A royal affair of sorts

I have three words to describe the events of 29 April 2011. Oh my God! Sure they got married, sure they are the future king and queen of the United Kingdom and sure it was a bank holiday (thank you for that BTW). But by golly! Did the TV channels take it upon themselves to make sure not one soul on this planet with a television or even access to a television gets to see this extravaganza.

I am not here to comment on the wedding, its lavishness or the craze surrounding the affair (OK, maybe I will comment on the craze, it is after all, too tempting to pass up!). I will instead draw parallels (or, rather, lack of parallels) to my own wedding, which as you may recall, was a pompous and much celebrated affair of equal magnificence, albeit restricted to the town of Chidambaram. You see, I think my wedding was a touch more grand. I am not delusional, nor am I conceited. I state facts here. Only facts. Here's why:

• Kate rolled up to her wedding in a rather old looking car. It may have been a custom modified Rolls Royce, but to quote my mother, "she is coming in an old car only, can't they afford a newer, more luxurious car?" I on the other hand rode into my wedding in a horse drawn carriage. Not one horse, but two horses drew said carriage.
• What's more, poor William was already situated within the Abbey when Kate arrived. I had the pleasure of picking up milady and riding to the wedding hall with her (you see, the old Rolls had no space in it to accommodate Wills). How romantic was that!
• All Kate had on their way to the Abbey was crowds of people cheering and shouting. I, on the other hand, had fireworks, crowds, traffic, dancers, James Band, friends and relatives leading me to the hall, surely you can't beat that!
• Their wedding started at 9:51am on 29 April 2011 and all proceedings will be complete at 2:50pm on 29 April. Mine, on the other hand began at 6:00pm on 6 December and finished at 1:30pm on 8 December! You cannot deny that a longer celebration is a bigger celebration!
• The church had pin drop silence when the wedding was going on, meaning the slightest noise could have potentially disrupted proceedings. At my wedding, you could have exploded a bomb outside the hall and it wouldn't have been heard, for the noise level inside the hall was significantly higher than a jet plane at full blast.
• Most importantly, when the priests prayed to the Lord to bless the couple, everyone could understand what the Lord was being requested to do. At my wedding, considering all chants were in Sanskrit, not one soul knew what sort of deal was being struck with our multitude of Lords for our well being. It is a well known fact that a secret, undecipherable message is far more exotic than an open and understandable one.
• Even more importantly than the most important point, although the world at large knew these folks were getting married, not one poster or banner marked the occasion. It is a well known fact that my and milady's photographs were plastered all across Chidambaram just to announce this! 

As I have undeniably proved above, my wedding was better than one fit for a king! So there.

Now for the crazies. 

Watching the invitees flock into the venue, one trend just could not be ignored. All men were in uniform, not of the ceremonial kind, but of the fashionable kind. They all wore dark suits/tuxedoes, white shirts, bows and polished black shoes. To boot, they all had sorry..er, solemn looking faces like they were going to watch someone beat a puppy. The women on the other hand, all wore elegant gowns and dresses that set off their looks like nobody's business, however, for some reason, it seemed to me that they were all pulled through a hedge of some sort on their way to the Abbey, what with the fancy "hats" they wore! I mean, a hat that looks like a set of antlers doesn't really qualify as a hat does it? Just a sample for your viewing pleasure:

Talk of analysis, the BBC commentator actually got emotional about the fact that Kate was wearing a particular designer's dress and that quote it was a proud day for fashion unquote. 

And the bets! God the bets! Will it rain, will Kate wear this designer's dress or that, will Will kiss Kate on the cheek or lips when they appear at the palace! Come on!!

All said done, here's wishing the young couple a long and happy life as a couple! Like their vows said, may they be together till death do them apart!

Pardon me...you're going to get the book thrown at you for that!!

Allegedly, a whole bunch of things give it to you. Potatoes, beans, raw bananas, lentils to name but a few. Sometimes not eating anything also results in the same fate. Old people get it, so do young ones. Even tiny toddlers barely out of the womb are not immune to it. That's right, I'm talking about wind. Not the kind that blows in one's backyard, but the kind that comes out of one's backside. Yep, the humble, taboo fart.

Everyone has to pass wind every now and then, yet no one would stand up and say they let one loose when the immediate area surrounding the gathering gets smothered in toxic gases. It's a natural body function, yet we cannot talk about it, just like the one who cannot be named in Harry Potter movies. Everyone knows he exists, but refuse to acknowledge it in the vain hope that not acknowledging his presence somehow makes him go away. According to women's magazines and movies, men are comfortable letting a few rip when in the midst of other men and women do not talk of such dirty things. However, I have not met such men and thankfully have not been in the midst of a demonstration.

Before you all wiggle your noses and head for the close button on the browser, let me assure you, I have no intention of analysing or discussing the nuances of different varieties of wind. I'd like to think I am above such frivolities.

As part of my random reads, I came across this link from a friend on Facebook. I really pity the people of Malawi. They are all going to have to develop a whole new gas free diet. However, more than the people of Malawi, do you know who I pity more? The policemen and women of the country. Not only are they going to have to go after hard hitting criminals, they're going to have to book petty farts as well. Literally.

As I think about the d(r)aft proposal by the Hon. George Fartless Chaponda, a number of visions are popping up in my head:

Scenario #1:

Picture a busy market place. People bustling about. Window shopping, actual shopping, shop lifting, shop keeping and the like. Constable DC is going about on his beat. DC is a vigilant man, and he knows the law like the back of his hand. He hears a noise. It's unmistakeable. Someone had just broken the law. No alarms going off, no guns in sight, not a single person violated. However, the law is broken. DC jumps into action. 

