Sometime during my teens I stumbled into advertising and worked in ad agencies during weekends through pre university. By the time the stint was over I had learned all that is know about advertising and was all set for an illustrious career in anything other than advertising. The tricks and gimmicks that I have learned working in an ad agency will be very useful for people who are contemplating an advertising career in the Creative side...
The web defines Advertisement as "Item of publicity to promote a product or service in newspapers, magazines, on TV etc."
Let me take the example of the following products/service to illustrate this point.
SHAMPOO
Marketing guy from shampoo company (MG): Ok, We need to push up sales of our Gopika shampoo.
Creative Director of Ad Agency(CD): And what is unique about your shampoo that we can highlight?
MG: Nothing.
CD: Great!
CD sends out a talent scout to look for a gal with long lustrous hair.
Talent Scout (TS) to gal with long lustrous hair: Ma’am you have lovely hair
Gal: er.. thank you. Do I know you?
TS: I am from ABC Modeling Agency, would you like to model?
Gal (jumping up and down with glee): wow !!! What will it be? Revlon cosmetics, Lee Jeans or a Mercedes car?
TS: er...you could call it cosmetics...
After the confirmation and paperwork CD sets up the photo shoot. The gal’s hair is washed and cleaned by an expert beautician using the best imported shampoo and lots of photographs are taken of her hair in various hair styles in landscaped gardens, in the shower, in an office setting etc.
Scene at the studio
Gal: what the f*&%$ I thought I will be modeling for cosmetics, why are you photographing my hair and not my face?
CD: er, this is just the beginning; we will unveil your lovely face in a phased manner.
Gal (happily): Oh ok.
After the shoot she is paid a pittance and unceremoniously shown the door.
TOOTHPASTE
MG: I know our Raja Toothpaste sucks but I gotta sales target to meet here.
CD: Whatever!
Talent Scout is sent to various colleges during lunch break. He shortlists a couple of gals and guys with the widest grins, and gets them over to the studio where a dentist waits with white paint.
Scene at the studio
Gal no. 1: What’s that? (Pointing to the white paint)
Dentist: This is XYZ teeth cleaner.
Guy no. 2: What does it do?
Dentist: It cleans your teeth to a sparkling white. It is IDA certified.
Guys and Gals: That’s neat!!
Dentist to assistant: Give them all my visiting card. They will definitely need it by this time tomorrow.
The guys and gals are clothed in funky college costumes and their teeth painted white by the dentist. The photographer adjusts his filter to subdue the shine from their teeth and takes numerous group photos of the guys and gals grinning widely at the camera.
After the shoot they are paid a pittance and unceremoniously shown the lift, aching jaws and all.
APPOINTMENT AD FOR IT COMPANY
HR Manager: We need to get the best talents into our company.
CD: Ok, so what are the benefits that your company offers prospective employees?
HR: Benefits?? What’s that?
CD: Ok, I get the point!
Talent Scout is sent out to Engineering colleges to look for very ordinary looking guys and gals (VOG)(This is for a more realsitic effect). After short listing a few he approaches them.
TS: Hello I am from XYZ Modeling agency; we are looking for your kinda face for our latest ad campaign.
VOG: Us?
TS: Yes !! You guys kinda fit the role. What are your names?
VOG no 1: I am Nadamuri Tharakka Venkatravamma and these are my friends Marudur Gopala Krishnan , Shinykutty Johnson, Srilakshmi Venkatachalapathy and Konkona Roychowdhury.
TS: Whew that was quite a mouthful. You will look just right for the role I have in mind.
VOGs are dressed in office wear with access cards around their necks and taken to Taj Westend. They are made to sit in the conference room and photographed looking seriously into laptops. A blond man staying at the hotel is persuaded to sit with them for the shoot for added effect. Then the guys’ strip into swimming suits while the girls enter the pool in their Salwars and pose like they are having a blast. Finally they are taken to the in-house discotheque where they are photographed dancing and presumably having fun.
HR to CD: Make it look like it is great working for Really Soft Technologies Pvt. Ltd. even though we are a 24/7 sweatshop.
CD(sarcastically): Shall I shoot the Vidhana Soudha as the new Really Soft Technologies Pvt. Ltd. building madam ?
HR: Why not! Personally I would have preferred the Taj Mahal but we don’t have the money to send you even by second class three tier to Agra.
After the shoot the VOGs are paid a pittance and ceremoniously shown the Taj Westend gate by the liveried Gatekeeper.
The copywriter then takes these photos, writes a catchy headline a smart body copy and makes a snazzy advertisement, which is splashed in various publications for your consumption.
I think I will stick with Shikakai powder, Neem twigs and my present company.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Monday, January 16, 2006
The silent killer !
This is a true incident that happened last year.
Last summer me and three other girls were living in a house in a less populated part of Koramangala. My roomies were out-of-towners while I was a ‘fringe-Bangalorean’ that is my folks lived a little away from the city. In order to cut short the commute time I had convinced my parents that I should stay in the city during weekdays during summer Internships. My parent's reluctantly gave in when they met my other roomies and the landlord who was a nice gentleman. I was maha thrilled to be living alone for the first time in my life, that is if you discount the months before final exams when I usually stayed in the college hostel (but then that was more like being in the Central Jail, without the benefits.) The house in which we all lived like merry bachelorettes was a four bedroomed house, which means we had our own private rooms. My room was slightly bigger than the matchbox size of the other rooms and this was willingly ceded to me to accommodate my PC.
My room mates were a mallu gal ‘A’, a Bengali gal I used to call ‘Chikoo’ for obvious reasons ( she was plump) and ‘P’ a girl from Chennai. I was the only non-techie and Intern in this crowd. From day one, the four of us hit it off quite well. None of those "your-wet-towel-was on-my-bed" and "you-borrowed-my-shoes" frictions that happens to gals living in hostels or sharing rooms. I think having our own rooms was a big blessing.
One day I was very late coming from office. As a drove tiredly into the house I didn't notice that the streetlights were off. There were several empty plots near our house and a huge wooded park sprawled opposite the house. I pulled into the driveway and in the faint light of my bike headlights saw that my roomies bikes were already parked in the driveway. After I had switched off the light of my bike I noticed that it was pitch dark everywhere. Groping my way to the front door I felt around till I found the switch to the light on the verandah and flicked the light on. The verandah was instantly bathed in yellow light and I noticed that the front door was ajar. The house was pitch dark save for the flickering of the TV and there was no movement within. I felt a chill run up my spine. I fished out my mobile from my handbag and called the landline in the house. I could hear the phone ringing but no one picked up the phone. I tried my roomies mobiles with no luck.
Fearing the worst I gingerly went inside the near dark hall. The light switch for the hall near the front door was useless as there was no bulb in the socket. That left the tubelight with its switch at the other end of the hall. As I walked into the dark hall groping my way around I could get a terrible smell. The smell was quite overpowering and I felt nausea welling up within me. Covering my nose with my jacket I groped around till I found the tube light switch and put it on. As the tube light flickered I got the terrible glimpse of a dead body that lay sprawled in the hall. Stifling a scream I rushed wildly out of the hall and into the kitchen. Quickly closing the door to shut out the terrible sight I put on the light switch with a trembling hand. I froze in horror at the sight in the kitchen.
Crockery and cutlery lay everywhere and the kitchen was in a mess. On the kitchen platform were my roomies their eyes wide with terror, mouth open in a silent scream. ‘Chikoo’ clutched a blue plastic packet in her cold hand. It had “Bellona Cockroach Repellent” written across in bold letters....
And judging from the dead body of the cockroach in the hall it was damn effective.
The salesman was right, it was ‘deadly’.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trackback: In my absence, one of my roomies had lit the Bellona agarbathi thinking that it was a regular agarbthi. This had caused the cockroach to come out and breathe its last in the hall where they were sitting watching TV. And since all three were terrified of cockroaches they would have fled to the nearest room i.e. the kitchen on seeing the roach in the hall. But to their bad luck the smell of the agarbathi had made the roaches in the kitchen to crawl out too to die on the kitchen floor. This would have made them jump on the kitchen platform effectively trapping them till I came back from work.
I took a broom and gathered the lone ranger in the hall and the other fellahs in the kitchen and put them to their final rest in the drain outside. After a thorough inspection of the house and lots of reassuring my roomies finally climbed down from their perch of one hour.
‘A’ gets married in May and ‘Chikoo’ in March. Me and ‘P’ the youngest amongst the four are now back with our parents. But this is one incident that we will never forget for a long time to come.
Last summer me and three other girls were living in a house in a less populated part of Koramangala. My roomies were out-of-towners while I was a ‘fringe-Bangalorean’ that is my folks lived a little away from the city. In order to cut short the commute time I had convinced my parents that I should stay in the city during weekdays during summer Internships. My parent's reluctantly gave in when they met my other roomies and the landlord who was a nice gentleman. I was maha thrilled to be living alone for the first time in my life, that is if you discount the months before final exams when I usually stayed in the college hostel (but then that was more like being in the Central Jail, without the benefits.) The house in which we all lived like merry bachelorettes was a four bedroomed house, which means we had our own private rooms. My room was slightly bigger than the matchbox size of the other rooms and this was willingly ceded to me to accommodate my PC.
My room mates were a mallu gal ‘A’, a Bengali gal I used to call ‘Chikoo’ for obvious reasons ( she was plump) and ‘P’ a girl from Chennai. I was the only non-techie and Intern in this crowd. From day one, the four of us hit it off quite well. None of those "your-wet-towel-was on-my-bed" and "you-borrowed-my-shoes" frictions that happens to gals living in hostels or sharing rooms. I think having our own rooms was a big blessing.
One day I was very late coming from office. As a drove tiredly into the house I didn't notice that the streetlights were off. There were several empty plots near our house and a huge wooded park sprawled opposite the house. I pulled into the driveway and in the faint light of my bike headlights saw that my roomies bikes were already parked in the driveway. After I had switched off the light of my bike I noticed that it was pitch dark everywhere. Groping my way to the front door I felt around till I found the switch to the light on the verandah and flicked the light on. The verandah was instantly bathed in yellow light and I noticed that the front door was ajar. The house was pitch dark save for the flickering of the TV and there was no movement within. I felt a chill run up my spine. I fished out my mobile from my handbag and called the landline in the house. I could hear the phone ringing but no one picked up the phone. I tried my roomies mobiles with no luck.
Fearing the worst I gingerly went inside the near dark hall. The light switch for the hall near the front door was useless as there was no bulb in the socket. That left the tubelight with its switch at the other end of the hall. As I walked into the dark hall groping my way around I could get a terrible smell. The smell was quite overpowering and I felt nausea welling up within me. Covering my nose with my jacket I groped around till I found the tube light switch and put it on. As the tube light flickered I got the terrible glimpse of a dead body that lay sprawled in the hall. Stifling a scream I rushed wildly out of the hall and into the kitchen. Quickly closing the door to shut out the terrible sight I put on the light switch with a trembling hand. I froze in horror at the sight in the kitchen.
Crockery and cutlery lay everywhere and the kitchen was in a mess. On the kitchen platform were my roomies their eyes wide with terror, mouth open in a silent scream. ‘Chikoo’ clutched a blue plastic packet in her cold hand. It had “Bellona Cockroach Repellent” written across in bold letters....
And judging from the dead body of the cockroach in the hall it was damn effective.
The salesman was right, it was ‘deadly’.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trackback: In my absence, one of my roomies had lit the Bellona agarbathi thinking that it was a regular agarbthi. This had caused the cockroach to come out and breathe its last in the hall where they were sitting watching TV. And since all three were terrified of cockroaches they would have fled to the nearest room i.e. the kitchen on seeing the roach in the hall. But to their bad luck the smell of the agarbathi had made the roaches in the kitchen to crawl out too to die on the kitchen floor. This would have made them jump on the kitchen platform effectively trapping them till I came back from work.
I took a broom and gathered the lone ranger in the hall and the other fellahs in the kitchen and put them to their final rest in the drain outside. After a thorough inspection of the house and lots of reassuring my roomies finally climbed down from their perch of one hour.
‘A’ gets married in May and ‘Chikoo’ in March. Me and ‘P’ the youngest amongst the four are now back with our parents. But this is one incident that we will never forget for a long time to come.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Forever young !
Thursday morning, and the usual avalanche of SMS’s fall on me as the gals plan Friday night’s jam session. I am caught in the middle of a crossfire of SMS’s going back and forth for a good one and a half hour.
1. silverine’s place, we can have a barbecue
2. No! 2 far + pesky brother how about N’s place?
3. No, pesky brother there too, how about S’s place?
4. No, her mom will close us by 10
5. Shobha?
6. Pesky younger sister
7. Ok then it is silverine’s place then
8. Ok.
It’s a wonder we get any work done at all on a Thursday.
Next round of SMS’ starts post lunch.
1. Bacardi Breezer for me
2. Rum, OM
3. KF Beer
4. Smirnoff
5. Blue Riband
6. somebody please get the softdrinks too
7. I hate Smirnoff , make it Absolut
8. I hate KF Beer, get me UB
9. Grovers White Wine
10. Who will buy?
11. Silverine and Nisha
12. Why us?????
13. (silence)
Friday evening me and Nisha set off for Sunday to Monday (S2M). Nisha grumbles that it took her a good half an hour to write down the booze list from her mobile while I look around furtively to see if any relation/friend of the family is around. I will never bump into a relation/friend of the family when I am shopping for groceries, but the moment I pick up a bottle of booze they appear miraculously from nowhere.*sigh*
The coast was clear. S2M was thinly populated with housewives and snotty hyperactive kids. We take our trolley and with the air of experienced boozards begin filling up the trolley. Pretty soon it is evident that we will need another trolley (because we had to keep the bottles horizontal in single file to avoid breakage). I walk across with an air of great interest to the Masala section, see an abandoned trolley and quickly grab it and we begin filling it up. After some time it becomes evident that something was horribly wrong with our booze shopping list because we are in need of a third trolley!!!!!
Time for SMS’s again.
1. Ok, tell us exactly how much booze you all want!
2. I want 3 breezers, orange flavor
3. 3 UB beers, pint
4. One wine, very chilled ok?
5. Smirnoff, 250 ml yaar
6. one 500 ml coke, sprite, fanta
7. if they don’t have OM get Celebration Rum,
8. They don’t have quarter? How dumb!
9. Ok then get me a 500 ml
10. Sausages over at Foodworld, can you get it instead?
11. Hey I am Veg remember?
12. Yeah, and I am Miss India
And so on and so forth. Pretty soon we are cursing and swearing and jotting down the ‘orders’. Now we know why waiters give us the cruel eye when we get into a debate on the merits and demerits of various brands of alcohol while he is waiting, pencil poised to take our orders.
After filling up for the second time, we go to the billing area near the exit. I see my Uncle John, my Dad’s drinking buddy coming straight at us. I duck behind the plastic wares shelf leaving a flustered Nisha with two trolleys laden with booze. Uncle John takes his time at the toiletry section and Nisha manages to push both the trolley amidst curses to 8 generations of my ancestors to the billing area. We are 5th in the queue consisting of a beautiful grey haired grandmom buying cheese and sugarless cookies, an old couple buying papadams, a mom buying half the store, and two guys buying Maggi Noodles and Sprite ( guess they were eating in style that day).
And as is wont for people waiting in the queue, everyone is casually looking around at the people coming in and the people waiting with them and at the …..trolleys. Our trolley looks like a bootleggers tempo and bottles stick out like fluorescent sore thumbs. The elderly gentleman standing in front of us with namam on forehead looks disapprovingly at us. He whispers something to his wife. She looks at our trolley pointedly, then stares at us coldly making both of us squirm like two worms on a hot plate. Then mom decides to look around. Her eyes freeze as she spots our trolley, widens in disbelief and she looks away disapprovingly. Then one of the not-so-merry bachelors standing behind the Grandmom espies our trolley. He nudges his friend and both giggle like two school girls who have just seen a packet of condoms. I suggest to Nisha that we give a swig of the wine to these people and both of us collapse into giggles at the very thought. (More disapproving stares)
Our turn comes at last and the cashier starts removing the bottles one by one painstakingly scanning the barcode one by one blessed bottle at a time. We ignore the stares and smirks of the growing queue and finally manage to leave the place after what seemed an eternity.
