, the sun is shining (as much as it is allowed to shine in this blessed land). Life in general appears to be under an illusion of smoothness. Then this trinket of information comes along.

Before I'm judged for being a snob who cannot be kind towards the men and women who beautify and keep the old top trim, I would like to say in my defense that I'm not that person. I don't blame mis-informed people for jumping to that conclusion simply because I said it's not worth paying 20,000 quid for a haircut.  I hold Velusamy in the highest of high esteem. I think he did a sterling job of keeping Mount Coconut trim. And he did it at 0.0003% of the cost of the £20,000 bloke. You don't need a barber to be able to sing and dance, you merely need one who can wield a pair of scissors to lop a lock of hair off, while steering clear of one's ears and other peripheral gadgets and attachments. If he can do said lopping with sufficient finesse to give an appearance of uniformity and style, that is a bonus. Like Velusamy.

I think this current crop of 'celebrity hairstylists' are a useless bunch of blokes. Not only do they charge you an arm and a leg, in addition to the Earth and the Sky, they don't actually chop any hair, simply make a floopy mess of it and send you on your way, while leaving you significantly out of pocket. 

Consider this. I googled for funny photos of people who have had electric shocks and a typical sample was this:

It is widely known and accepted that one of my virtues is that my research is thorough. So I followed that up with a consultation with Google on photos of stylish haircuts. I came up with this:

I cannot, for the life of me, differentiate one from the other.

When I was growing up, one of the things which traumatised me the most was that my parents would never, ever be happy with the length of my hair unless my scalp was visible and in the event I got into a fight with the friendly neighbor, I would not be weakened by hair that could be yanked by said friendly neighbor. I've tried, as all adolescents do, to rebel against this style unfriendly policy and have my hair cut 2mm longer than specification, only to be marched back to the barber for a top-up. I must say though, that this was never a problem with Velusamy. He had only one style and that was to lop off my locks to the exact length my parents wanted. No more, although less was appreciated. He would do a uniform job, and this was more desirable than the job my sisters would do when I was even younger. Yes, I am reliably informed that on more than one occasion, my sisters have practiced their hair cutting skills on me. I thankfully have no direct recollection of this dastardly act. 

Coming to the topic of this post, my interest in hair dressers/barbers/saloon artists/hair stylists (call them what you will) was piqued by an interview on rediff.com of AR Rahman's hair dresser. I am a fan of ARR and all that, but anyone who has seen him will immediately be able to tell 2 things:

• for all the money he has made and success he has seen, AR Rahman is yet to invest in a solid comb. Like all geniuses, his hair is unkempt and untidy. No complaints, just an observation.
• looking at the length of his hair, one would wonder if this hair stylist of his simply seats him on a saloon chair, nips out for a tea, comes back and gets his cheque for whatever obscene amount he charges AR Rahman for the 'haircut'.

If you click into the link, you would also find pictures of other celebrities whose hair this bloke's 'dressed'. Almost all of them have uncut, unkempt hair.

Thanks to the way I've been brought up, a hair cut is a monthly evil that must be dealt with as just that, a monthly evil. Hair once cut, should not bother you at all for 20 days, after which the odd comb may be introduced and 10 days from the day it needs a comb, the hair is put back where it belongs - the floor of a saloon. So, pardon me for not seeing style nor fashion in unkempt hair. The only benefit I see of spiky hair is in self defense, much the same way a porcupine uses its quills.

The bike of my dreams...or not

I've always been a bit of a dreamer. Dreams of both the day and night variety have visited me while I've been awake and while I've been sleeping.

I've always had some recurring theme to my dreams - either I'm falling endlessly or some such thing. I've rarely been surprised by my dreams, until last night.

Last night, I dreamt about riding my scooter. Nothing out of the ordinary here. However, the strange thing was that I noticed that the ride was distinctly bumpy and not comfortable at all. Rough road or a road in India, one might helpfully deduce. No. When I looked at the 'road of my dreams', it was a road that one can only dream about, clean, blackish grey, freshly laid and smooth as a Persian carpet. This led keen ol' me to take a peep under my scooter and I instantly found out the source of the bumpy ride. The wheels were square and I was bouncing along end on end, resulting in aforementioned ride quality.