He uses his astute skills of observation and directional hearing to isolate the direction in which the noise came from. He quickly swirls to his right and notices 25 people within 5 feet of him (the market is bustling after all). He is confident the decibel level and frequency of the noise mean it cannot have been further than 5 feet away. What should be do now? DC lines all 25 of them up. After some quick thinking, DC decides his first approach had better be direct questioning and asks, "Alright, I know there was wind passed by one of you lot. You know who you are and you better 'fess up or else...", he finishes with a threat. One dramatic pause later, he is none the wiser, not one soul speaks up. He looks at their faces and realises he's dealing with a serial farter here. Any other person would have broken into a sweat by now. 

All 25 of them are cool as a whistle. 24 of them because they have nothing to worry about and 1 is really good at breaking the law. The next approach in the book issued to all policemen and women, 'the police guide to catching farters' comes to DC's mind. He starts questing suspects one by one. DC has been extensively trained in the matter at the special summer course they had over 3 days in the beach resort of Dickbey (a fine resort, thinks DC as he remembers the 3 days spent in luxury at the training resort). He asks each of them what they have eaten since 5am the previous morning, after all, what goes in, comes out. By the process of elimination, he is confident he has reduced the number of suspects from 25 to 10. 

The next process is the 'tummy tap'. A gaseous tummy has a distinctive tap. This further reduces the number of suspects to 2. DC looks long and hard at the two of them. One of them starts showing the strain of hiding illegality and blurts out, "OK! It was me!" DC is a happy man, he's got his criminal and issues the penalty notice. Justice has been served. A thousand guilty can go free, but one innocent man shall not be punished. Never mind the 3 shops that got looted while DC was interrogating the suspects. A happy DC returns to his beat and prrrrrrt. "Here we go again!" says DC with a sigh and lines up suspects. 

Scenario #2:

A council meeting is taking place. A fierce debate is raging around the level of state subsidy to be given to universities. Members of the public are watching from the viewing gallery. The fate of the city hangs in balance, it is, after all this city is famous for its educational institutions. Suddenly the lawmakers are silenced by the foul smell wafting down from the viewing area. The police are summoned to the scene of the crime. No noise was heard by anyone in the vicinity. This was a 'silent' one. All usual techniques of interrogation prove fruitless and not one person comes forward with a confession. The councillors decide that it is time for an emergency session. Trivial things like education can be left behind and they jump right into a discussion on how to deal with silent farts. 12 hours later, a resolution is passed. In the event a silent fart perpetrator does not confess to the crime, the entire gathering in the vicinity of ground zero will be penalised. 

Scenario #3:

One of the suggestions Mr. Chaponda gives is to go use the restroom to fart. Queues outside restrooms in the highstreet become quite long with people waiting to get into the restroom. Things are getting quite impatient with people anxious to relieve themselves. Meanwhile, at the entrance to the restroom, an enterprising young man has set up a stall, charging an atrocious amount for a pair of ear and nose plugs. People going in snap them up like nobody's business, it is wild in there after all...

Scenario #4:

In other news, police are now being issued with air quality meters, after new research finds that the air quality around a fart perpetrator's backside contains lingering effects of the offending gasses, this sensor picks this up, thereby allowing police to easily convict perpetrators of this heinous crime. Police are now following people around town sticking the sensor on their backsides in order to comply with the law. 

Interesting times...!

Leftist arguments

Nope, not a politically motivated post. Now that we've got that out of the way...I'd indulged in some pond hopping over Christmas and decided to grace the US of A with a flying visit (pun totally intended!). After much uncertainty due to the white stuff. I'm not talking about the white stuff that lands one in jail, the white stuff that lands one in hospital. Wait, that white stuff also lands one in hospital, okay, I'm talking of snow.

We managed to sneak out of the British Isles through a small window of opportunity that the weather afforded us. Landing in the US, I couldn't help but notice one thing right away. The US likes to do things the exact opposite way to the rest of the world. This attitude hit me in the face right at the airport.

I'm usually accustomed to waiting in lines at the airports I've landed in for 'passport control', or immigration. Except for Indian airports, I'm always standing in line at the 'non-residents', 'immigrants' or foreigners queue. In the US I stood in the 'aliens' queue. I understand that the US is a world away from the rest of the world. Being a 10 hour flight from any place outside North America must have certainly contributed to this impression Americans have that they are a separate planet. I am, however, obliged to inform America that I have referred to the latest Google maps and NASA earth-from-space photography, both of whom are US registered entities, and America is still located on planet Earth. I have read somewhere that an alien is usually a person who isn't domiciled on the home planet, so, I humbly submit that I am not an alien, but a foreigner.

After entering planet United States of America, the excitement of the inter-planetary travel hit old bladder hard and I walked toward the 'rest-room' to empty said bladder. Out of sheer force of habit, I walked into the room on the left, only to get told off by one of the ladies who surprised me by being in the men's room. Turns out the ladies 'rest-room' was on the left and the blokes on the right, while I am used to vice-versa. Maybe I am being too picky or thick headed. Once I got into the right toilet and finished my business, I reached for the flush handle, on the right side of the cistern and didn't find one there. Of course, the handle was on the left! During the whole time I was in the States, I would religiously grope the right side of the flush before actually flushing. Having done my business and thoroughly washing my hand, I went out got into my BIL's car, and naturally it was left hand drive.