As we were walking out cursing and grumbling and groaning at the weight of the bottles and the ‘narrow minded” people, we heard a voice calling out - “Girls!” We look around and see that it was the white haired Grandma who was ahead of the sober bachelors in the line. She waves, smiles and then winks and says. “Have a blast, girls. And have a large one for me.”
We smile right back absolutely bowled over by the spunky lady.
At last!!! Someone who understands us. Someone who is our age !! (at least at heart.)
As we walk away I catch myself singing "Forever young, I want to be forever young"
1. silverine’s place, we can have a barbecue
2. No! 2 far + pesky brother how about N’s place?
3. No, pesky brother there too, how about S’s place?
4. No, her mom will close us by 10
5. Shobha?
6. Pesky younger sister
7. Ok then it is silverine’s place then
8. Ok.
It’s a wonder we get any work done at all on a Thursday.
Next round of SMS’ starts post lunch.
1. Bacardi Breezer for me
2. Rum, OM
3. KF Beer
4. Smirnoff
5. Blue Riband
6. somebody please get the softdrinks too
7. I hate Smirnoff , make it Absolut
8. I hate KF Beer, get me UB
9. Grovers White Wine
10. Who will buy?
11. Silverine and Nisha
12. Why us?????
13. (silence)
Friday evening me and Nisha set off for Sunday to Monday (S2M). Nisha grumbles that it took her a good half an hour to write down the booze list from her mobile while I look around furtively to see if any relation/friend of the family is around. I will never bump into a relation/friend of the family when I am shopping for groceries, but the moment I pick up a bottle of booze they appear miraculously from nowhere.*sigh*
The coast was clear. S2M was thinly populated with housewives and snotty hyperactive kids. We take our trolley and with the air of experienced boozards begin filling up the trolley. Pretty soon it is evident that we will need another trolley (because we had to keep the bottles horizontal in single file to avoid breakage). I walk across with an air of great interest to the Masala section, see an abandoned trolley and quickly grab it and we begin filling it up. After some time it becomes evident that something was horribly wrong with our booze shopping list because we are in need of a third trolley!!!!!
Time for SMS’s again.
1. Ok, tell us exactly how much booze you all want!
2. I want 3 breezers, orange flavor
3. 3 UB beers, pint
4. One wine, very chilled ok?
5. Smirnoff, 250 ml yaar
6. one 500 ml coke, sprite, fanta
7. if they don’t have OM get Celebration Rum,
8. They don’t have quarter? How dumb!
9. Ok then get me a 500 ml
10. Sausages over at Foodworld, can you get it instead?
11. Hey I am Veg remember?
12. Yeah, and I am Miss India
And so on and so forth. Pretty soon we are cursing and swearing and jotting down the ‘orders’. Now we know why waiters give us the cruel eye when we get into a debate on the merits and demerits of various brands of alcohol while he is waiting, pencil poised to take our orders.
After filling up for the second time, we go to the billing area near the exit. I see my Uncle John, my Dad’s drinking buddy coming straight at us. I duck behind the plastic wares shelf leaving a flustered Nisha with two trolleys laden with booze. Uncle John takes his time at the toiletry section and Nisha manages to push both the trolley amidst curses to 8 generations of my ancestors to the billing area. We are 5th in the queue consisting of a beautiful grey haired grandmom buying cheese and sugarless cookies, an old couple buying papadams, a mom buying half the store, and two guys buying Maggi Noodles and Sprite ( guess they were eating in style that day).
And as is wont for people waiting in the queue, everyone is casually looking around at the people coming in and the people waiting with them and at the …..trolleys. Our trolley looks like a bootleggers tempo and bottles stick out like fluorescent sore thumbs. The elderly gentleman standing in front of us with namam on forehead looks disapprovingly at us. He whispers something to his wife. She looks at our trolley pointedly, then stares at us coldly making both of us squirm like two worms on a hot plate. Then mom decides to look around. Her eyes freeze as she spots our trolley, widens in disbelief and she looks away disapprovingly. Then one of the not-so-merry bachelors standing behind the Grandmom espies our trolley. He nudges his friend and both giggle like two school girls who have just seen a packet of condoms. I suggest to Nisha that we give a swig of the wine to these people and both of us collapse into giggles at the very thought. (More disapproving stares)
Our turn comes at last and the cashier starts removing the bottles one by one painstakingly scanning the barcode one by one blessed bottle at a time. We ignore the stares and smirks of the growing queue and finally manage to leave the place after what seemed an eternity.
As we were walking out cursing and grumbling and groaning at the weight of the bottles and the ‘narrow minded” people, we heard a voice calling out - “Girls!” We look around and see that it was the white haired Grandma who was ahead of the sober bachelors in the line. She waves, smiles and then winks and says. “Have a blast, girls. And have a large one for me.”
We smile right back absolutely bowled over by the spunky lady.
At last!!! Someone who understands us. Someone who is our age !! (at least at heart.)
As we walk away I catch myself singing "Forever young, I want to be forever young"
Sunday, January 08, 2006
One for the road!
Dear Bengalureans!
Namaskara! I am Doddappa. Senior Driver BMTC. I am working in BMTC for past several days and hence the promotion as Senior Driver. (I would have been a Class I driver but for the blindness in one eye and color blindness in the other)
First of all, you pedestrians should realize that I love each one of you like just like my own brother or sister. Not that I don’t have any of my own, but then "the customer is always right yadda yadda" and I have to make the right noises according to the management this year....and I am not talking of the bus horn.
My bus is named Road King. I love driving. But I hate the people who come under my wheels. It is kinda uncool to have your tyres dirtied so often you know. So people, please try and keep out of the roads and if you must venture out, do it in a BMTC.
To drive home this point we drivers have adopted a new motto this year.
“The safest place in Bangalore is INSIDE a BMTC bus”.
On this auspicious occasion I have New Year message for all you lovely people of Bengaluru.
My first message is for you pesky...er young and bright bike riders. The road is for the big boys period. Think of your mom, sister, wife and other female relations when you decide to step on the road. Won’t they miss the chance to cook and feed you and keep your home, wash your clothes etc etc etc (and whatever else it is that women do) when you are dead? Therefore keeping them in consideration, hop on my jolly jalopy and enjoy the ride. Do us a favor. Lose the bike.
My next message is for all you irritating...well I meant well heeled four wheeler drivers. The road is not for woosies, period. Think of the size of my four wheeler.Then think of the size and EMI of your four wheeler. Then think of dealing with our Traffic Cops when you get your Merc dented! Then think of that nice garage you have at home. Then think of your car parked safely in the garage! Hope you are getting the big picture here....
Third message goes out to our tempo drivers, lorry driver etc."You scratch my back I will mangle yours right back tee hee."
Fourth and final message goes out to our dear Auto Rickshaw Drivers." F%&@ you all !!!"
I end my message wishing all pedestrians......I mean Bengalureans "Hosa Varshada Shubhaashayagalu!”
Translated into English it means "Happily New Year!"
Please remember, “The safest place in Bangalore is INSIDE a BMTC bus”. Kapiche?
Your's very sincerely,
Doddappa
Namaskara! I am Doddappa. Senior Driver BMTC. I am working in BMTC for past several days and hence the promotion as Senior Driver. (I would have been a Class I driver but for the blindness in one eye and color blindness in the other)
First of all, you pedestrians should realize that I love each one of you like just like my own brother or sister. Not that I don’t have any of my own, but then "the customer is always right yadda yadda" and I have to make the right noises according to the management this year....and I am not talking of the bus horn.
My bus is named Road King. I love driving. But I hate the people who come under my wheels. It is kinda uncool to have your tyres dirtied so often you know. So people, please try and keep out of the roads and if you must venture out, do it in a BMTC.
To drive home this point we drivers have adopted a new motto this year.
“The safest place in Bangalore is INSIDE a BMTC bus”.
On this auspicious occasion I have New Year message for all you lovely people of Bengaluru.
My first message is for you pesky...er young and bright bike riders. The road is for the big boys period. Think of your mom, sister, wife and other female relations when you decide to step on the road. Won’t they miss the chance to cook and feed you and keep your home, wash your clothes etc etc etc (and whatever else it is that women do) when you are dead? Therefore keeping them in consideration, hop on my jolly jalopy and enjoy the ride. Do us a favor. Lose the bike.
My next message is for all you irritating...well I meant well heeled four wheeler drivers. The road is not for woosies, period. Think of the size of my four wheeler.Then think of the size and EMI of your four wheeler. Then think of dealing with our Traffic Cops when you get your Merc dented! Then think of that nice garage you have at home. Then think of your car parked safely in the garage! Hope you are getting the big picture here....
Third message goes out to our tempo drivers, lorry driver etc."You scratch my back I will mangle yours right back tee hee."
Fourth and final message goes out to our dear Auto Rickshaw Drivers." F%&@ you all !!!"
I end my message wishing all pedestrians......I mean Bengalureans "Hosa Varshada Shubhaashayagalu!”
Translated into English it means "Happily New Year!"
Please remember, “The safest place in Bangalore is INSIDE a BMTC bus”. Kapiche?
Your's very sincerely,
Doddappa
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Cameraware
Today as I sat at my comp hard at work, a chat window pops up in front of me startling me. It was my friend Sunitha and her message read “I can see what you doing, you bad girl !”. I was battling to keep my temper in check after a mail from the Printer telling me that the printing matter that was to be delivered today would be delivered next week as there was a huge traffic jam near the Printing Press!!!! The stupid fellow always gives such innovative excuse because he has not done the job. That’s when the chat window pops up on the monitor.
This particular incident got me thinking. What if in the near future someone develops a a Camera like software programme that could be sent to other peoples computers as a malicious attachment to capture images and sounds of the person using the computer, his surroundings etc? (Do I hear that it is already under development? *shudder*)
At the rate at which technology is leapfrogging frontiers I wouldn’t be surprised if such a thing does happen soon. The enormity of its impact on our day to day lives I am sure would be tremendous. Imagine putting on your comp and then running a “cameraware” scan to remove malicious camera programmes every time you use the comp? And be forever wary that you are being observed by “cameraware’ that slips in like adware into your computer. It would be like living in fear forever! Even pesky adwares are difficult to remove completely as they keep reappearing, so a “cameraware’ would be just as difficult to remove completely from the system. Besides such a programme may be able to read or scan important files stored in your computer and send it out using your email to a remote operator.
Computers will be confined to isolated rooms in homes as you dare not keep it in your bedroom because you change your clothes in there. Or in any other room for that matter because a your comp is now a potential peeping tom. A ‘cameraware’ will become very useful for industrial espionage as it will be easy to install and use unlike bugs.
I can think of dozens of potential hazardous applications for a ‘cameraware’ none palatable. I am sure Symantec and Grisoft will make their billions making Anti Cameraware programmes to combat the growing intrusion into our personal space. And as they make software to detect hidden Cameraware, so will the makers of Cameraware make newer and more sophisticated editions of Cameraware that will be increasingly devious and difficult to detect.
Someone please tell me that this is a technical impossibility!
( p.s.dreamslittle has elaborated the impact of such a technology in his blog)
This particular incident got me thinking. What if in the near future someone develops a a Camera like software programme that could be sent to other peoples computers as a malicious attachment to capture images and sounds of the person using the computer, his surroundings etc? (Do I hear that it is already under development? *shudder*)
At the rate at which technology is leapfrogging frontiers I wouldn’t be surprised if such a thing does happen soon. The enormity of its impact on our day to day lives I am sure would be tremendous. Imagine putting on your comp and then running a “cameraware” scan to remove malicious camera programmes every time you use the comp? And be forever wary that you are being observed by “cameraware’ that slips in like adware into your computer. It would be like living in fear forever! Even pesky adwares are difficult to remove completely as they keep reappearing, so a “cameraware’ would be just as difficult to remove completely from the system. Besides such a programme may be able to read or scan important files stored in your computer and send it out using your email to a remote operator.
Computers will be confined to isolated rooms in homes as you dare not keep it in your bedroom because you change your clothes in there. Or in any other room for that matter because a your comp is now a potential peeping tom. A ‘cameraware’ will become very useful for industrial espionage as it will be easy to install and use unlike bugs.
I can think of dozens of potential hazardous applications for a ‘cameraware’ none palatable. I am sure Symantec and Grisoft will make their billions making Anti Cameraware programmes to combat the growing intrusion into our personal space. And as they make software to detect hidden Cameraware, so will the makers of Cameraware make newer and more sophisticated editions of Cameraware that will be increasingly devious and difficult to detect.
Someone please tell me that this is a technical impossibility!
( p.s.dreamslittle has elaborated the impact of such a technology in his blog)
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
GE
Many years ago (exactly 55 years, 2 months and 4 torturous days ago) a little baby boy was born in a small village of Karnataka. His name was Puttanna. Puttanna was a chubby child with a distinct fondness for food. He held his first ever-greasy serving spoon at the tender age of two and his parent's just knew that he had a great future as a Cordon Bleu Chef.
At the tender age of six he chopped his first putrid onion. By age eight he was mixing masalas with his right hand while digging his nose with the left. By age twelve he could ambidextrously scratch his unmentionables with one hand while stirring the sambhar with another. He thus showed the qualities of a great cook at a very early age and by age 16 he was made an apprentice with the village wedding cook Ranganna !! On his 18th birthday he made his very first Rasam. Alas!!! Ranganna died soon after tasting the Rasam.
And thus Puttana was elevated to the status of the village wedding cook. It was a proud day indeed for his parents. Puttana soon became world famous in his village and much in demand as it was noticed that there was a marked fall in wedding attendees when word got out that Puttana would be the presiding chef!
Puttana soon got bored with the same old routine of a wedding cook, after all there were only so many dishes he could butcher er...master. So one day he bid farewell to his tearful parents and set out for namma Bengaluru to seeku his fortunu in a five star hotelu er...hotel. What happened after he landed in Bengaluru (erstwhile Bangalore) is hazy but some people say he was arrested for poisoning a wedding party and thus landed in the Bengaluru Central Jail. In jail he befriended the prison cook and became his assistant thus further polishing his cooking skills. Puttana was an instant hit with the jail authorities because he greatly reduced the prison food bills. The money thus saved could now be used to treat inmates of the mysterious gastric ailments that nearly killed and maimed quite a few inmates. It was said that during Puttan's term even hurly burly rowdy sheeters quaked in fear when the meal gong reverberated in the jail corridors. Prisoners had to be dragged to the dining hall and there were many cases of jail break attempts.
Soon physically taxing interrogation sessions became a cake walk in Bengaluru Police Stations. A bowl of Puttana’s best rasam if placed in front of the criminal would make him sing like a canary. Till date Amnesty International never found out how, many a prisoner died during interrogation. (No pathologist ever thought of looking for Puttanas signature bondas in the dead men's entrails and all such cases were filed as “Unexplained Phenomena.”)
Soon after Puttana’s jail term was over he came out and looked at the Bangalore skyline. He was impressed with the numerous glass structures housing IT companies. They looked more impressive than five star hotels to his untrained yes. He decided that after conquering the taste buds of prisoners he would now conquer the taste buds of people working in these glass structures. He soon established a company called Ganesh Enterprises (GE)( or “Gastro Enteritis” as it is known in our company).
Today GE proudly runs our cafeteria and is a standing testimony to the fact that “bad cooking never killed anybody..it just maims your taste buds for life”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
GE Menu Card a.k.a. Choose your own suicide method.
Monday:
Breakfast: Granite idlis, rancid sambhar and gunpowder chutney. (bring your own hammer and Fire Extinguisher)
Snacks: Ferocious Chilli Bhajji , tame coconut chutney. (guaranteed to give you an ulcer in one hour or your money back guarantee)
Lunch: Horrors!!!!