I've heard that all dreams signify something. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why I would 'reinvent the wheel' and ride on square wheels. If this signifies that I will find a new way of doing something that's been done in a particular way for eons, I am worried. On several fronts. Square wheels are a pretty lousy form of locomotion and if this is indicative of a 'new way of doing something' then I can be sure its not a very suitable way of doing it, unless the objective is to ensure all users of said new method have suicide wishes and a few extra bones hanging about just to rattle and break. It's not at all efficient, I tell you.

I have been trying to make head of tail of this since the time I had it and I am not very happy to report that I am no closer to finding out even remotely why I would have such an 'innovative' dream.

So here's a call to all expert dream interpret my dream and give me ONE good reason why I should dream about square wheels. Thank you very much.

The master blaster in me...

Reading all the hoo-hah about a certain Sachin Tendulkar scoring a double hundred and this, I thought it might be prudent for me to share with one and all, my own 'Master Blaster' days.

I suppose a 'setting the scene' paragraph is in order. I was brought up in a boarding school. For the avoidance of doubt, I must clarify that the operative word is 'brought' up in a boarding school, as opposed to 'went' to a boarding school. It was home, you see. Like all boarding schools, this one would be closed for almost three and a half months of the year. For a majority of these months, the only souls on the entire 750/900 acre (size varies depending on who you're talking to), there would be a sum total of 5 families on campus. Including ours. That included 6 (b)rats that the pied piper called holidays could not get rid of. At the disposal of these brats were approximately 8 tennis courts, 3 basketball courts, 4 badminton courts, 1 swimming pool, 1 club house with 2 snooker tables, 2 table tennis tables and 3 carom boards, and roughly 10 play grounds. Cricket was the favoured sport of this band of brothers with the occasional peppering of seasonal games such as football, basketball and tennis (depending on which tournament was on TV at that time). This post is about Cricket.

Sidin, being the Genius that he is, has brought up the 'what exactly is a one day cricket match' question. In our case though, these matches were more likely 'day into night' cricket matches. You see, one day cricket matches just say one day, they do not specify 8 hours. Hence we would commence proceedings at the crack of dawn (usually around noon) and go one until one of the following happened:

a) one of the mothers came after us wielding a particularly stout stick
b) one of us lost a tooth and/or an eye
c) we lost all the balls and would need to retire in order to grovel and beg for a few more the next day from Manick or Raju, the sports room in-charges
d) a massive disagreement between teams resulted in a sulky cancellation of proceedings, and most often,
e) it became so dark that even with the aid of the lone streetlight at the end of the ground, it would become impossible to see a yellow tennis ball coming towards the batsman/fielder at speed, resulting in a wicket or boundary, which quickly degenerated into situation under (d) above. On the rare occasions that we would play like real men, with a cricket ball, we would call it quits as soon as (b) above happened. You see, we had only 1 pad per team, no gloves and no helmets, and several budding pace bowlers.

Keen and alert readers that you are, you would have, by now, no doubt, raised an eyebrow in protest saying a cricket match would require atleast 22 people. Not ours. All we needed was an even number of blokes and even when that wasn't possible, we would manage admirably by either having a floating team member or even better, convincing the weakest player that he wants to be an umpire since he is the fairest, most keen eyed and technically knowledgeable bloke in all of Lovedale. Usually worked like a charm.

That said, however, 6 people are not even near the full complement required to field a full ground. That instantly ruled out Top Flats, which was the largest ground in the northern hemisphere at that altitude, or something like that. In order to give the fielding team a fair chance, the most likely choice was the basketball court just below Prep School. It was the perfect size if the batting team also did part time fielding. However, it's size did have some disadvantages, a well placed hook could get a boundary and hence 4 or 6 runs depending on which part of the boundary wall the ball hit (the upper part being a 6), but more importantly, it could also:

- get one in trouble with Ms. Jerry Nash of Girls School if one hit the ball too hard and so much as touched a window of Girls School
- get one out if you hit hard enough for the ball to cross the boundary wall. To any ball wanting to escape the relentless throwing and hitting, crossing the wall was the ticket to freedom, for it is, to this day, virtually impossible to retrieve a ball that went into the dense undergrowth beyond the wall.