Now there is a school of thought that thinks left hand drive is the natural one and that the rest of the world is bonkers to drive on the other side. You will find that school to be mostly in America. There is another school of thought that things driving on the right side of the road is, well, not right. I am neutral about this and don't mind either, having lived in America aping Dubai and in Britain and its erstwhile colony. So this is not so much a gripe, but an observation.

The journey between the airport and home was completed without incident. On coming home, I found all switches to be in the on position, but no lights seemed to be on. So I assumed that for all its sophistication and industrial development, the place had a power cut. Then it hit me. On is off and off is on. What the world knows as the universal on position, is the off posish there.

All this got me thinking. Why would this happen? Why would everything, even the most mundane of things be the exact opposite of what the rest of the world considers normal? My thinking and groping later, I came to a plausible reason for this. When the old geezer Amerigo Vespucci did the hop across the ocean back in the 15th century, he must have been pretty peeved at matters the way they were done in Europe. He thought, "Right, I've now discovered my own continent. I'm going to do things my way here. And that way is to do things in a manner contrary to how the rest of those fools in Europe do it." And there folks, is how America came to be the way it is. I'm positive. Astute observers would no doubt, point out to me that in the 15th century, there were no cars, no electricity or immigration or indeed toilets. My explanation covers this too. The tradition established by Amerigo has been carried on by generations after him, who, no doubt, often visited Europe to make sure they were doing everything the Europeans didn't.

Happy New Year folks!

Note to self: quit smoking

Right upto a decade ago, governments in general and tobacco companies in particular vehemently denied any links between smoking and what's that called, cancer of the dungs or bungs or, ah, its lungs. They cited several very competitive studies involving, let's say, a 1000 people. If less than 10% of the population studied did NOT get lung cancer from smoking, the study concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support a link between lung cancer and smoking. So you could smoke wherever you wanted and the tobacco companies were happy with all the revenue, government was happy with all the additional tax revenue, celebrities were happy with all the endorsement revenue and the lousy lout who paid for all this was happy thinking it was cool to do so. All was fine and dandy. The sun shined and birds chirped and all that.

Around a decade ago, a particularly chirpy lad sat up and said, hang on, if less than 10% of the population did NOT contract a disease of some form or the other, it means 90% did. To add insult to injury for the tobacco companies, the lad found people around smokers, were more badly affected. That's not a good thing. This lad being well connected, lobbied and lobbied hard. Suddenly, the fashionable thing to do in government circles was to ban smoking in public places. 

Considering I'm not a smoker, and detest any form of smoke, I'm all for banning smoking in public places. However, like all good things, there was a catch. Anything relating to banning is required, by law, to be brought about by the government. Paragraph 1 above clearly demonstrates that the government is not very good at defining things. True to their reputation, they messed up on the definition of public places. They included almost every place but the kitchen sink within their definition of public places, making smokers an exiled species, who were forced to go outside every time the urge to light up got the better of them. It was no longer fashionable and they became the equivalent of social outcasts. In all their wisdom, the government forgot to include the most of public of public places, sidewalks and pavements.

This blasted oversight has created more smokers than before. Thanks to this loophole, non-smoking walkers were left with two choices. They could walk in a smog of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, nicotine, acetone, acetylene, formaldehyde, propane, hydrogen cyanide, toluene, and many others or they could walk in a smog of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide and particulates. Each option is less appealing than the other. However, most pedestrians choose the slow route to hell simply because they prefer not getting run over. 

It's extremely annoying when one is walking along the pavement, minding your own business and pottering about and you're stuck behind a block-head with a death stick, who is also, incidentally, pottering about. One then speeds up and overtakes said block-head, only to get stuck behind death stick toting block-head in front of the one one just overtook. The result is that one is always smoking if one is walking. 

In light of the above, I can do one of two things, I can quit walking or I can quit smoking. I have decided to do the latter, but in order to do that, I need help in raising money to do so. I will be gratefully accepting any monetary assistance from philanthropists who would be willing to help a poor bean counter buy a gas mask. Thank you.

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 :)!

How (not) to run a marathon

This post, much like the rest of me, is terribly late. This seems to be marathon season, full marathons, half marathons, 24, triathlons, 24. Except for marathons of the 24 variety, of which I am a veteran, I admire the tenacity and discipline marathoners of the physical exertion variety display, whether it is for a cause or simply to prove a point to themselves.

A recent case in point is my sister who just completed her first half marathon.

Most women, particularly Indian women tend to use childbirth as an excuse to lay off exercise and conveniently blame children for their being unable to shed weight (I know I'm going out on a limb and being very stereotypical here, apologies to all hurt feelings). This, in many cases, is a valid and true fact - one that I find very sexist since men cannot use the same excuse for not losing weight. I digress. My sister has always been an oddball fitness freak of nature in the BBC household (BBC for those who are wonder what it is, stands for Bala's Belly Corporation, an affectionate nickname my father had when in school). So it comes no surprise that this freak was the one to complete said marathon. Kudos to her and I find myself sadly short of words that adequately describe how I feel.

You know what I think about marathon runners? They're nuts, dumb, don't know the ways of the world. Don't get me wrong, but there are marathons that are run and marathons that are participated in. Most marathoners fall into the former category, yours truly falls in the latter. That, I believe, is the smart way to do it. Sure, with the right training, one can run the whole distance, but what if one does not have to run, but still finishes the marathon? So how does one participate without the road runner act? Simple, take an auto rickshaw for part of the way.