Evening Snack: Pakodas with ignorance-is-bliss fillings (curiosity killed many an employees appetite)
Tuesday:
Breakfast: MRF Tyre like Dosa, baby poo colored vapid chutney and thinner-than-water sambhar ( MRF’s Envy, Puttanna’s Pride)
Snacks: Mortar Vadas with tomoto kichip or you may call it tomoto saas ( one part red sauce, 10 part potato paste) !
Lunch: Gulp!
Snack: Samoosas (Friday's stale chapathi filled with Thursday's Potato curry and deep fried in engine oil.)
Wednesday:
Breakfast: Super Gluey Upma (toothpick absolutely FREE to dig out upma from roof of mouth)
Snacks: Puttana's Signature Bonda (buy one get one FREE on Wednesday, eat all you can FREE on other days.)
Lunch: O.H M.Y G.A.W.D !!!!
Evening Snacks: Yegg Sanveg, Chiss Sanveg, Vigitible Sanveg
( Yegg = butter and Egg Powder , Chiss = butter and the firm belief that you are actually having cheese, Vigitible = butter with a choice of very lifeless vegetables, ignore the caterpillar, he is friendly)
You guessed it, GE's credo is " We bring things to life!"
Thursday:
Breakfast: Dunlop Tyres like Puri and Potato Curry. (boiled potatoes in hot water, bring your own masala )
Snacks: Vigitible Cutlets* with tomoto kichip or tomoto saas ! ( *pop it right in, don’t dare to look what’s inside, Pray)
Lunch: Two deworming tablets please!
Evening Snacks: Pisssa, An exotic dish made with a white chapathi, tomoto poori (puree) topped with vigitables and a generous 3 mm coating of the best Italian chiss supplied by Guttihalli Bakery. (no additional charge for cockroach/lizard and other assorted animals)
Friday:
Breakfast: Gelusil / Digene
Snacks: Gelusil / Digene
Lunch: Gelusil / Digene
Evening Snacks: Gelusil / Digene
Wash above mentioned delicacies down with Coffee that can be an excellent substitute for Weak Hydrochloric Acid and Tea that can also double up as hot water.
Saturday: Check into nearest detoxification clinic if you are still alive.
At the tender age of six he chopped his first putrid onion. By age eight he was mixing masalas with his right hand while digging his nose with the left. By age twelve he could ambidextrously scratch his unmentionables with one hand while stirring the sambhar with another. He thus showed the qualities of a great cook at a very early age and by age 16 he was made an apprentice with the village wedding cook Ranganna !! On his 18th birthday he made his very first Rasam. Alas!!! Ranganna died soon after tasting the Rasam.
And thus Puttana was elevated to the status of the village wedding cook. It was a proud day indeed for his parents. Puttana soon became world famous in his village and much in demand as it was noticed that there was a marked fall in wedding attendees when word got out that Puttana would be the presiding chef!
Puttana soon got bored with the same old routine of a wedding cook, after all there were only so many dishes he could butcher er...master. So one day he bid farewell to his tearful parents and set out for namma Bengaluru to seeku his fortunu in a five star hotelu er...hotel. What happened after he landed in Bengaluru (erstwhile Bangalore) is hazy but some people say he was arrested for poisoning a wedding party and thus landed in the Bengaluru Central Jail. In jail he befriended the prison cook and became his assistant thus further polishing his cooking skills. Puttana was an instant hit with the jail authorities because he greatly reduced the prison food bills. The money thus saved could now be used to treat inmates of the mysterious gastric ailments that nearly killed and maimed quite a few inmates. It was said that during Puttan's term even hurly burly rowdy sheeters quaked in fear when the meal gong reverberated in the jail corridors. Prisoners had to be dragged to the dining hall and there were many cases of jail break attempts.
Soon physically taxing interrogation sessions became a cake walk in Bengaluru Police Stations. A bowl of Puttana’s best rasam if placed in front of the criminal would make him sing like a canary. Till date Amnesty International never found out how, many a prisoner died during interrogation. (No pathologist ever thought of looking for Puttanas signature bondas in the dead men's entrails and all such cases were filed as “Unexplained Phenomena.”)
Soon after Puttana’s jail term was over he came out and looked at the Bangalore skyline. He was impressed with the numerous glass structures housing IT companies. They looked more impressive than five star hotels to his untrained yes. He decided that after conquering the taste buds of prisoners he would now conquer the taste buds of people working in these glass structures. He soon established a company called Ganesh Enterprises (GE)( or “Gastro Enteritis” as it is known in our company).
Today GE proudly runs our cafeteria and is a standing testimony to the fact that “bad cooking never killed anybody..it just maims your taste buds for life”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
GE Menu Card a.k.a. Choose your own suicide method.
Monday:
Breakfast: Granite idlis, rancid sambhar and gunpowder chutney. (bring your own hammer and Fire Extinguisher)
Snacks: Ferocious Chilli Bhajji , tame coconut chutney. (guaranteed to give you an ulcer in one hour or your money back guarantee)
Lunch: Horrors!!!!
Evening Snack: Pakodas with ignorance-is-bliss fillings (curiosity killed many an employees appetite)
Tuesday:
Breakfast: MRF Tyre like Dosa, baby poo colored vapid chutney and thinner-than-water sambhar ( MRF’s Envy, Puttanna’s Pride)
Snacks: Mortar Vadas with tomoto kichip or you may call it tomoto saas ( one part red sauce, 10 part potato paste) !
Lunch: Gulp!
Snack: Samoosas (Friday's stale chapathi filled with Thursday's Potato curry and deep fried in engine oil.)
Wednesday:
Breakfast: Super Gluey Upma (toothpick absolutely FREE to dig out upma from roof of mouth)
Snacks: Puttana's Signature Bonda (buy one get one FREE on Wednesday, eat all you can FREE on other days.)
Lunch: O.H M.Y G.A.W.D !!!!
Evening Snacks: Yegg Sanveg, Chiss Sanveg, Vigitible Sanveg
( Yegg = butter and Egg Powder , Chiss = butter and the firm belief that you are actually having cheese, Vigitible = butter with a choice of very lifeless vegetables, ignore the caterpillar, he is friendly)
You guessed it, GE's credo is " We bring things to life!"
Thursday:
Breakfast: Dunlop Tyres like Puri and Potato Curry. (boiled potatoes in hot water, bring your own masala )
Snacks: Vigitible Cutlets* with tomoto kichip or tomoto saas ! ( *pop it right in, don’t dare to look what’s inside, Pray)
Lunch: Two deworming tablets please!
Evening Snacks: Pisssa, An exotic dish made with a white chapathi, tomoto poori (puree) topped with vigitables and a generous 3 mm coating of the best Italian chiss supplied by Guttihalli Bakery. (no additional charge for cockroach/lizard and other assorted animals)
Friday:
Breakfast: Gelusil / Digene
Snacks: Gelusil / Digene
Lunch: Gelusil / Digene
Evening Snacks: Gelusil / Digene
Wash above mentioned delicacies down with Coffee that can be an excellent substitute for Weak Hydrochloric Acid and Tea that can also double up as hot water.
Saturday: Check into nearest detoxification clinic if you are still alive.
Monday, January 02, 2006
PR in Heaven !
It is New Year eve and God is in a tizzy! He is alarmed at the rumors going around on earth about Heaven being a staid and boring place vis a vis the image of hell ... which was that of a rocking party zone where all sorts of immoralities could be carried out without the fear of God. God convenes a emergency meeting at 2 am celestial time with St. Peter , Archangel Gabriel and some other important Saints to discuss this serious development. St. Peter, who during his office timings at the Pearly Gates is wont to wander off to have a sneak peep into Hell is the first one to speak. “ We should hire a PR person and go for a complete image makeover of Heaven. We are facing a very techno savvy Internet generation and our traditional propaganda will not cut ice with them. I have seen the wonders that word-of-mouth-publicity has done for Hell!!” Everyone present at the meeting nod their assent leading to a lot of halos banging and jangling against each other. God surreptitiously removes the cotton balls that he keeps for such meetings and stuffs them in his ears. (The jangling noise was getting on his nerves.) For this brilliant suggestion St. Peter is entrusted with the job of finding a suitable PR person to undertake this Herculean task.
Next day St. Peter bids goodbye to all the angels and saints and after entrusting the task of gatekeeping to Gabriel sets out to look for a suitable PR person for Operation Yo Mama (the secret code word for the PR operation) He searches the Heavens and Earth for weeks but is unsuccessful in his endeavours as all the good PR people were in Hell!
On his return to gatekeeping he is as usual taking his Milk and Honey break sitting pensive on Hell’s walls peeping into Hell and ogling at the ladies when the Devil appeares and says to him. “ Petes my dear friend!!! I know what you are looking for. You need a good PR person right? I know of someone on Earth who can do the job well. She is known as Miss Communication and she is known for her good PR skills. ( the devil is devious , he knows this gal has made a hash of the PR job that was entrusted to her for only one day. He is hoping for a similar goof up.) St. Peter is immensely relieved, as God had threatened to demote him to a Milk Bar Vendor if he did not get the PR person by the weekend. ( poor St. Peter he loved his Scotch and being next to the Neon Gates of Hell, could occasionally sneak into Hell for a quick swig). The thought of pouring milk for the heavenly inmates for the rest of his life was unnerving. The last milk vendor in Heaven was caught spiking the milk with Scotch to contain the rebellion of the souls who were fed up of the constant diet of milk and honey. He was then demoted as prayer vendor. He was again caught this time tampering with the prayers by inserting the word Big Daddy instead of God and Holy Molly instead of Holy Spirit to make it more interesting for the inmates bored of repeating the same prayers day in and day out for Eternity. He was again demoted to a gardening job in Eden. In the Garden of Eden this soul was again caught making illicit liqor from the grapes and further demoted as Halo Polisher and the saga of sacrilegious crimes continued. He was the first serial offender in the history of Creation.
Anyways to cut our narrative short St. Peter land up in namma Bengaluru( a mysterious place from where a lot of souls are seen entering the Neon Gates of Hell) and convinces MS to undertake the job.
Upon reaching Heaven, MS is shocked at the very pansy, pearl studded Pearly Gate. It was no wonder that many souls cast into heaven preferred to deviate to the flashing Neon Gate of Hell right next door. The Pearly Gate was also defaced with obscene grafitti by the heavenly inmates. One of the graffiti that made her gasp read:
It’s Hell in here,
Heaven next door!
She decides that in order to present Heaven as an attractive alternative to Hell, she would have to do some PR work for the heavenly inmates too. (So that they would stop making those ugly holes in Heaven’s pearly walls to stare shamelessly into the going ons in Hell)
On Day One she tears down the Pearly gates and installs a really funky doorway with an flashing illumination signboard in psychedelic pink, blue and orange. The signboard reads “ Enter at your own risk” and the Pearly Gates is now re-christened “Gateway to Heaven” to give it that air of adventure and thrills that was missing earlier.
On Day Two she attacks the boring white hospital robes of the heavenly inmates. She ropes in famous designer Michael Jackson for a complete redesign of the heavenly uniforms. Michael Jackson wields his/her magic scissors and soon the inmates are like the weirdos in Hell!
On Day Three MS's agenda was to reduce the overwhelming presence of Milk and Honey bars in heaven. She prevails upon St. Peter to get permission from God to operate Holy Wine Bars so that the inmates would get a break from their usual bland liquid diet. The inmates rejoice as this means that they need not sneak out of heaven to the seedy bars operated by Hell outside the Pearly Gates.
On Day Four MS pulls out all the angels patrolling Heavens boundaries and sends them for dance classes at the famous Bollywood Jatka School in Mumbai. Upon successful completion of their Dance classes they were to provide alternate entertainment to combat the steady stream of jumpees into Hell from Heaven.
On Day Five the rivers of milk and honey is dammed and replaced with Scotch and Vodka to combat the illicit bars outside the pearly gates from where the Guardian Angels had to regularly drag heavenly inmates back to Heaven.
On Day Six MS removes the Harps and Lyres played by the inmates and replaces them with the loudest electronic musical instruments available in the market. (Noise proofing Heavens walls to keep out the loud music from Hell did not help due to numerous holes made by the inmates)
OnDay Seven MS Wi-Fi's Heaven and Arch angel Gabriel is made the System Administrator ( He was suitably experienced in the job anyway due to the long hours he spent with his hellish counterpart in Hell's Network Neighborhood.)
MS looks at her creation and is satisfied. All she needs now is another client to meet her sales target this year.
The Devil in the meantime was getting increasingly alarmed with the transition of Heaven into a Hell-like-zone. He was now determined to get rid of MS and stop her make-over frenzy which was beginning to hit his bottom line and image really hard. (Just yesterday an inmate of Hell actually jumped the Pearly Walls into heaven when he saw the angels doing a “Pardesia” remix number to an appreciative audience) So one day the Devil sneaks into Heaven wearing his God costume that he has been successfully using from the time of Creation and lies in wait for MS in the garden of Eden. At last he spots her and confronts her.
Devil: I am God! I demand that you stop the makeover work in Heaven!
MS: What a long tail you have my Lord!
Devil: Er...it is the latest fashion accessory
MS: What sharp fangs you have my Lord!
Devil: er...it needs a lil trimming I know.
MS: And what an ugly face you have Mr. Devil!
Devil: er...was it that obvious?
MS:Hire me! I can make you look like God himself!
Devil: You are hired!! But make sure I look better than God.
MS: Of course!!! I will send you an Estimate for the job immediately.
PR gal successfully gets another client and the rest is history.
Next day St. Peter bids goodbye to all the angels and saints and after entrusting the task of gatekeeping to Gabriel sets out to look for a suitable PR person for Operation Yo Mama (the secret code word for the PR operation) He searches the Heavens and Earth for weeks but is unsuccessful in his endeavours as all the good PR people were in Hell!
On his return to gatekeeping he is as usual taking his Milk and Honey break sitting pensive on Hell’s walls peeping into Hell and ogling at the ladies when the Devil appeares and says to him. “ Petes my dear friend!!! I know what you are looking for. You need a good PR person right? I know of someone on Earth who can do the job well. She is known as Miss Communication and she is known for her good PR skills. ( the devil is devious , he knows this gal has made a hash of the PR job that was entrusted to her for only one day. He is hoping for a similar goof up.) St. Peter is immensely relieved, as God had threatened to demote him to a Milk Bar Vendor if he did not get the PR person by the weekend. ( poor St. Peter he loved his Scotch and being next to the Neon Gates of Hell, could occasionally sneak into Hell for a quick swig). The thought of pouring milk for the heavenly inmates for the rest of his life was unnerving. The last milk vendor in Heaven was caught spiking the milk with Scotch to contain the rebellion of the souls who were fed up of the constant diet of milk and honey. He was then demoted as prayer vendor. He was again caught this time tampering with the prayers by inserting the word Big Daddy instead of God and Holy Molly instead of Holy Spirit to make it more interesting for the inmates bored of repeating the same prayers day in and day out for Eternity. He was again demoted to a gardening job in Eden. In the Garden of Eden this soul was again caught making illicit liqor from the grapes and further demoted as Halo Polisher and the saga of sacrilegious crimes continued. He was the first serial offender in the history of Creation.
Anyways to cut our narrative short St. Peter land up in namma Bengaluru( a mysterious place from where a lot of souls are seen entering the Neon Gates of Hell) and convinces MS to undertake the job.
Upon reaching Heaven, MS is shocked at the very pansy, pearl studded Pearly Gate. It was no wonder that many souls cast into heaven preferred to deviate to the flashing Neon Gate of Hell right next door. The Pearly Gate was also defaced with obscene grafitti by the heavenly inmates. One of the graffiti that made her gasp read:
It’s Hell in here,
Heaven next door!
She decides that in order to present Heaven as an attractive alternative to Hell, she would have to do some PR work for the heavenly inmates too. (So that they would stop making those ugly holes in Heaven’s pearly walls to stare shamelessly into the going ons in Hell)
On Day One she tears down the Pearly gates and installs a really funky doorway with an flashing illumination signboard in psychedelic pink, blue and orange. The signboard reads “ Enter at your own risk” and the Pearly Gates is now re-christened “Gateway to Heaven” to give it that air of adventure and thrills that was missing earlier.