If this team comes across as an amateurish team, now would be a time to change opinions, for I am about to introduce some of the most (in)famous bowlers in the history of Cricket.
 

• Ganesh, seeing this gentle giant thunder down from the boundary wall is a sight to behold. With the arrogant laziness of an elephant and pretty much the height of said elephant, this guy would unleash the ball from a height of 9 feet. A normal ball would come across to the average 4 feet batsman as a life threatening bouncer. Needless to say, the lone pad would be in huge demand every time this bloke came to bowl with a cricket ball. Injuries which can be brushed aside for the next day's match were fine, any further absence due to injury was a risk not worth taking. Ganesh was also the senior most bloke in the squad.

• Renju. Next in seniority, he would try to bowl pace and to be honest, at that age, it did feel like pace! However, he was nowhere near the life threatening pace Ganesh wielded.

• Sudhakar. This guy was a regular part timer and said he was a swing bowler, but it was more like a slowish straight ball.

• Praveen - Yet another part timer. This bloke was (in)famous for chucking allegations a la Muthiah Muralidharan. Many a times he has left the ground in a huff because one of us appealed against his chuck...er, bowling.

• Shibu - Renju's kid brother, until he began to realise he was being played, he would be the preferred umpire and when he realised should be playing, rather than being played, Shibu tried his hand at spin bowling. To his credit, on several occasions, the ball did reach the batsman before being smacked out of the ground. It was this quality of tempting the batsman to smack the ball to smithereens that made Shibu a prolific wicket taker.

• Me. You could replace my name in Shibu's profile and it wouldn't be too inaccurate.

Now that I have introduced the bowlers, I should introduce the batsmen:

• Ganesh. I have already established that this bloke was/is tall. While his height was a definite advantage in bowling and fielding, it was sometimes a liability in batting. You see, in order to ground the bat, Ganesh would have to bend over in half, but then again, it was not possible to bowl him a bouncer, the highest any of us could reach would be his hip, which he swat with disdain. He could also cover the length of the pitch in around 3 footsteps, and was hence adept at taking quick singles.

• Renju. Was a decent middle order batsman, he was like Rahul Dravid, would take root at one end and pretty much stay there until a fight broke out. As I write this, I wonder if he can be called middle order. He would usually come in one down (which means he'd step in after the team lost one wicket). I suppose calling him middle order is correct since coming in at number 2 in a team of 3 does make it middle order!

• Sudhakar. He could hold a bat and swing it, at times connecting the ball in the process. Pinch hitter would accurately describe him.

• Praveen - memories of his batting prowess elude me, primarily because he would get into a fight over his bowling action and leave in a huff before he could bat nine times out of ten.

• Shibu - for as long as I can remember, Shibu was only as tall as a bat, hence he wasn't the most effective tool in the box from a purely logistical perspective, but he had an uncanny ability to connect ball and bat and was capable of dropping the bat and scurrying between wickets like Jerry (not Ms Jerry Nash) running from Tom and was a dependable bet to get runs.

• Me. For the record, I was slightly taller than Shibu. Under poor lighting conditions, I was more than capable of somehow connecting ball and bat, however, enthusiastic cheering from my team mates would often get the better of me and I would often smack the ball into the jungle, which led Ganesh to give me the nickname 'Master Blaster', a name which to this day sticks...

Aah, fun times :)

The cold Sun

I was wondering the other day, it's a good thing these scientist types changed their panic attack headlines from 'Global Warming' to 'Climate Change'. Any reference to global warming would attract a well aimed, powerful and solid kick to the referer's bottom. Allow me to explain.