Allow me to explain. When I was in school, we were required to run a torturous 10km run every morning come rain or snow (unfortunately snow never came to Lovedale, but rain did come, in bucket loads). The route was as circuitous as it gets. We'd have to start off from Top Flats and literally patrol the school campus and come back via Junior School to Senior School. Now, the distance from Top Flats to Senior School is 500 metres, why one would take a 10km route in the first place was beyond me, but no one listened to me. The genius in me, on this occasion, was suppressed. That, however, did not stop it altogether.

A group of around 6-7 of us would amble along at the very end of the crowd making sure no boy is left behind, wounded or otherwise eaten by a passing leopard. In a gratitude-less world, this free, selfless service was rewarded with reprimand from KB, the physical instructor. However, reprimands never stopped us from doing what we loved, service to society, so this happened every morning.

One day, said genius had an epiphany. Every morning we pass the school garages and the school auto rickshaw would just be starting off on its daily milk run. Why not save the environment a little bit by taking a ride on an otherwise empty auto rickshaw? So we all piled in. We would have travelled the sum total of 549 metres when the vehicle was stopped, by none other than KB. What's worse, the checkpoint was right outside my house.

Like most teachers, KB had lost his sense of humour and ability to recognise genius somewhere around year 33 of his career. Needless to say, he did not take kindly to our little act of innovation and we were made to kneel down for half an hour, outside my house. It was a case of so close yet so far.

So, I ask my sister, you were the clever one in our family (and I've always been the black sheep), pray, why didn't you take an auto rickshaw on your half marathon? Shortage of 'ricks in your part of the US of A?

Nevertheless Saumya, I'm proud of your achievement (despite running like everyone else in the marathon)!

I blame the recession.

The recession does funny things. For one, who would've thought it possible to have discounted airfares in the middle of summer? Well, there were offers galore and I decided to relieve the wife of some of her home sickness and send her to India on a month long holiday. The time for travel came and I soon found myself staring at the lonely end of an entire month home alone, bang in the middle of the British summer. Almost cruelly, the weather was perfect for going out; Wimbledon only suffered a day or so of rain. For those of you who are already squirming thinking this is just another lonely lover post that is a long-winded rant about how much I miss and love my wife, rest easy, this isn't. I did miss her like the dickens and I do love her, but I'm not one to wax lyrical about it. If I was, I'd be a poet, not a bean counter.

This is about the tremendous journey of self discovery that happened during the one month she wasn't around. The loneliness compounded a pre-existing, but unknown medical condition and made it get even worse. Thank heavens for air tight windows and relatively dust free Britain. Had this happened while I was in India, God knows what would have happened to me, I would probably have contracted deadly diseases like Malaria, Dengue and such, simply because this condition worsened.

The amazing part is I didn't need to go to a doctor either to diagnose my condition or to take corrective medication, self medication if you will. The disease began rearing its dark ugly head on the first weekend alone itself. However, it was around week two of this ordeal that I diagnosed it as Extremlitis Buttatis Lazishia (pardon my Latin). Like a bum who is speaking at his first AA meeting, I told myself, "I am butt lazy!" It came to me like an epiphany. Corrective action was extremely easy after that.

Allow me to explain. Wife and parents left on their respective 10 hour flights in different directions on a Thursday. Friday was spent slaving away at the office making up for lost time. Saturday came and I got up at a rather leisurely 10 AM, settled down in my usual place in the drawing room with a few slices of bread and steaming cuppa' and switched on the TV. I must have moved from the place around 10 hours afterwards, to go straight to bed. I got up on Sunday at a more respectable 8 AM and decided to get some work done, came to drawing room and my jaw dropped. What I saw was a semi-circle of assorted junk starting with 3 remote controls, 3 coffee cups, the plate I used to eat the day before, the X Box controller and a laptop. I kid you not; they were in a perfect semi-circle around the place I sat in. I gave myself a mental kicking and excused the action, or lack of it, as the first day of 'freedom' and that things would be back to normal, with the house remaining squeaky clean, just the way I like it. The rest of the day was uneventful, but only because I packed my bags and headed out to a friend's place for lunch and to watch India get hammered by England in the 20Twenty world cup.

The week passed reasonably uneventfully until Friday. The sink was full of dishes, the dustbin was overflowing and stinking to high heavens and I had only opened the fridge to take the milk out and replace it each time I had coffee - once a day. End result, rotting vegetables were stinking the fridge up. Said epiphany struck then. I was uncharacteristically living in squalor. I had become a lazy lump of trash. Before 7/12 happened, I enjoyed living alone, I enjoyed keeping my house very unlike a bachelor pad and I loved cooking alone and experimenting on myself. Now, I hated living alone, while I still enjoyed keeping the house clean, I had no will to do so and I hated cooking alone.

I am a man of knee-jerk reactions and hence I embarked on a zombie-like cleaning spree and chucked out 3 garbage bags of potentially fly, rodent and disease attracting junk. The remaining two weeks of wifey's absence passed off just like the good 'ol days minus the cooking.

I'm happy to report wife is back in town and all is well, the birds are singing, the sun is shining (although occasionally now 'coz when she came back, she brought a classic wet British summer back with her) and I've been cured of Extremlitis Buttatis Lazishia. For now.