On Day Two she attacks the boring white hospital robes of the heavenly inmates. She ropes in famous designer Michael Jackson for a complete redesign of the heavenly uniforms. Michael Jackson wields his/her magic scissors and soon the inmates are like the weirdos in Hell!
On Day Three MS's agenda was to reduce the overwhelming presence of Milk and Honey bars in heaven. She prevails upon St. Peter to get permission from God to operate Holy Wine Bars so that the inmates would get a break from their usual bland liquid diet. The inmates rejoice as this means that they need not sneak out of heaven to the seedy bars operated by Hell outside the Pearly Gates.
On Day Four MS pulls out all the angels patrolling Heavens boundaries and sends them for dance classes at the famous Bollywood Jatka School in Mumbai. Upon successful completion of their Dance classes they were to provide alternate entertainment to combat the steady stream of jumpees into Hell from Heaven.
On Day Five the rivers of milk and honey is dammed and replaced with Scotch and Vodka to combat the illicit bars outside the pearly gates from where the Guardian Angels had to regularly drag heavenly inmates back to Heaven.
On Day Six MS removes the Harps and Lyres played by the inmates and replaces them with the loudest electronic musical instruments available in the market. (Noise proofing Heavens walls to keep out the loud music from Hell did not help due to numerous holes made by the inmates)
OnDay Seven MS Wi-Fi's Heaven and Arch angel Gabriel is made the System Administrator ( He was suitably experienced in the job anyway due to the long hours he spent with his hellish counterpart in Hell's Network Neighborhood.)
MS looks at her creation and is satisfied. All she needs now is another client to meet her sales target this year.
The Devil in the meantime was getting increasingly alarmed with the transition of Heaven into a Hell-like-zone. He was now determined to get rid of MS and stop her make-over frenzy which was beginning to hit his bottom line and image really hard. (Just yesterday an inmate of Hell actually jumped the Pearly Walls into heaven when he saw the angels doing a “Pardesia” remix number to an appreciative audience) So one day the Devil sneaks into Heaven wearing his God costume that he has been successfully using from the time of Creation and lies in wait for MS in the garden of Eden. At last he spots her and confronts her.
Devil: I am God! I demand that you stop the makeover work in Heaven!
MS: What a long tail you have my Lord!
Devil: Er...it is the latest fashion accessory
MS: What sharp fangs you have my Lord!
Devil: er...it needs a lil trimming I know.
MS: And what an ugly face you have Mr. Devil!
Devil: er...was it that obvious?
MS:Hire me! I can make you look like God himself!
Devil: You are hired!! But make sure I look better than God.
MS: Of course!!! I will send you an Estimate for the job immediately.
PR gal successfully gets another client and the rest is history.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Happy New Year !
My New Year Resolutions
Make a New Year Resolution!
Make a New Year Resolution that I can follow.
Stick to my New Year Resolutions
Remember my New Year Resolutions.
Make sure my New Year Resolution last at least a month.
If possible two months!
And if possible….
Stop getting obsessed about my New Year Resolutions.
Is there any way I can break my New Year Resolutions?
Can I make half-a-year New Year Resolution?
If I break my New Year Resolution can I start afresh?
Or do I have to wait for the next year?
Can not making a New Year Resolution be my New Year Resolution?
Is New Year Resolutions accepted by the law? Then please can I not pay taxes?
If I make a New Year Resolution to be on time for office, do I have to do it the whole year? ( oh my gawd!!! )
Do I have to make ‘good’ New Year Resolutions? I cannot always be nice to people when they tell me how much I look like my grandma every time they meet me.
Can I make ‘bad ‘New Year Resolutions like letting my dog on my pesky 10-year-old neighbor every time he bursts a cracker just when I am passing by?
Any ideas on New Year Resolutions?
I hate New Year Resolutions!!!! hmph
Have a great year dear blog pals. Hope to read lots more posts from you and I hope to post more often too. Now that’s a New Year Resolution to begin with!!!!
Happy New Year 2006!
Monday, December 26, 2005
Feel gifted !
The first gifts of the Season from other family members have started trickling in. My aunt gave me a beauuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful pack of heart shaped candles with glitter on them. I absolutely love them!!!!
Second gift is from a cousin brother. Hold you breaths girls. Trumpets sounds, cymbals clash as I open the gift.
IT IS A BOX OF GLITTERY EYE SHADOW !!!
Yuckk!!
( but the thought was nice)
Ok, this is it. That was the last straw on a gals fast sinking faith in the ability of most guys to buy a decent gift. I am now convinced that most guys are not gifted with the art of gifting ( corny line I know!! ) So here’s a guide for guys who are gifting-ideas-challenged and want to surprise the women* in their lives with that Perfect Gift. (* moms, sisters, girlfriends,wives, cousins sisters, colleagues etc.)
Warning: Please do not try this on men!
1. We do not like non stick pans. Please do not remind us of the drudgery of cooking for you.
2. We do not like crockery. It is a constant reminder that it needs to be filled with food.
3. But we love cookery books. Especially glossy ones with colorful pictures . Don’t ask me why Point No. 1 and Point No. 2 is disallowed when Point No 3 is allowed.
4. We like kitchen implements if they operate electronically and we are married ( or else you are in trouble, leave scene immediately).
5. We like candles. The fancier the better. Don’t ask me why! Just buy it!!
6. We love flowers, but stick to roses if you do not know about our likes and dislikes among the 200 other varieties available in the market.
7. We love artificial flowers, that is if you are onsite in the US or Europe.
8. We love perfumes, but please DO NOT BUY perfumes for us. We dont wanna smell like an oil slick! (Hint: Gift voucher)
9. We do not like aftershave. I know it smells wonderful.
10. Ditto for men’s deodorant. I know it does the same thing that a ladies deodorant does. grrrrrrrrr
11. We do not mind sarees if we are 21 and above. But please tell the shopkeeper that we will be coming soon to exchange it.
12. Ditto with books. But a subscription of Femina, Reader's Digest or Cosmo will be just fine.
13. We love jewelry but follow Point No 8 (Gift Voucher). Please remember a Rs 500/- Gift Voucher will not even get us an entry into a jewelry shop. The Gift Voucher should be in multiples of Rs.1000/- only!
14. It's true, Diamonds are indeed a girls best friend. (hint, hint)
15. We love gems but please tell sales girl our birthmonth so that she can give you our birthstone. We are very particular about this. However whatever our birthmonth, Diamonds are always welcome ;)
16. Everything that glitters is not gold for girls. So please go easy on glittery tops, shoes, handbags, lipstick and eyeshadows. Point No. 5 can be repeated here too.
17. We are extremely particular about our lipstick shade, so repeat Gift Voucher /Certificate here too.
18. If you are planning on buying lingerie for wife / girl
friend then “God help you!!!” Play safe, don't get caught consulting a Lingerie catalogue. Read it someplace safe.
19. We love chocolates. But we may not like chocolates as a gift because it is fattening. So it’s your call.
20. A weighing scale is not such a good idea of a present and can be potentially harmful to your skull.
21. We love paintings, but no nude women please... and vice versa.
22. We love crystals, especially those cute animals figurines in crystals.
23. Talking of crystals, we also like crystalware.
24. Teddy bears are acceptable if we are 12 years and below. Dolls also fall under this category!
25. Just because we are middle aged ( 50+) does not mean we do not appreciate flowers, so go easy on the Hot Water Bottles,prayer books and Shawls.
26. We love music CDs but who the heck is Laffy Taffy???? And Black Eyed Peas...? Is this some exotic vegetable? Please enquire about our taste in music from our friends before buying that CD.
27. If we are above 70, forget about the gift.....we would love to have you visit us.( ok senti rising to dangerous levels here, grandma I miss you * sniff* )
28. And ....the only brass that we wanna see, is on guys in uniform ;)
Second gift is from a cousin brother. Hold you breaths girls. Trumpets sounds, cymbals clash as I open the gift.
IT IS A BOX OF GLITTERY EYE SHADOW !!!
Yuckk!!
( but the thought was nice)
Ok, this is it. That was the last straw on a gals fast sinking faith in the ability of most guys to buy a decent gift. I am now convinced that most guys are not gifted with the art of gifting ( corny line I know!! ) So here’s a guide for guys who are gifting-ideas-challenged and want to surprise the women* in their lives with that Perfect Gift. (* moms, sisters, girlfriends,wives, cousins sisters, colleagues etc.)
Warning: Please do not try this on men!
1. We do not like non stick pans. Please do not remind us of the drudgery of cooking for you.
2. We do not like crockery. It is a constant reminder that it needs to be filled with food.
3. But we love cookery books. Especially glossy ones with colorful pictures . Don’t ask me why Point No. 1 and Point No. 2 is disallowed when Point No 3 is allowed.
4. We like kitchen implements if they operate electronically and we are married ( or else you are in trouble, leave scene immediately).
5. We like candles. The fancier the better. Don’t ask me why! Just buy it!!
6. We love flowers, but stick to roses if you do not know about our likes and dislikes among the 200 other varieties available in the market.
7. We love artificial flowers, that is if you are onsite in the US or Europe.
8. We love perfumes, but please DO NOT BUY perfumes for us. We dont wanna smell like an oil slick! (Hint: Gift voucher)
9. We do not like aftershave. I know it smells wonderful.
10. Ditto for men’s deodorant. I know it does the same thing that a ladies deodorant does. grrrrrrrrr
11. We do not mind sarees if we are 21 and above. But please tell the shopkeeper that we will be coming soon to exchange it.
12. Ditto with books. But a subscription of Femina, Reader's Digest or Cosmo will be just fine.
13. We love jewelry but follow Point No 8 (Gift Voucher). Please remember a Rs 500/- Gift Voucher will not even get us an entry into a jewelry shop. The Gift Voucher should be in multiples of Rs.1000/- only!
14. It's true, Diamonds are indeed a girls best friend. (hint, hint)
15. We love gems but please tell sales girl our birthmonth so that she can give you our birthstone. We are very particular about this. However whatever our birthmonth, Diamonds are always welcome ;)
16. Everything that glitters is not gold for girls. So please go easy on glittery tops, shoes, handbags, lipstick and eyeshadows. Point No. 5 can be repeated here too.
17. We are extremely particular about our lipstick shade, so repeat Gift Voucher /Certificate here too.
18. If you are planning on buying lingerie for wife / girl
friend then “God help you!!!” Play safe, don't get caught consulting a Lingerie catalogue. Read it someplace safe.
19. We love chocolates. But we may not like chocolates as a gift because it is fattening. So it’s your call.
20. A weighing scale is not such a good idea of a present and can be potentially harmful to your skull.
21. We love paintings, but no nude women please... and vice versa.
22. We love crystals, especially those cute animals figurines in crystals.
23. Talking of crystals, we also like crystalware.
24. Teddy bears are acceptable if we are 12 years and below. Dolls also fall under this category!
25. Just because we are middle aged ( 50+) does not mean we do not appreciate flowers, so go easy on the Hot Water Bottles,prayer books and Shawls.
26. We love music CDs but who the heck is Laffy Taffy???? And Black Eyed Peas...? Is this some exotic vegetable? Please enquire about our taste in music from our friends before buying that CD.
27. If we are above 70, forget about the gift.....we would love to have you visit us.( ok senti rising to dangerous levels here, grandma I miss you * sniff* )
28. And ....the only brass that we wanna see, is on guys in uniform ;)
Thursday, December 22, 2005
The joys of Christmas Shopping !
Ok I made some grandiose announcement about not being able to blog etc etc. But being away from the comp and the office is working wonders and this Christmas season I have so many tales to tell!!!
Christmas is here and as usual I get the noble task of buying the gifts that the family wants to give each other. A typical day before Christmas shopping goes like this.
Dad: Ok, so what do you think I should give your mother?
Me: How about you both taking off to Lourdes as you promised her 7 years back?
Dad: Sure, You will get leave right? You and mom can have a nice pilgrimage.
Me: But Dad she wants to go with you!!!! She has been looking forward to this for so many years. ( I use a very senti speech here)
Dad: I know, I know, but the guys were just telling me that we haven’t had a party like the one you organized on Father's Day! So you go with Amma and don’t hurry back. And if you go with Amma then as additional bonus you get that zoom lens for your camera!
Eldest Brother G: Now tell me what you want and what I should get for all of you.
Me: Ok, I want perfume, I think you should give mom a saree and Dad needs new shoes for his walks and M ..hmmm I think you give him what we all have been giving him for the past umpteen years, a nice tube of hair gel !!!
G: Ok, and get a nice handbag for your to-be-sis-in-law.
Me: She will think you are a miser. Give her something expensive!
G: Ok, how about a purse?
Me: She may call off the wedding.
G: You women are so hard to please!!!
Me: You are learning fast!
G: Oh my God, now I will have to think of gifts for her birthdays too????
Me: Yes! But it’s too late to cancel your wedding so I will get her something and you can tell her that you looked high and low for this perfect gift for her. She will be very pleased.
G: Fine and don’t forget to wrap it and put a nice message too. But don’t let your creativity get the better of you. I don’t want her thinking she is marrying a lech !
Second Brother M: Ok what do you want this Christmas that won’t be thrown on my head or will not be given to the gardener.
Me: What else do you expect when you present me with a monkey cap?
M: That was a Monte Carlo monkey cap!!!!
Me: yeah, the gardener looks very spiffy in that.
M: Ok then your highness what can I get for thee this year? Ok wait....I know what I will buy for you? ( with a gleam in his eyes), I get that awful sinking feeling when M goes shopping. He walks away whistling. I KNOW I will get a Hot Water Kettle! (of course it will be a different brand and color from the one I got the year before last and the year before the year before last)
Mom: I know what I will buy for everybody!!! (with triumphant smile.)
Me: er...what will be that Amma?
Mom: You will look really nice in a Salwar!
Me: But amma I have so many that I don’t wear!
Mom: Don’t argue with me. And for M, I will get a nice shirt. He looks like a beggar at weddings.
Me: Amma he rather look like a beggar than a pansy in that lacy shirt you bought for him last time.
Mom: Don’t argue with me. And for Dad also a nice shirt...
Me: But ma he hates shirts, he always wear Tees.
Mom: Don’t argue with me! And for your Chetan a nice wallet.
Me: But ma, he already has 25 wallets!
Mom: Don’t argue with me. Now come with me and show me where I can get these things in those new malls. And don’t forget to carry a big bag so that the guys don’t see what we have bought for them.
(Like they don’t know already)
Land of “OPPORTUNITY” !
A couple of incidents that happened over the last one and half years.
A few months ago while me and my colleagues were crossing the road a car driven by two teenagers, both blonde, (probably some expats kids) nearly ran us over. They stopped the vehicle and cheekily peeped out of the window to see our reaction. However they accelerated off recklessly at dangerous speed when some guys from my office who witnessed this incident ran towards them in rage.
Last month, just as we were nearing the Cubbon Park traffic junction, the traffic lights turned yellow. A bike with two guys who were near the signal slowed down and stopped on seeing the yellow lights. Right behind them was a Tempo Traveller driven by a foreigner. The vehicle was carrying four Great Danes, probably his pets. The white man was furious when he saw the biker slowing down. He pulled down his window and swore at the bikers fluently gesticulating obscenely. He was angry that the biker didn't jump the light thus holding him back too.
Last year in Mumbai the head of a large MNC abuses an Indian who overtook him by calling him a “bloody Indian”. The incident was reported in the papers however the foreigner got away with an apology.
Earlier this year in Ooty a rashly driven Scorpio (again a white man) nearly ran down a lady carrying firewood on the road. He too stopped to abuse the poor lady before driving off in rage.