Thanks to my undying efforts, the world now knows what greeted me the day after I bought my scooter. The underlying hope at that point in time was that this too would come to pass and in a fortnight the sun would come out of hibernation, provide heat and light and all that. What a load of BS that turned out to be.

It's now more than a month since said scooter entered the household and the Sun has been as lazy as ever. The bloke can slumber like a bear in hibernation, I tell you. It began getting cold and nippy way back in November. The days are getting longer now, but they sure as hell ain't getting any warmer.

When I first moved the UK, one of the major draws, for me, was the rain. This is a fact I've had to justify to every single person that has ever asked me why I chose to leave a sunny country like Dubai and come to wet and dreary UK. The normal reaction to this statement is to look at me like I have just eaten a live crocodile. Some even look at me like they did when they found out there is no Santa Claus. Once the initial shock of my statement passes by, they eventually recover and in less than 2 days, they return to their normal selves and dismiss me as an eccentric madman. I found their line of reasoning for such a reaction a bit on the cuckoo side, but I understand it better now.

Coming from a country where rain hits the headlines and only does that around 3-4 days in a year, it felt good to have regular rain again. It felt good back in the day, but like they say, too much of a good thing soon turns bad. It's rained around 3-4 days a week for the past 4 months and I've had my fill of rain, thank you very much. The temperature gauge on the dash of my scooter has forgotten what it is to be in double digit temperatures and my digits have forgotten what it would feel like to have two of their namesakes get together in the context of a weather discussion.

Even the hardy British folks seem to have stopped grumbling about the weather, probably in the vain hope that they would somehow appease the weather Gods into blessing the place with more moderate weather. No luck on that front either.

Then we have these blessed statisticians, who keep reeling off numbers that say this has been the coldest winter since records began. Since my records began, each winter has been colder than the next, according to these statistics.

It is now bright and sunny outside, but there is no point in going outside, for the Sun in this part of the world only produces light and does not bother  with heating.

The other day, I was watching an advertisement by these infernal litigation lawyers, and I am seriously contemplating if there would be any point in suing the Sun, the Solar System, the UK Government (for the UK being where it is on the planet). The reason for the lawsuit? Discrimination against the people and citizens of this cold and wet country...

Update:

Funny thing happened. As with all other posts of late, this one was taking a healthy snooze in the Drafts folder for the past couple of days. I was mucking about with the weather widget on my phone and out of a whim, I googled the coldest city on Earth and came up with Yakutsuk in Siberian Russia. The current temperature as of the time I posted this is -32 degrees Celcius. Further reading up on this desolate brought up this article. God just dished out some top-of-the-line perspective didn't He?

A Christmas story...in spring!

Over Christmas, I'd been taking a much needed break from work and literally chilling out at home for 10 days (the weather was below freezing!).

For all the freedom and independence the media has in the UK, it's surprising that only two major providers of TV entertainment are present in the market - Sky and Virgin. Sky requires a dish antenna and my apartment has banned the use of dish antennas on its premises sighting aesthetic reasons. That left me with the grand choice of 1 when it comes to powering my TV.

While I am tempted to whinge about how much Virgin is ripping me off, I will control myself, for this post is about something else. I am not much of a sports fan, so that eliminates the content of around 120 of the 140 channels that Virgin provides. The only other worthwhile channels are Comedy Central, Dave (only because they have endless re-runs of Top Gear) and Discovery.

Now that we have that out of the way, said break was spent predominantly zoned out in front of the telly and the set-top box stuck firmly stuck on Comedy Central. I was watching an interesting episode of Everybody Loves Raymond and his cuckoo family. For ELR aficionados, this was the one where Frank sends an anecdote to Readers' Digest and gets published. He then walks around with a note pad trying to identify other quips he can send in, now that he is "published"!

Watching it reminded me of myself. In the early days of this blog, I wore the same shoes as Frank B. Frank walked around with a tiny notepad while the notepad in my tiny mobile phone was where I'd jot down amusing things that happened every day in my life. At one point, there were more ideas than the inclination and will to write!