Moral of the story: Want to live a happy contended life in a small corner of your world, don't live in a recession.

Wimbledone

Wimbledon came and Wimbledon went. My interest in Tennis waned quite a bit after my teen idols Sampras and Graf retired. I found that the blokes who came afterwards didn't exactly play the same brand of tennis that the players of the '90s played. Gone were long rallies, fast volleys and Boris Becker style diving returns. In came a sort of "wham-bham-Thank you ma'am" brand of tennis where big servers and bigger ground strokes spelt the death of interesting matches.

The way games are played changes and I'm all for change, but more than anything, what caused me to lose interest was a combination of quick buck stars who had short careers, made a quick exit. There were no more idols to look forward to. I also sorely missed long standing rivalries a la Sampras-Agassi, Graf-Seles. In a world of short careers, there was no time for outstanding duels.

When Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal started vying with one another for top marks, it rekindled my interest, but again the brand of tennis played didn't quite appeal to me. All that changed on 5 July 2009. Watching the kind of game Federer and Rodick played in the final made me wonder as to how many other gems I missed in the past 5-6 years. Blow for blow, shot for shot, these two players matched each other. It was like watching two gladiators fighting it out in a Roman amphitheatre, each one looking for that moment of weakness that would give them the break they needed. That moment did not come for 4 hours and 14 minutes. Sure, they was the one instance in the second set tie-break when Federer won 5 points in a row to come up from 5-2 down to take the set. In a match which had upwards of 75 games, Federer broke Roddick's serve in only 1 game and that game won him the Championship - that's what I call the mother-of-all-breaks!

Rekindling of desires aside, there were a few things that bugged me to no end:

Commentators. In the era gone by, commentators used to say something relevant, something intelligent, some interesting information and gave us, well, commentary - what was wrong in the shot played, better ways of doing it, strategies going through the players minds etc. Not any more. I have high regard for the likes of Boris Becker and, in my opinion, he's right up there with the likes of Pete Sampras, but he just doesn't cut it as a commentator! The blokes these days say stuff for the sake of saying stuff. No more match analysis, no more strategies, no more opinions. Here's a typical example. Federer hits a cross court winner. Commentator: "Federer going for the forehand cross court shot, getting it in. The score is now 40-0". I can see that you knuckleheads! This is the type of commentary you'd expect to hear on the radio, not on TV! Oh, and this would be followed by 6 million replays of the shot from every angle perceivable and as if that wasn't enough, you'll have a graphical representation of the same shot, just to spice things up. This observation, many would agree, is not restricted to tennis. Sports in general seems to have gone to the dogs where commentary is concerned. Most of us would remember the havoc Mandira Bedi created in the world of Cricket a few years ago when she "showed" (wink, wink!) up on TV and had nothing intelligent to say, well, this is something similar, only instead of looking at noodle straps and hearing dumb talk, you get to hear stuff of the same IQ level from a suited and booted Boris Becker or Tim Henman! The prevailing logic seems to be that commentary is the retired players' club with automatic right of entry.

Andy Murray. I know I'm being cruel to Andy here. Bless him, he's extremely talented and young and is definitely going to make it big and have a 'Murray Hill' in the not too distant future. That said, when he was denied entry to the finals by a stellar performance from Roddick, I heaved a sigh of relief. I couldn't have handled another day of Murray Mania that took over the British Press over the past month and half (ever since he won the Queens or whatever). He was portrayed as some kind of demi-god who wields a magic wand disguised as a tennis racket and at one stage, some papers even seemed to hint that he is the solution to the economic climate by providing the junta with something to look forward in these bleak times. If this was India, there would be temples at ever cross road (in the middle of the junction, no doubt) in Murray's name, such was the idol worship. One may argue that coming from India, I have no right to say anything about idol worship. One may get a fat lip for saying so. In India, we need idols. In a land of a billion plus people, there is such a dearth of talent that we need blokes to look upto and talk about endlessly. Leave alone talent per-capita, talent in its entirety is conspicuous by its absence. Take Cricket. We have 15 people who are on the national team. 4 of them sit out each game secretly hoping someone from the remaining 11 fall and break their legs so that they get a chance. Of the remaining 11, 6 misfire at any given point in time. So we have 5 people with talent representing 1.3 (?) billion people. You do the math - I can't handle such large decimal numbers. Britain is not like that, they have talent overflowing from every nook and cranny in every sport. Footie (hell yeah!), Rugby, Cricket (they've got a team that misfires most of the time, so I'll discount that one), Tennis, Swimming, Cycling and God knows what else. But you've got to give it to the press here in the UK. They build temples for every sportsman whose sports happen to be in the news at the time. I only follow the Tennis news and was a bit claustrophobic with all the coverage of Murray that vied for my elusive attention.

Speaking of attention, I'm now looking forward to watching matches which Federer plays and hope Nadal gets alright soon, for they have now captured said attention.

I give you my word, I have just been Bauered

I have recently spent roughly 17 hours of my life living in a land where one is free to do anything, you want to come back from the dead? Check. Want to acquire WMDs to destroy the world as we know it? Check. Want to destroy a country? Check. Want to make your daughter Secretary of State? Check.