In Kodaikanal last year while trekking we came across a huge house amidst a fruit plantation. We were warned by the locals to keep away from the fortress like house as the people who owned the land (Germans) owned ferocious dogs (to keep out the “natives”). The dogs had apparently grievously injured a kid and another woman who had gone to collect firewood in the Estate. Collecting firewood in the Nilgiris is not considered encroaching. In fact quite a few foreigners have bought land in the Nilgiris and you can make out their property with the imposing high walls and patrolling dogs.
On my recent Goa trip, I was witness to yet another incident. After browsing through the famous Flea Market my brother and me came across a Pizza joint. As we sat with our beers waiting for the rest of the family to join us the other tables soon filled up with foreigners. The topic of discussion at the table next to me was about the “awful lot of Indians coming to Goa!!” Many of these foreigners here were “service providers” for the foreign tourists. They ran tattoo parlors, hair braiding parlors, organized tours etc etc. We were told by the owner of the pizzeria ( a Goan) that the locals rarely interfered with these foreigners. The tourism industry here was run by the foreigners for the foreigners with the help of a few Indians.
A disconcerting scene at the same pizzeria. An old Frenchman covered in Rudraksha with a small girl in tow and that of another young man with another small child. Both kids looked like laborers kids.
Another incident in Goa. A religious procession carrying a statue of some Christian Saint is being carried to another house in a procession. A group of foreigners all youngsters, hoot and jeer at the procession.
Go to the outskirts of Bangalore where foreigners are farming huge tracts of land. The produce of these land range from flowers to fruits to vegetables is flown out of the country by private cargo aircrafts. The seeds and pesticides bought in by these people are unregulated I am told. (But this is an unverified report)
I have nothing against foreigners in fact there quite a few of them in my company and they make excellent people to work with. But when I was in Goa I was told that the tourist industry has been virtually taken over by foreigners and was dangerously out of control of the State Government. The main reason behind this was the strong network that these people establish exploiting the loopholes in the system. In fact the newspapers in Goa were simmering with reports of foreigners running illegal businesses in Goa leading to a lot of local discontent. (Please note the word illegal)
Our people have found jobs abroad when opportunities were scarce here. So we should extend the same welcome to people from other countries too. But the haughty attitude towards “natives' is disconcerting. Besides we have a virtually non-existent system of keeping track of foreigners and their activities here.
So India is a land of opportunities now? Opportunity for what?
A few months ago while me and my colleagues were crossing the road a car driven by two teenagers, both blonde, (probably some expats kids) nearly ran us over. They stopped the vehicle and cheekily peeped out of the window to see our reaction. However they accelerated off recklessly at dangerous speed when some guys from my office who witnessed this incident ran towards them in rage.
Last month, just as we were nearing the Cubbon Park traffic junction, the traffic lights turned yellow. A bike with two guys who were near the signal slowed down and stopped on seeing the yellow lights. Right behind them was a Tempo Traveller driven by a foreigner. The vehicle was carrying four Great Danes, probably his pets. The white man was furious when he saw the biker slowing down. He pulled down his window and swore at the bikers fluently gesticulating obscenely. He was angry that the biker didn't jump the light thus holding him back too.
Last year in Mumbai the head of a large MNC abuses an Indian who overtook him by calling him a “bloody Indian”. The incident was reported in the papers however the foreigner got away with an apology.
Earlier this year in Ooty a rashly driven Scorpio (again a white man) nearly ran down a lady carrying firewood on the road. He too stopped to abuse the poor lady before driving off in rage.
In Kodaikanal last year while trekking we came across a huge house amidst a fruit plantation. We were warned by the locals to keep away from the fortress like house as the people who owned the land (Germans) owned ferocious dogs (to keep out the “natives”). The dogs had apparently grievously injured a kid and another woman who had gone to collect firewood in the Estate. Collecting firewood in the Nilgiris is not considered encroaching. In fact quite a few foreigners have bought land in the Nilgiris and you can make out their property with the imposing high walls and patrolling dogs.
On my recent Goa trip, I was witness to yet another incident. After browsing through the famous Flea Market my brother and me came across a Pizza joint. As we sat with our beers waiting for the rest of the family to join us the other tables soon filled up with foreigners. The topic of discussion at the table next to me was about the “awful lot of Indians coming to Goa!!” Many of these foreigners here were “service providers” for the foreign tourists. They ran tattoo parlors, hair braiding parlors, organized tours etc etc. We were told by the owner of the pizzeria ( a Goan) that the locals rarely interfered with these foreigners. The tourism industry here was run by the foreigners for the foreigners with the help of a few Indians.
A disconcerting scene at the same pizzeria. An old Frenchman covered in Rudraksha with a small girl in tow and that of another young man with another small child. Both kids looked like laborers kids.
Another incident in Goa. A religious procession carrying a statue of some Christian Saint is being carried to another house in a procession. A group of foreigners all youngsters, hoot and jeer at the procession.
Go to the outskirts of Bangalore where foreigners are farming huge tracts of land. The produce of these land range from flowers to fruits to vegetables is flown out of the country by private cargo aircrafts. The seeds and pesticides bought in by these people are unregulated I am told. (But this is an unverified report)
I have nothing against foreigners in fact there quite a few of them in my company and they make excellent people to work with. But when I was in Goa I was told that the tourist industry has been virtually taken over by foreigners and was dangerously out of control of the State Government. The main reason behind this was the strong network that these people establish exploiting the loopholes in the system. In fact the newspapers in Goa were simmering with reports of foreigners running illegal businesses in Goa leading to a lot of local discontent. (Please note the word illegal)
Our people have found jobs abroad when opportunities were scarce here. So we should extend the same welcome to people from other countries too. But the haughty attitude towards “natives' is disconcerting. Besides we have a virtually non-existent system of keeping track of foreigners and their activities here.
So India is a land of opportunities now? Opportunity for what?
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Ghosts of Christmas present
I just read somewhere that a movie called Pulse will be releasing next year. This movie is a story of a guy who dies and then starts sending his buddies e-mails.
I apologize to all those folks on my floor that I scared silly by suddenly bursting into laughter after reading this news. It took me a good half an hour of giggling to recover from this news.
What cracked me up was the thought of a ghost using email!!! After battling with spam and forwards now we will get unsolicited mails from ghosts too?? :-p I tried to conjure up a hypothetical situation wherein a ghost sends emails and the resultant turn of events. Now imagine that one day you get a spine chilling e-mail from a ghost:
ghost@xyz.com: “I want your credit card numbers!”
Mail comes back to ghost with this message: “this user does not exist!”
Ghost resends mail to your other email ID
Mail comes back with this message: “sorry, this user has exceeded his quota.”
Ghost tries your office ID, mail returns with this message: TRANSACTION FAILED - Unrepairable Virus Detected. Please contact your mail administrator.
Now what can a honest upright ghost do in such a situation? He has tried all legal routes to haunt you but failed. So he does a Patrick Swayze act to intimidate you by typing this sinister message on a MS Word document on your PC.
“Silverine,
I want all your credit card numbers. Or else....”
Signed:
Mr. Ghost
Suddenly an ugly talking paper clip materializes from nowhere, blinks and enquires: It looks like you are writing a letter. Would you like help?
Ghost jumps out of his ectoplasm in fright at the sudden appearance of the ugly talking paper clip.The ugly talking paper clip looks awfully like his skeleton back in the grave. He doesn't like the ugly talking paper clip. He tries to scare ugly talking paper clip but ugly talking paper clip stares right back at him unfazed smiling and blinking. Ghost tries to close document to get rid of ugly talking paper clip but ugly talking paper clip enquires : Do you want to save changes to the document?
Ghost retreats in haste, thinks for some time and tries new tactic. He opens Microsoft Outlook. Ugly talking paper clip reappears. Now it is the ghost's turn to feel haunted! He clicks on ugly talking paper clip in trepidation. Ugly talking paper clip asks: What would you like to do?
Ghost types: Get Silverine’s credit card numbers.
Ugly talking paper clip replies: Listen buster! I have been trying to get her credit card numbers too for the past two years, now buzz off!!
Ghost makes New Year resolution never to mess with technology again.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok folks, I will stop here for now. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2006. I don’t think I will be able to blog till month end as I have a very noble duty to accomplish! And that is to ensure my chetan ( my eldest brother) reaches the wedding altar willingly or unwillingly ( even if I have to drag him there). My to-be-sis-in-law is paying me big money for this.
So take care, have a blast partying this Xmas and New Year. Don’t drink and drive, observe lane discipline, tip the traffic cops generously etc. etc. ( this is a FREE public service message for which the cops have agreed to pay scant attention to my traffic misdemeanors for the next one month! Yipeee)
For a sneak preview of the movie Pulse click here!
I apologize to all those folks on my floor that I scared silly by suddenly bursting into laughter after reading this news. It took me a good half an hour of giggling to recover from this news.
What cracked me up was the thought of a ghost using email!!! After battling with spam and forwards now we will get unsolicited mails from ghosts too?? :-p I tried to conjure up a hypothetical situation wherein a ghost sends emails and the resultant turn of events. Now imagine that one day you get a spine chilling e-mail from a ghost:
ghost@xyz.com: “I want your credit card numbers!”
Mail comes back to ghost with this message: “this user does not exist!”
Ghost resends mail to your other email ID
Mail comes back with this message: “sorry, this user has exceeded his quota.”
Ghost tries your office ID, mail returns with this message: TRANSACTION FAILED - Unrepairable Virus Detected. Please contact your mail administrator.
Now what can a honest upright ghost do in such a situation? He has tried all legal routes to haunt you but failed. So he does a Patrick Swayze act to intimidate you by typing this sinister message on a MS Word document on your PC.
“Silverine,
I want all your credit card numbers. Or else....”
Signed:
Mr. Ghost
Suddenly an ugly talking paper clip materializes from nowhere, blinks and enquires: It looks like you are writing a letter. Would you like help?
Ghost jumps out of his ectoplasm in fright at the sudden appearance of the ugly talking paper clip.The ugly talking paper clip looks awfully like his skeleton back in the grave. He doesn't like the ugly talking paper clip. He tries to scare ugly talking paper clip but ugly talking paper clip stares right back at him unfazed smiling and blinking. Ghost tries to close document to get rid of ugly talking paper clip but ugly talking paper clip enquires : Do you want to save changes to the document?
Ghost retreats in haste, thinks for some time and tries new tactic. He opens Microsoft Outlook. Ugly talking paper clip reappears. Now it is the ghost's turn to feel haunted! He clicks on ugly talking paper clip in trepidation. Ugly talking paper clip asks: What would you like to do?
Ghost types: Get Silverine’s credit card numbers.
Ugly talking paper clip replies: Listen buster! I have been trying to get her credit card numbers too for the past two years, now buzz off!!
Ghost makes New Year resolution never to mess with technology again.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok folks, I will stop here for now. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2006. I don’t think I will be able to blog till month end as I have a very noble duty to accomplish! And that is to ensure my chetan ( my eldest brother) reaches the wedding altar willingly or unwillingly ( even if I have to drag him there). My to-be-sis-in-law is paying me big money for this.
So take care, have a blast partying this Xmas and New Year. Don’t drink and drive, observe lane discipline, tip the traffic cops generously etc. etc. ( this is a FREE public service message for which the cops have agreed to pay scant attention to my traffic misdemeanors for the next one month! Yipeee)
For a sneak preview of the movie Pulse click here!
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
I, ME, MYSELF
I turn 50 today ! Er... I mean this is my 50th post. This post is a reply to Leon's Tag where I am supposed to list 20 facts about myself.I really enjoyed doing this one. And like other tags I wish there were more than 20 points that I could list about myself. So here goes...and if anyone gets bored halfway through or earlier please click here and here for some light reading.
1. I am the youngest of three kids and was born a month premature. I spent the first month of my life in an incubator. The doctor told my Dad that I was perfectly normal enough to be kicked out of the incubator but he had to follow hospital rules and keep me in there. He advised my Dad not to wear off his knees kneeling and praying in the hospital chapel as I was doing better than most full term babies. My Dad sighed as he realized that he had missed a perfectly good opportunity to yarn to friends and family about how he pulled his daughter out of the jaws of death by kneeling down and storming the heaven with prayers. ( He can spin enough yarn to weave a blanket over the Himalayas)
2. I am a very forthright person and brutally frank too. I do not mince words. With these characteristics I do not know how I ended up in the communication business. I handle Communications for an IT company.
3. I have a curious mind and must get to know how things are done. So I learnt to cut hair, to make wines ( I am not kidding),embroider, knit, bake, carve vegetables, make candles, cake icing, flower arrangements, Bonsai, Ikebana etc. And if there is anything else out there to be learnt I will do it. And after I learn these stuff I buy books and try to learn more on these subjects. I try to perfect most of the things I have learnt. I have actually gone into restaurant kitchens befriended cooks and got recipes out of them. It is this passion for learning that made me pick up Photoshop, Corel Draw and Dreamweaver in weeks. I cannot bear to not know stuff.
4. I am a Crossword-oholic! I cannot sleep till I have completed every grid! ( I need help!!!)
5. My Dad is very liberal in his outlook; my Mom is a very conservative Pala Achayathi. I was never allowed to sleep over at friends house however my friends were always welcome to do so at my house. That’s the way my parents struck a balance between their views. I am glad I have little bit of the modern and little bit of the traditional in me. However my Mom still remains my best friend.
6. I rarely watch TV. And if I do watch it will be only comedy serials, English movies and Malayalam movies. I still love to put my legs over the sofa backrest and hang upside down on the sofa and watch TV (don’t ask me why). My mom is convinced that I was a bat in my last life.
7. I can actually make people puke their lunch out with my one-liners. Ask the crowd that sits with me for lunch in the cafeteria.
8. I can size up a person at first meeting. But I do not let first impression be the last impression. Every person in my mind is an open book. I just keep adding new chapters.
9. I once spent an entire day in Ooty following a Malabar Whistling-Thrush .I can identify over 50 different bird species. I can spend an entire lifetime watching birds with my Canon binoculars and not be bored with it ( the feathered kind mind u guys). Next birth I want to be reborn as a bird. ( ahem..the feathered kind guys!)
10. I rarely lose my temper except when someone treats me like a kid. This is what made me snap at two commenters on my blog, for which I am deeply remorseful.
11. In school and college I never confined myself to any group. I was welcome in all the groups from the literary types to the constantly-applying-makeup-types to the sporty-types to the nerdy-types.
12. I am too forgiving. I cannot hold a grudge for long. I am too cheerful a person for that.
13. I live in eternal dread of losing any member of my family. I rather die before that happens.
14. I am fastidiously neat. Cleaning up is my stress therapy. I am also a very organized person. At work it is me who usually plans out every Quarters schedule.
15. I work at break neck speed. That's because I work with utter concentration and the ideas flow thick and fast when I am faced with a creative challenge. I did this months Internal Newsletter including content and design direction in 3 hours flat. I need to slow down sometimes for the sake of my team mates.
16. I believe that it takes all kinds to make the Earth. So it is no point getting irritated at differing opinions or viewpoints. I believe in the live and let live philosophy very strongly.
17. I am a religious person, but constantly got into fights with the nuns in school and college over matters on religion. I still disagree with a lot issues in the Church, but remain steadfastly a Catholic.
18. I do not believe in love at first sight. I am too much of a realist for that.
19. I am equally comfy in my own company or with others. I can never get bored because I will always have something to do.
20. I hum 24 /7/ 365 days of the year. I love pop, reggae and country music besides old Hindi and Malayalam songs. At work you will never see me without my headphones.
Whew that was quite a job. I cheated by inserting more than one aspect of my personality in one point, but I still feel I have so much more to say. I am supposed to pass on the tag so I am passing it on to whoever would like to attempt it. Try it guys, you will be amazed how much you will enjoy it.