As I 'matured' in the blog trade, I began to make a mental note of things that were blog-worthy. Once again, I noticed that I was flooded with ideas. This made me a very happy man, for ideas are exactly what the doctor ordered for a writer, but I found myself sorely lacking when it came to actually translating those ideas into a post that made more sense than, say, this one. 

The end of that episode featured Frank hanging up his boots as a 'published writer'. I wonder if I'm headed to the same fate...am I going to hang up my boots because I can't translate ideas to posts? I don't think so, as long as I can come up posts on how I can't come up with posts :). 

What do you say readers?

Condemned....to learn religion!

Ah, good old Gulf News, never fails to provide a juicy titbit or two.

This one is about a Saudi bloke who decided to marry 6 women and got busted. It gets murkier. This nutter worked for the Vice Police.

Apart from the obvious wise cracks around Vice Police itself not being vice free and the practice what you preach comeback, this is worrying on multiple grounds.

Saudi Arabia, as a self appointed protector of the Faith, has a force known as the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The charter for this force is simple - make everyone who sets foot on Saudi soil adhere to the strict rules imposed by it as protector of the Faith. This force has absolute powers and is able to arrest anyone, anywhere and for reasons as flimsy as a lady showing 2 centimeters of skin from the soles of her feet when she fell down flat on her face.

The poor sods who get arrested for these 'offences' are humiliated, punished, whipped and in general made miserable.

Back to our bloke. His story is that he's married six women when he's only(!) allowed to take on 4! The story is worrying from several angles because:

1. the bloke works for the Vice Squad and he does this!
2. he claims he had no idea that 4 was the maximum - this coming from a person who is in charge of implementing said rule is even more worrying
3. then comes the punishment he was given:

• 120 lashes
• travel ban for 5 years
• memorise the last 2 sections of the Qu'uran.

How can a punishment be a punishment if it involves memorising Holy Scriptures? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of if 'Protectors of the Faith' consider it a punishment to learn what their religion says?

Reminds me of my good friend, Mr. 23rd Pulikesi. Among the many gems he doled out as punishment, was one where a court dabari (crier) was punished with repeating Pulikesi's praise for a week. While getting fed with kollu (horse feed). Once a day...

Strike 1, 2, 3...you're out...of this aircraft!

Flights don't scare me. I'm no dare devil either. I can be scared quite easily, however, in all of my flying experience (totalling a grand 6 years), I haven't been scared of air planes. Awestruck, yes, petrified, no. From the time I looked up in awe at the huge Boeing 747-400 cargo liner that used to land on my sister's house in Bangalore (her house then used to sit next to the airport compound wall facing the runway), I'd always wanted to fly in the 747 simply because it was then the largest commerical passenger aeroplane in the world.

Until my first flight in 2005, all I had to go on were reports from near and dear on how the interiors of a plane looked. Most of the reports pointed in the direction of a similarity between KPN Travels buses and a flight's interior. Turns out that description was not entirely inaccurate, the only difference being the seats in KPN buses are more comfortable, recline more and have a lot more leg room.

To date, I have yet to fly in a 747-400, but lost interest in flying in it after Airbus announced the A380, all desires to fly shifted loyalties to Airbus. I followed all programs on Discovery channel on the making of the Airbus A380 and knew its vital statistics by heart. Again awestruck, not scared of its ability to stay in the air.

All that changed a few days ago. With me extricating bricks from intimate places not once, but thrice in one flight.

On the rare occasion the office sends me on a business trip requiring the use of a commercial airliner, I jumped with joy when my ticket from London to Dubai listed the aircraft as A380-800. Finally. I thought it would be a cruise, what with its superior leg room in cattle class and all. Note the operative word cattle class. Apparently, in my company, one needs to be arthritic and old (read: Senior Manager and above) to fly business class. The recession, I tell you.

I checked in at the airport and there it stood, huge and majestic, although one might argue that from angles, the plane looked like it could lose a few kilos. The area above the cockpit also made the plane look very old - it was completely bald. 