You see, I spent the last weekend catching up on Season 7 of 24. Another marathon session with Jack Bauer confirms the following:

'tis said Jack Bauer refused a syringe at a blood bank. Instead, he asked for a gun and a bucket. And that 9/11 only happened because Jack Bauer was on vacation. He'll never go on vacation again. All I can say is, Jack Bauer can:

1. kill at will (do you think he is the dubble-woh-sevan of America?)
2. taken out of a Senate hearing with consummate ease
3. whomever he thinks is necessary
4. the President of the US of A assurances at will, and the President will ignore everyone else and go with Jack's decision, just because he "gave his word"
5. every order given by commanding officers
6. be given access to classified information at the drop of a hat even though he doesn't have clearances
7. doesn't have to eat
8. get his friends classified jobs, just because he wants to work only with them, and most importantly,
9. justify all of the above!

The list is endless and so is the fun. Do not, for one instant, be fooled into thinking the Prez of the US of A is a puppet in Jack's hands whenever America faces a crisis. The Prez can also do the following:

1. appoint her own daughter as the Secretary of State without having to consult anyone and opposition parties are not even mentioned
2. every time there is a set back to National Security, she can look at the bearer of the news and say, "How can this happen? I don't care how its done, I want the person who did this be found immediately!" - I counted her saying this atleast twice every episode
3. stand by her guns and ignore all advisers, security analysts and common-sense, just because Jack said so (refer point d under things Jack can do above)
4. the first gentleman can be conned by any dimwit and end up being kidnapped. No points for guessing the IQ of the first gentleman

While all this is fun, the blokes intending to wreak havoc on USAland are no better:

1. they will let Jack infiltrate their gang in a matter of minutes and entrust him with the most critical part of the assignment, which Jack will screw up anyway
2. they get double crossed easily
3. they know the names and addresses of relatives of all government agents (how's that for doing their homework)
4. they all end up dead
5. they all end up dead, but a select few can be revived from death to make a comeback that leaves many more dead!
6. they have names like Dubaku (I cracked up when I heard the guy's name, how can a dubaku be scary?)

I'm not sure how many have seen the latest season of 24, I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so all I can say is nobody is safe, it's safer to stay indoors and lock all doors and windows :).

While watching it, another thought came to mind. The show takes place in America, where the counter terrorist agents have access to roughly the following methods of surveillance (give or take a few):

1. satellite which provide coverage of any place in a few seconds with HD clarity as if taken from a helicopter around 500 meters above the ground
2. surveillance cameras (even if they are private surveillance cameras, they are mysteriously linked to Uncle Sam's offices)
3. traffic cameras
4. infrared cameras from satellites to track heat signatures

This got me thinking. If the show were to be shot in the UK, all the satellite technology in the world would be redundant. All the agents would need is access to surveillance cameras. There are millions of cameras in this place. There was a report I read recently that every Londoner, on average, gets photographed by 300 cameras. Add to this, the proposal to have road cameras that can track every journey made by every vehicle in the UK using a network of number plate recognition cameras, blokes like Dubaku don't stand a chance!

Despite all that, there is something about that show that is gripping. You know Jack is going to kick ass in a way said ass has never been kicked before, but you still hang around to see it happen. It takes exhaustion to overcome you before you decide to switch off the TV and hit the sack, only to get up bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning and hitting the couch with a vengeance to make up for time lost resting tired eyes.

The suspense is built up in the beginning of each show, right upto the half way mark, stalls midway and builds up towards the end and boy!, does it finish with a bang or what, leaving you gasping for air and can't wait to watch the next episode.

From having watched all seven seasons (5 of which were watched over a 4 day period), I can say the best way to watch it is continuously. If you watch it on TV, the commercial breaks will kill the tension, so will waiting for a week to get the next episode.

Having said that, I think the producers should start thinking beyond WMDs and nukes to spook people, mass alien infiltration anybody?

P.S.:

Did you know that Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.

Sarvamm, upset mayam

I've never been much of a movie goer. I'm more of a movie watcher. However, of late, I've dived headlong into the watching business thanks to a generous offer from Cineworld Cinemas that permits me to watch n number of movies a month, and in return for the privilege I transfer a set amount of funds from my bank account to Cineworld. It works for me and them, a win-win situation, one might say.

My policy for watching Tamil movies, until recently was to only watch something that the whole of Tamilnadu raved about for no less than 6 months. Those films are usually graced with my patronage at the movie theatres.

Now, in typical Indian isshtyle, I watch as many movies as my schedule accommodates, just to get some paisa vasool.

While in mood to confess, I might also add that I never review movies. I'm going to break that practice as well. This post is about Sarvamm.

The movie stars Arya and Trisha. The reason we zeroed in on this particular Tamil movie is because it was the only one running within a 5000 mile radius. Bad move.

The movie starts off with Arya beating someone black and blue, no explanations offered. I suppose the person getting beaten is a symbolic reference to the audience. Then there's a tacky song in which Arya entertains the audience with a performance in which he only has 2 left feet. Maybe someone should inform him of the fact that he can't dance. The song, I'm informed by the wife, has been sung by Illayaraja. He's clearly out of touch with singing, but I'm sure we can endure 5 minutes of cacophony in favour of the grander scheme of things.

This is followed by a go-karting nee, bumper car, race which sets up the introduction for Trisha. I'm not sure if its the screen at my local multiplex or if that's the real deal, Trisha doesn't even look all that pretty in this movie, she looks skinny and malnourished. The lack of looks further accentuates the absence of acting.