1. I am the youngest of three kids and was born a month premature. I spent the first month of my life in an incubator. The doctor told my Dad that I was perfectly normal enough to be kicked out of the incubator but he had to follow hospital rules and keep me in there. He advised my Dad not to wear off his knees kneeling and praying in the hospital chapel as I was doing better than most full term babies. My Dad sighed as he realized that he had missed a perfectly good opportunity to yarn to friends and family about how he pulled his daughter out of the jaws of death by kneeling down and storming the heaven with prayers. ( He can spin enough yarn to weave a blanket over the Himalayas)
2. I am a very forthright person and brutally frank too. I do not mince words. With these characteristics I do not know how I ended up in the communication business. I handle Communications for an IT company.
3. I have a curious mind and must get to know how things are done. So I learnt to cut hair, to make wines ( I am not kidding),embroider, knit, bake, carve vegetables, make candles, cake icing, flower arrangements, Bonsai, Ikebana etc. And if there is anything else out there to be learnt I will do it. And after I learn these stuff I buy books and try to learn more on these subjects. I try to perfect most of the things I have learnt. I have actually gone into restaurant kitchens befriended cooks and got recipes out of them. It is this passion for learning that made me pick up Photoshop, Corel Draw and Dreamweaver in weeks. I cannot bear to not know stuff.
4. I am a Crossword-oholic! I cannot sleep till I have completed every grid! ( I need help!!!)
5. My Dad is very liberal in his outlook; my Mom is a very conservative Pala Achayathi. I was never allowed to sleep over at friends house however my friends were always welcome to do so at my house. That’s the way my parents struck a balance between their views. I am glad I have little bit of the modern and little bit of the traditional in me. However my Mom still remains my best friend.
6. I rarely watch TV. And if I do watch it will be only comedy serials, English movies and Malayalam movies. I still love to put my legs over the sofa backrest and hang upside down on the sofa and watch TV (don’t ask me why). My mom is convinced that I was a bat in my last life.
7. I can actually make people puke their lunch out with my one-liners. Ask the crowd that sits with me for lunch in the cafeteria.
8. I can size up a person at first meeting. But I do not let first impression be the last impression. Every person in my mind is an open book. I just keep adding new chapters.
9. I once spent an entire day in Ooty following a Malabar Whistling-Thrush .I can identify over 50 different bird species. I can spend an entire lifetime watching birds with my Canon binoculars and not be bored with it ( the feathered kind mind u guys). Next birth I want to be reborn as a bird. ( ahem..the feathered kind guys!)
10. I rarely lose my temper except when someone treats me like a kid. This is what made me snap at two commenters on my blog, for which I am deeply remorseful.
11. In school and college I never confined myself to any group. I was welcome in all the groups from the literary types to the constantly-applying-makeup-types to the sporty-types to the nerdy-types.
12. I am too forgiving. I cannot hold a grudge for long. I am too cheerful a person for that.
13. I live in eternal dread of losing any member of my family. I rather die before that happens.
14. I am fastidiously neat. Cleaning up is my stress therapy. I am also a very organized person. At work it is me who usually plans out every Quarters schedule.
15. I work at break neck speed. That's because I work with utter concentration and the ideas flow thick and fast when I am faced with a creative challenge. I did this months Internal Newsletter including content and design direction in 3 hours flat. I need to slow down sometimes for the sake of my team mates.
16. I believe that it takes all kinds to make the Earth. So it is no point getting irritated at differing opinions or viewpoints. I believe in the live and let live philosophy very strongly.
17. I am a religious person, but constantly got into fights with the nuns in school and college over matters on religion. I still disagree with a lot issues in the Church, but remain steadfastly a Catholic.
18. I do not believe in love at first sight. I am too much of a realist for that.
19. I am equally comfy in my own company or with others. I can never get bored because I will always have something to do.
20. I hum 24 /7/ 365 days of the year. I love pop, reggae and country music besides old Hindi and Malayalam songs. At work you will never see me without my headphones.
Whew that was quite a job. I cheated by inserting more than one aspect of my personality in one point, but I still feel I have so much more to say. I am supposed to pass on the tag so I am passing it on to whoever would like to attempt it. Try it guys, you will be amazed how much you will enjoy it.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Close Shave!
One of my most enduring and endearing memories of Goa.This is a mobile cam image of a board outside a barber shop on Baga Beach Road. I was ROFL after seeing this.I particularly liked the logo i.e. the shaving blade with the legend 'Close Shave' emblazoned across.You can see many such hilarious boards and notices if you look around.
Close shave anyone? ( you know where to go) :))
Close shave anyone? ( you know where to go) :))
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Selling Snow to an Eskimo
How would you sell snow to an Eskimo? This was a question that a couple of people in my company asked me the other day at lunch. Though I do not handle marketing I have watched my marketing brethren in action to be fairly able to answer the said question.
Selling snow to an Eskimo is a piece of cake (according to aforementioned marketing brethren) if you follow the laid down marketing principals of giving your customer a new product, value for money, accessories, distribution system, pricing, promotion blah blah blah.
Now... our Eskimo is surrounded by snow. Tonnes and miles of white snow. So we add a dash of value-adds to the snow, package it attractively and pray for suckers er...customers to buy it from us. (Besides, inspirational pep talk by your Manager that you either reach your target or go back to your old job as door to door salesman in Bansiwalah Papad Company also works wonders.And such pep talks give the team that vital burst of energy and motivation to attempt the impossible like selling infrastructure bonds to Bangaloreans. )
For aspiring marketing executives the conversation below will act as a curtain raiser to a career in marketing. ( I know no one aspires to be in Marketing, but then people with a glib tongue and no life need to be gainfully occupied too.)
Marketing Guy ( MG)to Eskimo: Aksuse!! ( greetings) I am from Icy Snow Company.
Eskimo: You come selling snow to me Eskimo ??? You either crazy or from marketing. ( shaking head)
MG( plastic smile and well rehearsed speech in place): We don’t just sell any snow, Sir. We sell Icy Snow, the leading brand of snow in the world.
Aren’t you bored with same old snow you see very day? The same old white, reindeer dropping dripping, husky pee smelling snow that you use posing serious heath hazards to you are your family?
Eskimo: My ancestors use same snow, I use same snow. Nothing happen. Now scram pest, before I let my Huskies on you!
MG: You have Huskies? How cute; we give free castrations for 8 Huskies with every purchase of $10,000 worth of snow from us.
Eskimo: Whaaaa? You castrate my Huskies? I will castrate you if I see you near my Igloo again!!!! grrrrrrr
MG:(hastily) er... Or you can take the 8 pack of absolutely FREE copper bells for your Reindeers Sir.
Eskimo:(suitably mollified) hmmmmm that sound good.
MG (wiping sweat from his brow): Glad to be of service Sir.
MG starts a presentation on his Laptop.Impressive music fills the air as a Flash presentation of squiggly lines weave and curl over a world map. A clichéd commentary accompanies the presentation extolling the company and its snow.
MG: As you can see sir, we are a well-established company with an office in every country. We manufacture tonnes of snow and our sales in places like Ice Land and Greenland is at an all time high.
Eskimo is not impressed. He says “We Eskimos no fools like ‘em Icelanders and Greenlanders, Shmucks!!!! Baah!”
MG:(smoothly) Of course you are not. But then do you use Vitamin enriched snow for your igloos?
Eskimo: Vitamin enriched snow? What do I need that for?
MG: For a healthier lifestyle and bounding energy for your seal hunting Sir. Imagine sleeping in an Igloo that is slowly releasing essential Vitamins and Minerals into the atmosphere, so that you wake up healthy and raring to go!
Eskimo:(puzzled) Go Where? I go hunting once a month. Rest of the days we eat.
MG: Er… well sir let me rephrase the sentence for you. Imagine sleeping in an Igloo that is slowly releases essential Vitamins into the atmosphere, so that you wake up healthy and raring to eat.
Eskimo: Will the vitamins make me eat more?
MG(confused but learning on the job): er...is that good or bad? I mean an increase in appetite?
Eskimo: hmmmm well I can’t afford to eat more cos that means I have to hunt more...
MG: ( cutting in smoothly) Well Sir what I actually meant was that it will effect your ahem...libido!
Eskimo:(petrified) No no no... that mean I have more children, which means I have more mouths to feed!
MG: And many more hands to help you during hunting Sir.
Eskimo(scratching his beard):That sounds interesting.
MG:(triumphantly removing a glossy brochure from his briefcase)...And our snow comes in different colors too. You can choose from a wide variety of Pastels and Browns besides the regular colors. You will be the envy of the neighborhood Sir. Infact Mr. Akkituyok, your neighbour has just ordered a batch of purple snow for his new Igloo.
Eskimo: Well, if Akkituyok has ordered then I must have this new fangled snow too. That son of a mountain skunk, rotten seal eating bastard will not steal the march from me.
MG: That’s the spirit Sir !! I shall process your order ASAP. That will be $7000 dollars Sir, will it be cash or card?
Eskimo: Dollah? What dollahs? We Eskimos pay in seal skin ONLY !!!!
MG: aarrgghhh !!!!!
Well... he nearly sold the snow.
It was a catch 22 situation. MG is caught between the deep sea and Bansiwalah Papad Company. He was last seen jumping off an iceberg.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
War Games
Troops Who Burned Taliban Face Discipline says the yahoo news headlines. Now that is an interesting thought. Imagine a soldier who has burnt a dead Taliban man being court martialled.
Enquiry Officer (EO): So, how many Taliban men did you cremate?
Soldier: None Sir!
EO: Bad boy!!!, tell the truth or I will confiscate all your matchboxes.
Soldier: Ten sir!
EO: Ok, now for that voluntary admission you do 100 sit ups and no Playboy magazines for one whole week.
Is that how they plan to “discipline” offenders in the US army? Not that I have any hate or love for the Taliban or the US troops, but the reporter who wrote this headline must have had his tongue firmly in cheek to describe the severity of punishment that awaits US troops who cremated dead Taliban militants.
A military spokesperson in this article is quoted as saying that the offending troops will not be prosecuted ( just disciplined) because their action were motivated by “hygiene reasons”.
Now that is even more interesting. Now getting up in the morning, brushing your teeth and burning a Taliban militant will be considered as good hygiene. Bad breath? Burn a militant. Body odor? Burn another militant. And so on and so forth till you are absolutely hygienic and smelling wonderful.
I must admit this headline woke me up from my Sunday hibernation mode to instant alert mode.
“The U.S.-led coalition's operational commander, Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, said broadcasts about the burned remains, while "designed to incite fleeing Taliban to fight," violated military policy.
This is a very strange war tactic indeed. You have the enemy fleeing and victory in sight and you goad them to come back for more? Consider this “scene”.
Sergeant Tim: The Taliban is fleeing Sir!
Kamiya: Oh nooooooooo!!!! How can they do this to me? Come back you cowards and fight like a man!!!
Sergeant Tim: er..general, they have vanished.
Kamiya (recovering composure): “Ok it’s time for my pet Foolhardy Strategy No. 457 that will make the enemy fight like a man. Call the video cameraman!!”
Kamiya to video camera man: “ Burning Scene No 658940,Lights,Camera, Action!!!!”
The shot is canned and sent for broadcast.
Flushed with the succes of his strategy, Kamiya has since resigned and has opened the School of Creative Military Tactics in POK.
Enquiry Officer (EO): So, how many Taliban men did you cremate?
Soldier: None Sir!
EO: Bad boy!!!, tell the truth or I will confiscate all your matchboxes.
Soldier: Ten sir!
EO: Ok, now for that voluntary admission you do 100 sit ups and no Playboy magazines for one whole week.
Is that how they plan to “discipline” offenders in the US army? Not that I have any hate or love for the Taliban or the US troops, but the reporter who wrote this headline must have had his tongue firmly in cheek to describe the severity of punishment that awaits US troops who cremated dead Taliban militants.
A military spokesperson in this article is quoted as saying that the offending troops will not be prosecuted ( just disciplined) because their action were motivated by “hygiene reasons”.
Now that is even more interesting. Now getting up in the morning, brushing your teeth and burning a Taliban militant will be considered as good hygiene. Bad breath? Burn a militant. Body odor? Burn another militant. And so on and so forth till you are absolutely hygienic and smelling wonderful.
I must admit this headline woke me up from my Sunday hibernation mode to instant alert mode.
“The U.S.-led coalition's operational commander, Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, said broadcasts about the burned remains, while "designed to incite fleeing Taliban to fight," violated military policy.
This is a very strange war tactic indeed. You have the enemy fleeing and victory in sight and you goad them to come back for more? Consider this “scene”.
Sergeant Tim: The Taliban is fleeing Sir!
Kamiya: Oh nooooooooo!!!! How can they do this to me? Come back you cowards and fight like a man!!!
Sergeant Tim: er..general, they have vanished.
Kamiya (recovering composure): “Ok it’s time for my pet Foolhardy Strategy No. 457 that will make the enemy fight like a man. Call the video cameraman!!”
Kamiya to video camera man: “ Burning Scene No 658940,Lights,Camera, Action!!!!”
The shot is canned and sent for broadcast.
Flushed with the succes of his strategy, Kamiya has since resigned and has opened the School of Creative Military Tactics in POK.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Homeocide
Has anyone here been to a homeo doc? Well, I have been several times, as my parents have great faith in Homeopathy. During my numerous childhood visits I never noticed the questions that the doc asked my mom. The scores of small bottles that lined the shelf and the smell of alcohol and Lactose pills that hung in the air would fascinate me and I spent many happy hours exploring the clinic.
Recently I had to go to a homeo doc near my office for a persistent cough that I had developed after getting drenched in the rain. For the first time in my life I faced the questions of a homeo doc on my own. By the end of the case taking I felt I had been through a methodical KGB style interrogation! Before I proceed any further let me assure you that I have utmost faith in homeo meds. However the questions that a homeo doc asks you, can drive you crazy.
Homeo Doc (HD): When did u notice you had a cold.
Me: When my nose started running and I started coughing.
HD: Exactly what time did your nose start running?
Me: er......I don't remember
HD: You don’t remember? Does this happen often?
Me: Does what happen often?
HD: These memory lapses
Me: No no no my memory is perfectly fine, it's just that I didn't notice when my nose started running.
HD: ( looking at me with exasperation) How can make a case study if you don’t give me an approximate time?
Me: hmmm I think it was morning!
HD: Ok, was it between 1am and 3 am or 3am and 6 am or 6am and 9 am?
Me: er...I think it was between 6am and 9 am.
HD: Please be sure. These things are important you know.
Me: ( itching to make a dash for the door) Yes, I am sure.
HD: Was it cold or foggy that morning when your nose started running?
Me: I dunno
HD: What do you mean you don't know? Didn't you look around?
Me: I don't get up that early.
HD: But you just said that your nose started running between 6 am and 9 am. Then you would have noticed the weather.
Me:( in a hurry to get this painful exercise over) It was definitely foggy.
HD: Describe the nose run.
Me: Huh?
HD: (patiently) Was it clear, green, white thick or thin?
Me: I think I want to puke.
HD: So you have nausea too?
Me: No, but if I have to describe my snot I think I will puke.
HD: Suit yourself, but don’t blame me and make statements that homeo meds don’t work if I get the diagnosis wrong because of our non-co-operation.
Me: (meekly) Ok, It was clear and running like crazy.
HD: Ok, so when did the cough start?
Me: Oh my gawd do I have to go through this all over again?????
HD: Yes.
Me: groaaaaaaan
At this point of time I was hoping that an Allopathic doctor would appear miraculously with a lethal injection in hand to put me out of my misery.
And er..."NO"...the injection is not for me!
Recently I had to go to a homeo doc near my office for a persistent cough that I had developed after getting drenched in the rain. For the first time in my life I faced the questions of a homeo doc on my own. By the end of the case taking I felt I had been through a methodical KGB style interrogation! Before I proceed any further let me assure you that I have utmost faith in homeo meds. However the questions that a homeo doc asks you, can drive you crazy.
Homeo Doc (HD): When did u notice you had a cold.
Me: When my nose started running and I started coughing.
HD: Exactly what time did your nose start running?
Me: er......I don't remember
HD: You don’t remember? Does this happen often?
Me: Does what happen often?
HD: These memory lapses
Me: No no no my memory is perfectly fine, it's just that I didn't notice when my nose started running.