The plane had made a hash of first impressions by coming into the airport over 25 minutes late. Airline staff helpfully attributed it to congestion in Heathrow and we all know what a busy airport Heathrow is, so impressions were promptly restored.

Once the interiors were cleaned up from its previous flight, we all shuffled in and I made myself cozy in the seat, not at all spilling out of the seat and also appreciating the decent bump in leg room. The plane eventually made it to taxi stage around 30 minutes behind schedule.

As with all planes, the captain introduced himself on the PA and helpfully told us the flight plan, speed, altitude and flying time. I have multiple issues with this information doled out by chauffeurs of the air.
 

• flight plan: I know where I'm coming from and I am aware of where I am going. How you propose to take me there is entirely upto you, I trust your judgement. When I get into a bus from Coimbatore to Chennai, some drivers/conductors helpfully tell you it will stop at Salem, Dindivanam and Chengulpet bypass. That is helpful; I don't think any driver of a bus in any country will tell you the bus plans to be on NH47 for 200kms before turning onto NH45 for 300kms. If a pilot tells me the flight I'm on is from A to C with a stop at B, I will be mildly interested. What we usually get is that the flight is from A to C and flies past B.

• speed and altitude: the airshow monitor constantly displays this information, thank you. I suppose, it's a good thing S Athai doesn't know any pilots. If she did and she flew with them, she would ask them to slow down to 30kmph (chapter 3 last paragraph!) if the pilot discloses the speed as "we'll be cruising at 875kmph."

• flying time: When a ticket is bought, the normal practice is for time departure time and arrival time to be displayed. Please let me know if we're going to be late, I'd appreciate that, thank you.

There are people to say this friendly banter is to develop a rapport between the passengers and the pilot. I refer these people to the relationship between bus driver and passengers.

Anyway, the pilot gave us information on flight plan never-the-less. The flight was to fly over UK, Europe, cross over into Asia over Turkey, Baghdad, some sea and then onto UAE airspace. 

Baghdad? No one mentioned that to me earlier! It might have actually been more helpful if there was an armed escort of the non-hijacker variety on board! I decided to keep a look out for incoming surface to air missiles, just in case. Brick extrication #1.

Around an hour into the flight, at some point over Brussels, helpful pilot uncle came on the PA again and said, "it appears passengers in the upper deck of the aircraft, please accept our apologies over the noisy flight you've been having, it's because one of the seals in a door on the upper deck is a 'bit' faulty. We are in touch with our base in Dubai on actions to take over this. In the meanwhile, please accept our apologies for the noise. Instantly, images of me being sucked into the atmosphere by rapid depressurization of the cabin since the door gave way flooded my mind. I remember being optimistic by thinking that at least, I wouldn't have to look out for missiles if we fell out of the sky before Baghdad came. Please Mr. Pilot, if the danger is not imminent, i.e., we're going to die in 10 seconds, please tell us something else. I strongly recommend a placebo. Something as mundane as, "will the passenger who has eaten one too many beans in the upper deck please step into the toilet, the noise is deafening" would have helped immensely. Brick extrication #2.

Somewhere between Turkey and Iraqi airspace, we ran into turbulence. To an already paranoid mind, this didn't do any wonders. The ride comfort on the flight suffered and both the interior and ride reminded me of KPN Travels more and more. To make matters, eagle eyed as I am, I noticed that the altitude had dropped from 33,000 feet to 27,000 and speed had decreased from 875kmph to 800kmph. Brick extrication #3. This is when pilot uncle truly made himself useful and said we're flying lower and slower in order to smoothen out the ride. Relief flooded back in, only to be replaced by more dread, for we were now over Iraq and flying lower! Brick extrication #3b. Thanks to G Bush and his cronies, it appears Iraq is fresh out of surface to air missiles and we made it to Dubai over 1 hour late and I had to scramble in the 15 minutes left to make my connecting flight, which thankfully, was as boring as any other flight I have taken.

Suddenly, my appetite for flying in the largest aircraft in the business has been satiated. I wonder why...