What follows is a grinding, nail pullingly irritating 45 minutes in which Arya tries to woo Trisha. In the middle of all this, the villain and his sidekick get introduced, resulting in the untimely death of an undertaker for no reason whatsoever. The villain is totally devoid of any expression (I have a sneaking suspicion that he tries to be that way). Bad guy stalks another bloke who has no relation at all to Trisha or Arya. How the stalkee manages to stay one step ahead of the stalker while maintaining the same standard of living, changing cars, houses, schools for his kid etc., etc., without once worrying about money or the means of earning it boggles the mind.

Somewhere around the interval, the two independent plots are loosely connected, setting up the pace for the second half, which, I admit is a half decent thriller.

Other mind boggling matters include Arya not getting affected even after getting struck by a poisonous knife, the presence of king cobras in the jungles of Munnar, not rare sightings, but a dime a dozen.

However, good prevails of stupid at the end of the day. What especially amazes me is, the director seems to have had the amazing sense to stall any progress in the 'storyline'. It's almost as if the director decided to have 3,240,213 songs in the movie, to be inserted anytime the story heated up. I suppose the conversation at the editing stage would have been something like this, "Hmm, the story is getting too interesting, olddown here, lets have a song here, here and here. Oh, lets also have a song here, just to spice things up!"

Overall it was a pretty disappointing movie. Do you know what was the most upsetting bit? I ignored several divine messages to catch this movie. I first tried to watch the movie before it released (mixed-up the release dates), then missed the bus (quite literally) and therefore missed the show, and even had a fight just before leaving thereby cancelling the movie plan. I went and watched it against all odds and I'd have been a very disappointed man had I paid money for this. Thank God for the Unlimited Pass!

I'm a failure, there I said it

I failed my school's motto i.e., Never Give In and, I failed to reach my own targets. I have no excuses and I'm guilty as charged.

No, I'm talking about achieving my blogging deadlines.

I'm talking about Executive Orders. Does that ring a bell? I'm happy to say that I finally finished page 250, but after much deliberation, I've decided to abandon ship. Its not been an easy decision and I have undergone the same trials and tribulations a captain of a sinking ship feels - do I go down with the ship or escape with the rest of crew? I have chosen the latter.

Instead, I began reading a Dan Brown and have reached page 60 in just an hour, no problems with characters or parallel plots, thank you.

150 pages after I last reported to you, I'm no closer to understanding the characters (I've lost count of the new characters by the way), so I have decided that the President of the United States will have to battle evil on his own, I will not be able to help him and I wish him luck in setting the world right.

Recession hits home...

His eagle-like eyes concentrate on the minutest details. Every movement the banker makes is the subject of an extensive audit. Why was this deposit made, how much did you credit my account with, how much have you debited for that purchase, how much rent is due to me, prove to me that you have credited my salary etc., etc., are perpetual challenges the banker faces.

When its time to indulge in muti-million dollar deals, he pushes hard, really hard. Arguments are a-dime-a-dozen within this board room, no acquisition is settled without a lengthy debate, without an analysis about the strength of the investment and of benefits of investing in real estate.

He is ruthless in collecting rent for his properties. Relations and relationships have no place in the world of business and no one is spared.

His strategy worked just fine and he always finished as a multi-millionaire, victorious and rich. Until yesterday. Yesterday he was forced to file for bankruptcy, by his own daughter-in-law.

That, my dear readers, is how appa plays Monopoly. It takes an experienced eye to distinguish between the seriousness with which he trades in shares and plays Monopoly. No matter who rolls the dice, he personally totals it, he follows each and every player's moves to make sure they are done legally and makes sure rent is paid in accordance with the rules before the next person rolls the dice, he is a one man army comprising investor, auditor and investment guru, extolling the virtues of investing in real estate.

Fans of 'Lage Raho Munnabhai' would be familiar with the following conversation between Lucky and the corrupt government servant (obviously not verbatim, but reproduced accurately!):

Lucky: Kitna mangta hai kaam khatam karne? (How much do you want to finish the job?)
Corrupt Government Servant: Rs 10 lakhs
Lucky: Rs 20 thousand
CGS: Rs 8 lakhs
Lucky: Rs 25 thousand
CGS: Final offer Rs 5 lakhs
Lucky: Great, na tera, na mera Rs 2.5 lakhs, the deal is done, moo meeta kar! (neither yours nor mine, Rs 2.5 lakhs, the deal is done, bring out the sweets).

I simply love this type of bargaining and here's the scene that took place between appa and amma yesterday over appa's aborted attempt to purchase Hong Kong from amma with hopes of building a hotel. The original price amma paid for Hong Kong was M$ 2.6m

Appa: How much do you want for Hong Kong?
Amma: I paid 2.6 million and since you will build a hotel if I sell it to you, I want atleast 8 million (this was reasonable considering I was her financial advisor and after looking at possible inflows to appa once he builds a hotel there, I suggested the figure of 8 million).
Appa: I will give you 3 million, nothing more
Amma: Nothing doing, I'll come down to maximum 6 million
Appa: I'm not paying more than 3.2 million, take it or leave it.
Amma: OK fine, I'm leaving it.

10 rounds later, appa was bankrupt because the rest of us built hotels at each of our places, my wife at Sydney, London and New York, amma at Rome, Shanghai and Vancouver and me at Montreal and Riga. He ended up staying at London quite a bit and with no sources of funds other than his salary run, his income could not keep up with his extravagant expenses and he had to be declared bankrupt!

Its a cruel world, 'init?

Should I bring out the bubbly?

My name is Anand and I'm (supposed to be) a geek. And in Geekland, today I got the ultimate reward. I'll get to it in a bit. First, more on why I'm a geek.