HD: ( looking at me with exasperation) How can make a case study if you don’t give me an approximate time?
Me: hmmm I think it was morning!
HD: Ok, was it between 1am and 3 am or 3am and 6 am or 6am and 9 am?
Me: er...I think it was between 6am and 9 am.
HD: Please be sure. These things are important you know.
Me: ( itching to make a dash for the door) Yes, I am sure.
HD: Was it cold or foggy that morning when your nose started running?
Me: I dunno
HD: What do you mean you don't know? Didn't you look around?
Me: I don't get up that early.
HD: But you just said that your nose started running between 6 am and 9 am. Then you would have noticed the weather.
Me:( in a hurry to get this painful exercise over) It was definitely foggy.
HD: Describe the nose run.
Me: Huh?
HD: (patiently) Was it clear, green, white thick or thin?
Me: I think I want to puke.
HD: So you have nausea too?
Me: No, but if I have to describe my snot I think I will puke.
HD: Suit yourself, but don’t blame me and make statements that homeo meds don’t work if I get the diagnosis wrong because of our non-co-operation.
Me: (meekly) Ok, It was clear and running like crazy.
HD: Ok, so when did the cough start?
Me: Oh my gawd do I have to go through this all over again?????
HD: Yes.
Me: groaaaaaaan
At this point of time I was hoping that an Allopathic doctor would appear miraculously with a lethal injection in hand to put me out of my misery.
And er..."NO"...the injection is not for me!
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
P C Hell !
“God could not be everywhere so he created System Administrators”
Not so ancient saying
There is this enduring legend in IT companies. It’s called the Legend of the System Administrator(sysadmin). Everyone has heard about him but no one has actually seen him. And like the other people in this company including the management I have never seen him. There are random reports of sightings, which are however not confirmed to be actually a sysadmin. The management is sure they have hired a sysadmin. The Security guys complain that someone keeps slithering in and out of shadows and stairwells. The Housekeeping guys have reported that they have seen something move in the wiring. In fact Muniyamma from Housekeeping performed a Pooja to smoke what she termed was an evil spirit in the Network cables. Whatever was in there coughed up a storm making the systems crash.
It is rumored that he comes out in the open in the nights when no one is around to attend to our complaints. Of course this is a rumor mind you. A lot of people here believe that He is our God keeping an eye on our Network, PC’s and protecting our data. And like God, we blindly believe in Him and His abilities to tackle our problems. We have even kept aside several auspicious days where we offer ritual sacrifices to appease Him. Last Monday we created a Folder called Network Problems and sacrificed it by Shift + Deleting it. Then we sang His praises and went back to work.
This week the sacrificial folder is called systems_not_rebooting.
Next week I anticipate a sacrificial folder filled with complaints called: oppenoffice_is_driving_me_crazy_somebody_please_helllllllllp.
Of course there are doubting thomases in our company too. These infidels do not believe in the existence of a sysadmin and say that the Network is a result of a big bang though I must admit it usually looks like a big bang did take place in the networks! These unbelievers do not understand that like God the sysadmin tests your faith and patience in him from time to time by frequent Network crashes. It keeps us on our toes and makes us believe in the mortality of our labor and frequent back ups on removable drives.
We even believe that there is a PC Hell to which we are confined if we are bad and spared if we have been good.
Bad behavior according to sysadmin is:
1. Sending mails to the sysdamin asking for help. (It disturbs his concentration while playing Solitaire)
2. Changing the settings on your PC and making it crash. (because he has to leave the cricket match commentary and come to attend to your PC)
3. Mailing him with complaints about the EPABX (Because by force of habit he will come down to repair the EPABX and then realize that it does not come under his job description)
4. Swearing at the computer when it hangs and thus abusing his profession (Because he thinks no one likes him and everyone pokes fun at him, which is actually true)
5. When you send huge attachments to everyone jamming the mail server etc.( because he realizes that he was not in the mailing list)
6. Mailing him probing questions about your PC problems (because he himself doesn't know)
Good behavior according to a sysadmin is:
1. Never asking for help
2. Using Do-It-Yourself-Manuals or Online help
3. Waiting for his help for five seconds and then calling the AMC guys of your home PC for help
4. Doing a short course in System Administration so that you can help yourself
5. Sending him occasional e-cards telling him how much you appreciate his services.
Those of you who fall in the good deeds category will be left alone in peace to deal with your PC problems. But those of you have been naughty and have troubled your sysadmins, will experience the horrors of a PC Hell.
P C Hell is described below for the uninitiated.
1. Messengers do not work your system and the sysadmin replies to your mails saying that he will look into it in a year so, because he has important things to attend to now.
2. You cannot access your Yahoo Mail, Rediffmail or any other free of paid mail services that you are using for no apparent reasons. But you get regular mails from the sysadmin informing you how much he has enjoyed the jokes in your various personal mail accounts.
3. You also get mails expressing sympathy at your bank balance.
4. You are mailed complicated instructions to Install OpenOffice like “ Take a deep breath, Exhale, do this for twenty minutes then mail me again for further instructions”
5. You are tersely informed via mail that for the security of your PC you will now have to use 45 character passwords.
6. Every site you try to browse invariably leads to appreciateyoursysadmin.com.
Never mess with your sysadmin.
Not so ancient saying
There is this enduring legend in IT companies. It’s called the Legend of the System Administrator(sysadmin). Everyone has heard about him but no one has actually seen him. And like the other people in this company including the management I have never seen him. There are random reports of sightings, which are however not confirmed to be actually a sysadmin. The management is sure they have hired a sysadmin. The Security guys complain that someone keeps slithering in and out of shadows and stairwells. The Housekeeping guys have reported that they have seen something move in the wiring. In fact Muniyamma from Housekeeping performed a Pooja to smoke what she termed was an evil spirit in the Network cables. Whatever was in there coughed up a storm making the systems crash.
It is rumored that he comes out in the open in the nights when no one is around to attend to our complaints. Of course this is a rumor mind you. A lot of people here believe that He is our God keeping an eye on our Network, PC’s and protecting our data. And like God, we blindly believe in Him and His abilities to tackle our problems. We have even kept aside several auspicious days where we offer ritual sacrifices to appease Him. Last Monday we created a Folder called Network Problems and sacrificed it by Shift + Deleting it. Then we sang His praises and went back to work.
This week the sacrificial folder is called systems_not_rebooting.
Next week I anticipate a sacrificial folder filled with complaints called: oppenoffice_is_driving_me_crazy_somebody_please_helllllllllp.
Of course there are doubting thomases in our company too. These infidels do not believe in the existence of a sysadmin and say that the Network is a result of a big bang though I must admit it usually looks like a big bang did take place in the networks! These unbelievers do not understand that like God the sysadmin tests your faith and patience in him from time to time by frequent Network crashes. It keeps us on our toes and makes us believe in the mortality of our labor and frequent back ups on removable drives.
We even believe that there is a PC Hell to which we are confined if we are bad and spared if we have been good.
Bad behavior according to sysadmin is:
1. Sending mails to the sysdamin asking for help. (It disturbs his concentration while playing Solitaire)
2. Changing the settings on your PC and making it crash. (because he has to leave the cricket match commentary and come to attend to your PC)
3. Mailing him with complaints about the EPABX (Because by force of habit he will come down to repair the EPABX and then realize that it does not come under his job description)
4. Swearing at the computer when it hangs and thus abusing his profession (Because he thinks no one likes him and everyone pokes fun at him, which is actually true)
5. When you send huge attachments to everyone jamming the mail server etc.( because he realizes that he was not in the mailing list)
6. Mailing him probing questions about your PC problems (because he himself doesn't know)
Good behavior according to a sysadmin is:
1. Never asking for help
2. Using Do-It-Yourself-Manuals or Online help
3. Waiting for his help for five seconds and then calling the AMC guys of your home PC for help
4. Doing a short course in System Administration so that you can help yourself
5. Sending him occasional e-cards telling him how much you appreciate his services.
Those of you who fall in the good deeds category will be left alone in peace to deal with your PC problems. But those of you have been naughty and have troubled your sysadmins, will experience the horrors of a PC Hell.
P C Hell is described below for the uninitiated.
1. Messengers do not work your system and the sysadmin replies to your mails saying that he will look into it in a year so, because he has important things to attend to now.
2. You cannot access your Yahoo Mail, Rediffmail or any other free of paid mail services that you are using for no apparent reasons. But you get regular mails from the sysadmin informing you how much he has enjoyed the jokes in your various personal mail accounts.
3. You also get mails expressing sympathy at your bank balance.
4. You are mailed complicated instructions to Install OpenOffice like “ Take a deep breath, Exhale, do this for twenty minutes then mail me again for further instructions”
5. You are tersely informed via mail that for the security of your PC you will now have to use 45 character passwords.
6. Every site you try to browse invariably leads to appreciateyoursysadmin.com.
Never mess with your sysadmin.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
A life so precious snuffed in seconds
During Diwali hols an ex colleague of mine, VK was driving home on his motorbike when his bike handle grazed against a stationery truck hurling him onto the road. As he picked himself up from the road, a BMTC bus which was coming from the opposite direction ran over him. The BMTC bus was a good 15 meters away, but the driver was allegedly chatting with a friend to notice the road. VK died instantly, his body cut into half. He was 24. The driver was arrested. The news was reported in the newspaper and VK became yet another statistic. VK leaves behind a young wife and a two year old daughter.
In his office, the news came as a jolt, especially since VK was a very well loved person with his ever ready smile and sincere nature. The whole office was enveloped in gloom. It was difficult to deal with the fact that VK was no more, and more difficult to comprehend his wife and daughter's future as VK was the only earning member in his family.
During the police paperwork of the case we learn't some startling facts.
1.If you kill someone with a vehicle it is considered an accident. All you to do is pay a fine and if the Judge is in a bad mood a couple of months in prison.
2.Only if you kill a person with a knife or any other weapon is it deemed a murder.
3.In an accident the bigger vehicle is automatically deemed guilty. Therefore you have no choice but to plead guilty even if you were hit from behind.
4.And if the bigger vehicle's owner was indeed guilty, then a pre determined amount will be paid by the Insurance company to the wronged party. The sum is not even worth mentioning here.
5.Investigations of accidents are never carried out. A case is registered so that concerned parties can claim insurance.
Can anyone in the higher echelons of power comprehend the terrible loss suffered by VK's family? If they could they would have definitely made the roads a safer place for the ordinary citizen. The fact of the matter is that no one cares. It doesn't matter that VK's young daughter will never know her father and that his wife will perhaps have to struggle for the rest of her life to bring up her daughter and support her old in laws.
A death in the family has many repercussions. Do we need to spell this out to the authorities?? Or are we lacking as citizens in blindly following the archaic laws laid out in the last century?
Somehow I feel that we have all failed VK by remaining mute spectators to such preventable tragedies.
R.I.P VK
In his office, the news came as a jolt, especially since VK was a very well loved person with his ever ready smile and sincere nature. The whole office was enveloped in gloom. It was difficult to deal with the fact that VK was no more, and more difficult to comprehend his wife and daughter's future as VK was the only earning member in his family.
During the police paperwork of the case we learn't some startling facts.
1.If you kill someone with a vehicle it is considered an accident. All you to do is pay a fine and if the Judge is in a bad mood a couple of months in prison.
2.Only if you kill a person with a knife or any other weapon is it deemed a murder.
3.In an accident the bigger vehicle is automatically deemed guilty. Therefore you have no choice but to plead guilty even if you were hit from behind.
4.And if the bigger vehicle's owner was indeed guilty, then a pre determined amount will be paid by the Insurance company to the wronged party. The sum is not even worth mentioning here.
5.Investigations of accidents are never carried out. A case is registered so that concerned parties can claim insurance.
Can anyone in the higher echelons of power comprehend the terrible loss suffered by VK's family? If they could they would have definitely made the roads a safer place for the ordinary citizen. The fact of the matter is that no one cares. It doesn't matter that VK's young daughter will never know her father and that his wife will perhaps have to struggle for the rest of her life to bring up her daughter and support her old in laws.
A death in the family has many repercussions. Do we need to spell this out to the authorities?? Or are we lacking as citizens in blindly following the archaic laws laid out in the last century?
Somehow I feel that we have all failed VK by remaining mute spectators to such preventable tragedies.
R.I.P VK
Saturday, November 05, 2005
A cracker of a start to Diwali hols!
Two weeks back my Dad surprised us with the news that he had booked a holiday for us in Goa after our visit to Kerala for the Diwali hols. This was an unexpected windfall as I really needed a break after last months hectic work schedule due to the IT.In. My jaded mind was too numb to even manage a smile when my Dad made the announcement. Proof enough that I badly needed a holiday. I was too tired to even pack till Friday night just before departure. I left work around 5 pm and headed straight for home to finish my packing. Now, my family is a seasoned bunch of travelers and long years of traveling with the pack has wised me up to certain eventualities that happen before/during/after the travels.
Packing for the journey is a mutlipronged activity with each family member unique in his or her packing habits. My Dad packs the fastest. Two bottles of scotch and a couple of bottles of Vodka thrown carelessly into his suitcase and he is ready to leave. My mom will then, patiently fill the suitcase with not-so-essential material like underclothes, toiletries, clothes etc. My Dad doesn’t waste too much time on the mundane.
My eldest brother ‘G’ is more organized. He starts packing at least a week in advance. He is the person we will most likely turn to in the middle of nowhere for an Antacid or an earbud. Mom and me are a close second to “G” in packing efficiency.
This leaves out a very interesting packer in my household. My second elder brother 'M’ who everyone says is a classic example of a Bohemian born into a mallu family. He is even more prudent than my Dad in packing. Dark sunglasses and a tube of hair gel thrown into the suitcase is all that he needs to hit the road. For the past several years I have done the not so enviable job of packing his bag, to avoid the inevitable confusion when my eldest brother realizes that his shaving kit is missing in the morning or when my Dad realizes that his Bermudas and Tees have somehow migrated to his second son’s room. M also wears and discards clothes at the rate of three pairs a day. Which means I have to mentally calculate the number of days we will be out with the number of clothes he will wear. After some complicated mathematics, I simply empty his cupboard into the suitcase/s.
My Dad goes into hibernation the moment we leave Bangalore and leaves all decision making to ‘G’. This leads to lot of snide comments from ‘M’ (for my ears only of course, for he has a healthy respect for Chetan) about favoritism and nepotism and all other isms that he can think of which may be totally unconnected to the situation like ‘communism’. The fact that he cannot even decide whether he should shave or not before leaving is ignored in the feeling of righteous indignation.
Both the brothers share driving duty. Prior to departure ‘G’ would have stored all his favorite numbers into his MP3 for his stint at the wheel. He is also a very safe and able driver and the first half of the journey will go uneventfully. It is when ‘M’ takes over the wheels that the atmosphere inside the SUV changes dramatically. My Mom removes her rosary beads and talks wistfully about seeing her grandchildren before she dies. My Dad looks like he has just been told that he has only a few hours to live. I usually say a silent prayer and adjust my hair and makeup incase I have to enter the Pearly Gates in a hurry. (I better look good to cover up for my vast multitude of sins).
Past experience has taught me that a sober collection of music will make “M” drive at a steady speed of 60 mph or so. Heavy metal makes him do crazy things like trying to take hairpin bends at 90 kmph. To avoid total decimation of the family I have to perform the vital task of loading his MP3 player with a collection of music that will ensure that we live another day to see yet another sunrise.
Friday night, just before we left I sat down and carefully chose some not so raucous numbers for M’s MP3 player. While waiting for them to transfer I decided to finish my packing, dinner etc. Finally we left after my Mom had made us say the mandatory prayers and we had handed over the house and dogs to my aunt. We reached Coimbatore by midnight and spent the night at my Uncles place. Next day after breakfast M took over the vehicle for the next lap to Cochin. ‘G’ as is the practice switched places with me and migrated to the back, so that he could better control the itch to snatch the wheel from M every time he swung the vehicle like a madman on a suicide mission... which he usually does once every half an hour.