Geek is a label that my sister lovingly stuck onto my forehead while I was with her in Dubai. I think that label is wrong more on account of her being 'um, lets say, "technologically challenged" rather than on my being any sort of technical gee-whiz with soda bottle glasses. You see, back then, when I was in Dubai, I was a man of simple means, living the bachelor life in a single room with no TV or girlfriends to keep me company. So it became that my means of entertainment centred around the Internet and appliances that make it possible to connect to the Internet - i.e., computers and related items.

I was quite content using my office laptop with a tethered connection for these pursuits until the suits in my office decided that using the office laptop for personal purposes was blasphemy and blocked all the fun software - messengers, video players and the like. For some sadistic reason, there were some software that were not blocked, but an email was circulated saying you may install these software, but if you get caught, somebody's gonna get hurt, we won't say who.

I needed a personal laptop now and not wanting to settle for anything else, it came in the form of a Mac. Soon I was blissfully spending nights watching movies online and even downloading some of them. Problem solved? No. My Mac has a 13" screen, so keeping it tethered meant the screen was faraway and audio sounded wonky. So I got a wireless router and sound blasters (again of the super fast and super fine quality varieties respectively). Problem number 3 was that I was running out disc space thanks to my fire-at-will downloading, so I needed more hard disk space and that came in the form of a 500GB WD MyBook (back then that was the most space available). The only drawback to the above was the minefield of wires that necessitated tip-toeing into my room to avoid an urgent meeting between face and floor. So that's about my computing pursuits.

Next on the list is my love of good mobile phones running Windows Mobile and lovely, fun filled hours spent customising them with custom ROMs that I tested for some 'fellow' geeks at an online forum. The result - three phones, with one almost always connected to my laptop. That's it.

When I started this blog, I also included a stat counter so I can see which countries people are visiting my page from and get some cheap kicks out of that. So in geek terms, I am really only a teenager who is experimenting and nowhere near the professional that I am portrayed to be. I can see true geeks nodding in agreement and I am thankful to them.


But please, pretty please, call me a geek! Why, because I got the reward mentioned above. With frowning eyebrows, I can see you asking me what that reward is. Here it is: my page is listed 6th out of 4.2 million web pages, I am on Google!












PS: I will not rest until I reach the number 1 spot. So, to answer my question, no I will not bring out the bubbly on this occasion, but yes, I might just treat myself to another custom ROM...

The same thing, in English please...

"I am awaiting confirmation of a B wave low in order to go long and ride wave C higher to 1.50 +. “The count that I am working with now treats the rally from 1.35 to 1.4990 as wave A of a flat (flats have subwaves 3-3-5).” Wave B is in 3 waves and waves a and c of B are roughly equal (a common occurrence). Exceeding 1.3954 would be the first sign that a low is in place. Until then, there is the possibility of price testing 1.35."

I have a confession to make. I am a bean counter, a bean counter of the boring variety. Wait a minute, that's NOT my confession, I'm still getting to it! A bean counter who is worth his beans would, theoretically speaking, understand what's written in the preceding paragraph. I don't. Its all gobbledegook to me. This gives me the same vague confusion that comes from reading free horoscope predictions.

Take this gem for instance:

"Longer term, if the USDCAD is breaking higher in an impulse as a terminal thrust from a triangle (that had been underway since October), then price needs to remain above 1.2348."

Any normal, red blooded male would think this is an excerpt from a romantic novel in which the story is at that critical stage when the hero, USD and the heroine, CAD are going to do things which only dirty little or highly romantic minds (depending on which side of the coin you're looking at) can come up with. But no, this is a long term forecast for the US Dollar and Canadian Dollar!

Do you know what's at the root of my problems? Mozilla Firefox, version 3.1 to be precise. The blasted browser is awesome at all times except when it has the little "subscribe to feed" link with each web page. While researching some stuff about foreign exchange rates, I came across this site which gives forex forecasts and promptly hit subscribe, only to feel inadequate with every passing day.

Woe is me....

Note: All text in italics are part of an actual forex forecast taken from the website wwwdotdailyfxdotcom and is copy righted to them. Feel free to check it out and join me in my inadequacy buhahaha....

The customary "Why I started blogging" post

I follow so many blogs that I only need to log onto Google Reader every 5 minutes to find a new post, yet, despite the fact that I used to enjoy writing, I didn't have a blog for myself.

Ask me why and I have a well rehearsed and oft used line, "I can't find that creative spark". The real reason is that I don't want to think, the mind has become rusty and unused (hence the title of the blog, there, I've justified the title, just like they do in Tamil movies!). The only writing I've been doing for the past few years has been writing reports, boring, straight faced reports - reports that are as boring as...well, me!

Marriage brought about a change in me. No, its got nothing to do with inspiration and being in love, I'm talking about the marriage itself. So many hilarious incidents happened that there is no way I'm going to give up so many chances to kick start that brain and let the creative juices flow!

There is a more profound reason why I've taken to blogging - famous people have blogs, simple! You see, my wedding was celebrated with a lot of pomp and gaiety so much so that the next time I went to Chidambaram, I was actually recognised by a total stranger who remembered me from the banners and came and spoke to me. That makes me famous. Period. Famous people have blogs. Yet another period.

This is the first post and therefore will be kept brief, stay tuned...

P. S.:- Feels like I just lifted a weight off me, having confessed to my laziness :)