M, after adjusting his sunglasses and smoothening an invisible lock of hair into place, drove out like a pilot taxing to the take off point. We left Coimbatore and cruised on the Highway. The speedometer showed a comfortable speed level and I sat back to read the newspaper. After 100 kilometers or so the vehicle screeched to a sudden violent halt. M looked like he had seen a ghost. The entire family ( except Dad who was sleeping like a lamb) looked around to see the cause of this sudden stoppage in the middle of the road. M then slowly removed the headphone and turned around and glared at me with black murder in his eyes. He pointed to the headphones and said “ there is a cat wailing in here !!!!!”
Perplexed I took the headphones from him and listened. The mellifluous voice of M S Subbulaksmi (MS)wafted into my ears. She was hitting a particularly high note of some carnatic raga. But how the hell did she get in here ?!?!
Now... a mixture of MS Subbulakshmi and M is a more volatile combination than candle and gunpowder. They have a particularly violent history since the days my Dad would insist on putting on an MS tape in mornings. After several unsuccessful attempts by Dad to get the family to appreciate MS, M finally got fed up and threw the tapes over the fence. M has developed a virulent hatred for anything to do with Carnatic music because of the force fed diet of such music in his earlier years. I realized that my Dad must have loaded some of his favorite MS numbers onto the MP3 not realizing it was M’s.
The culprit was fast asleep. M was fuming because he felt that his ‘rhythm’ was disrupted. My mom was giggling hysterically when she realized what had happened. I was holding my stomach trying not to laugh my guts out, while G’s face was contorted as he unsuccessfully tried to stop the paroxysms of laughter.
M watched us in disgust for some time and grouchily went back to the wheel when he realized that it would take some time for the laughter to subside. He drove in a black mood till Ernakulam and then to his utter delight and our utter dismay found a heavy metal CD in the glove compartment. A collective groan arose from us as we realized that we would have to endure some heavy duty noise for the rest of the journey.
However the look on M’s face when he switched on the music is something I will remember to my dying day. Instead of heavy metal music, Daler Mehendi bellowed lustily “hogayi thi balle balle, hojayegi balle balle”.
The culprit was fast asleep.
(The less said about M and his relationship with Daler Mehendi the better! Suffice it to say that they don’t share a very cordial relationship.)
Packing for the journey is a mutlipronged activity with each family member unique in his or her packing habits. My Dad packs the fastest. Two bottles of scotch and a couple of bottles of Vodka thrown carelessly into his suitcase and he is ready to leave. My mom will then, patiently fill the suitcase with not-so-essential material like underclothes, toiletries, clothes etc. My Dad doesn’t waste too much time on the mundane.
My eldest brother ‘G’ is more organized. He starts packing at least a week in advance. He is the person we will most likely turn to in the middle of nowhere for an Antacid or an earbud. Mom and me are a close second to “G” in packing efficiency.
This leaves out a very interesting packer in my household. My second elder brother 'M’ who everyone says is a classic example of a Bohemian born into a mallu family. He is even more prudent than my Dad in packing. Dark sunglasses and a tube of hair gel thrown into the suitcase is all that he needs to hit the road. For the past several years I have done the not so enviable job of packing his bag, to avoid the inevitable confusion when my eldest brother realizes that his shaving kit is missing in the morning or when my Dad realizes that his Bermudas and Tees have somehow migrated to his second son’s room. M also wears and discards clothes at the rate of three pairs a day. Which means I have to mentally calculate the number of days we will be out with the number of clothes he will wear. After some complicated mathematics, I simply empty his cupboard into the suitcase/s.
My Dad goes into hibernation the moment we leave Bangalore and leaves all decision making to ‘G’. This leads to lot of snide comments from ‘M’ (for my ears only of course, for he has a healthy respect for Chetan) about favoritism and nepotism and all other isms that he can think of which may be totally unconnected to the situation like ‘communism’. The fact that he cannot even decide whether he should shave or not before leaving is ignored in the feeling of righteous indignation.
Both the brothers share driving duty. Prior to departure ‘G’ would have stored all his favorite numbers into his MP3 for his stint at the wheel. He is also a very safe and able driver and the first half of the journey will go uneventfully. It is when ‘M’ takes over the wheels that the atmosphere inside the SUV changes dramatically. My Mom removes her rosary beads and talks wistfully about seeing her grandchildren before she dies. My Dad looks like he has just been told that he has only a few hours to live. I usually say a silent prayer and adjust my hair and makeup incase I have to enter the Pearly Gates in a hurry. (I better look good to cover up for my vast multitude of sins).
Past experience has taught me that a sober collection of music will make “M” drive at a steady speed of 60 mph or so. Heavy metal makes him do crazy things like trying to take hairpin bends at 90 kmph. To avoid total decimation of the family I have to perform the vital task of loading his MP3 player with a collection of music that will ensure that we live another day to see yet another sunrise.
Friday night, just before we left I sat down and carefully chose some not so raucous numbers for M’s MP3 player. While waiting for them to transfer I decided to finish my packing, dinner etc. Finally we left after my Mom had made us say the mandatory prayers and we had handed over the house and dogs to my aunt. We reached Coimbatore by midnight and spent the night at my Uncles place. Next day after breakfast M took over the vehicle for the next lap to Cochin. ‘G’ as is the practice switched places with me and migrated to the back, so that he could better control the itch to snatch the wheel from M every time he swung the vehicle like a madman on a suicide mission... which he usually does once every half an hour.
M, after adjusting his sunglasses and smoothening an invisible lock of hair into place, drove out like a pilot taxing to the take off point. We left Coimbatore and cruised on the Highway. The speedometer showed a comfortable speed level and I sat back to read the newspaper. After 100 kilometers or so the vehicle screeched to a sudden violent halt. M looked like he had seen a ghost. The entire family ( except Dad who was sleeping like a lamb) looked around to see the cause of this sudden stoppage in the middle of the road. M then slowly removed the headphone and turned around and glared at me with black murder in his eyes. He pointed to the headphones and said “ there is a cat wailing in here !!!!!”
Perplexed I took the headphones from him and listened. The mellifluous voice of M S Subbulaksmi (MS)wafted into my ears. She was hitting a particularly high note of some carnatic raga. But how the hell did she get in here ?!?!
Now... a mixture of MS Subbulakshmi and M is a more volatile combination than candle and gunpowder. They have a particularly violent history since the days my Dad would insist on putting on an MS tape in mornings. After several unsuccessful attempts by Dad to get the family to appreciate MS, M finally got fed up and threw the tapes over the fence. M has developed a virulent hatred for anything to do with Carnatic music because of the force fed diet of such music in his earlier years. I realized that my Dad must have loaded some of his favorite MS numbers onto the MP3 not realizing it was M’s.
The culprit was fast asleep. M was fuming because he felt that his ‘rhythm’ was disrupted. My mom was giggling hysterically when she realized what had happened. I was holding my stomach trying not to laugh my guts out, while G’s face was contorted as he unsuccessfully tried to stop the paroxysms of laughter.
M watched us in disgust for some time and grouchily went back to the wheel when he realized that it would take some time for the laughter to subside. He drove in a black mood till Ernakulam and then to his utter delight and our utter dismay found a heavy metal CD in the glove compartment. A collective groan arose from us as we realized that we would have to endure some heavy duty noise for the rest of the journey.
However the look on M’s face when he switched on the music is something I will remember to my dying day. Instead of heavy metal music, Daler Mehendi bellowed lustily “hogayi thi balle balle, hojayegi balle balle”.
The culprit was fast asleep.
(The less said about M and his relationship with Daler Mehendi the better! Suffice it to say that they don’t share a very cordial relationship.)
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
The ABC of a Girls PC
Disclaimer: Girls who are PC savvy may find this post offensive. Therefore you are advised to read this post and feel ashamed for not helping your PC challenged sisters.
Recently a blogger has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. He had merely linked a story about an Institute in his blog and for his troubles was sent a ‘notarized email” by the Institute. Now I think this is as good as sending a mail with a lawyer as an attachment! Now.... e-mails with viruses, adware, Trojan etc I don’t mind, but a lawyer? Imagine a lawyer running lose in a gals PC like mine! Gawd!!!! My deep dark secrets will be exposed to the world. My huge collection of jpeg images of....... puppies, kittens, flowers, teddy bears, little red hearts etc. etc. will become public knowlegde and I will become the laughing stock of the world ( read guys). On the flipside I will be the envy of all the gals, who will promptly flock to my PC to see if there are images that they can take and add to their collection. This dark underbelly of my PC is a folder called “ My Pictures” located within My Documents. No amount of therapy could cure me of collecting more and more of these pictures. (Now that I have confessed this deep dark secret I feel much better whew!!!) Now you guys must understand, we gals have our needs too, and no amount of cuddly sacharine sweet images will satisfy our craving to go awwwwwwwwwwww.
Even our PCs are very different from a guy's PC. For starters, we will have roses, teddy bears, little ones of animals and not so little ones of humans like Brad Pitt , Ashton Kuchner, Irfan Pathan etc as our Desktop background. However our Desktop is a Niagara Falls of Icons drowning out the background image.
Our PCs will remind us patiently at regular intervals that there are too many unused icons on the Desktop, which we ignore as we are genetically predisposed to ignoring anything that pops up on our Monitor. Our Microsoft Outlook will however have numerous reminders popping up at regular intervals reminding us about sales in various Malls, stylist’s appointment, changing nail polish, bill payments, Novenas etc.etc. For convent-educated gals (of any community), saying a Novena* is a must.( *a nine day prayer which if said without fail for nine consecutive days will yield a lot of hot air). Gals have Novenas for everything like:
1.Retrieving lost items especially email passwords ( I swear by this one)
2.A break up between John Abraham and Bipasha Basu
3.Getting a good boyfriend who will immediately propose (definition of ‘good’ unknown to this writer)
4.Getting a good boyfriend who will NOT propose etc.
We are notoriously bad at running Virus Scans inspite of the reminder window that frequently pops up after the due date. For PCs used by gals, Norton Anti Virus has a special feminine Edition in the pipeline. It comes with numerous power packed features like a reminder that the PC is due for a Virus Scan and then, actually going ahead with the scan anticipating that we will close the reminder window. It will, then catch the virus, worm, trojan and dangle it in front of our eyes on the monitor, forcing us to recoil in horror. Another feature is, numerous cockroaches that will crawl in the monitor as a reminder that a scan is overdue. Nothing like visual suggestion to drive home the point. Apparently this edition has an inbuilt thingie which enables it to detect that the user is female. For example:
1.Only a girl will use her PC running in Safe Mode.
2.Only a gal will push a warning from Anti Virus that there is a dangerous virus in the system to one side ( because the window can't be closed) and continue working.
3.Gals don’t like Quick Launch, they prefer everything on Desktop
4.And since there are too many confusing Icons on the Desktop we prefer to use the Programs Menu anyway.
5.Outlook Express will have additional stationery options with little hearts, bows, roses…..guess you get the gist by now.
6.The monitor will be festooned with colorful ribbons, little teddy bears and dried flowers stuck with tape. And the keyboard will have colorful stickers looking like sores all over.
7.We have never been to C and D Drive and do not know of its existence.
Anyways a recent incident led to a sea change in my attitude towards my PC and Laptop. I now swear by frequent virus scans. It all started with this innocent incident at a meeting after a presentation on my Laptop.
Boss: Ok guys! We have to strategise this quarters Brand Promotions activities.
A pop up window pops up from my Laptop with this message: Looking for Brand Promoters? Your search ends here. Contact ABC Brand Consultants.
(My hand reaches mechanically with years of experience of closing Pop Up Windows and I close the window without blinking an eyelid.)
Boss: So what are the Events that we plan to do as a follow up to the promotional activities?
Popup Window: For Promotions and Event Management contact Best Events!
Boss: ahem... silverine, have you cleaned your machine lately?
Popup Window: Clean your PC today. FREE adware scanner , download NOW, Click Here.
Me: huh! Why do I need to clean my machine?
Boss: Well... there is an awful lot of popups in your machine.
Popup Window: Free POP UP BLOCKER, click here
Me: (closing the window automatically) Where????
Popup Window: Your search ends here. Find Everything at where.com.Try The Hottest New Search Engine
Colleague No 1: Please run the Norton Anti Virus from time to time.
Popup Window: Get professional antivirus software and advice - protect your pc. Click Here
Colleague No3 to Colleague No 5: I think I am coming down with the flu.
Popup Window: Cold and Flu Treatments. Click here for your Guide to Herbs & Vitamins Proven To Prevent, Relieve, Speed Recovery
Colleague No 4 to me : (whispering) “Hey there is a sale at Metro Shoes today, Lets scoot from office early today ok? “
Popup Window: Shoes: Buy It Cheap On eBay, Low Prices, New and Used
Boss: ahem girls…lets return to the topic of discussion shall we?
Popup Window: The Key to Choosing the Right Topic for Discussions - Tips and Advice from Bright institute.
Boss: For Gods Sake!!!! Somebody shut down that laptop !!!!
Popup Window: Searching for God??? God wants you to seek a close relationship with Him at holyblessings.org
My lappie and me have since then been grounded. *sniff*
Recently a blogger has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. He had merely linked a story about an Institute in his blog and for his troubles was sent a ‘notarized email” by the Institute. Now I think this is as good as sending a mail with a lawyer as an attachment! Now.... e-mails with viruses, adware, Trojan etc I don’t mind, but a lawyer? Imagine a lawyer running lose in a gals PC like mine! Gawd!!!! My deep dark secrets will be exposed to the world. My huge collection of jpeg images of....... puppies, kittens, flowers, teddy bears, little red hearts etc. etc. will become public knowlegde and I will become the laughing stock of the world ( read guys). On the flipside I will be the envy of all the gals, who will promptly flock to my PC to see if there are images that they can take and add to their collection. This dark underbelly of my PC is a folder called “ My Pictures” located within My Documents. No amount of therapy could cure me of collecting more and more of these pictures. (Now that I have confessed this deep dark secret I feel much better whew!!!) Now you guys must understand, we gals have our needs too, and no amount of cuddly sacharine sweet images will satisfy our craving to go awwwwwwwwwwww.
Even our PCs are very different from a guy's PC. For starters, we will have roses, teddy bears, little ones of animals and not so little ones of humans like Brad Pitt , Ashton Kuchner, Irfan Pathan etc as our Desktop background. However our Desktop is a Niagara Falls of Icons drowning out the background image.
Our PCs will remind us patiently at regular intervals that there are too many unused icons on the Desktop, which we ignore as we are genetically predisposed to ignoring anything that pops up on our Monitor. Our Microsoft Outlook will however have numerous reminders popping up at regular intervals reminding us about sales in various Malls, stylist’s appointment, changing nail polish, bill payments, Novenas etc.etc. For convent-educated gals (of any community), saying a Novena* is a must.( *a nine day prayer which if said without fail for nine consecutive days will yield a lot of hot air). Gals have Novenas for everything like:
1.Retrieving lost items especially email passwords ( I swear by this one)
2.A break up between John Abraham and Bipasha Basu
3.Getting a good boyfriend who will immediately propose (definition of ‘good’ unknown to this writer)
4.Getting a good boyfriend who will NOT propose etc.
We are notoriously bad at running Virus Scans inspite of the reminder window that frequently pops up after the due date. For PCs used by gals, Norton Anti Virus has a special feminine Edition in the pipeline. It comes with numerous power packed features like a reminder that the PC is due for a Virus Scan and then, actually going ahead with the scan anticipating that we will close the reminder window. It will, then catch the virus, worm, trojan and dangle it in front of our eyes on the monitor, forcing us to recoil in horror. Another feature is, numerous cockroaches that will crawl in the monitor as a reminder that a scan is overdue. Nothing like visual suggestion to drive home the point. Apparently this edition has an inbuilt thingie which enables it to detect that the user is female. For example:
1.Only a girl will use her PC running in Safe Mode.
2.Only a gal will push a warning from Anti Virus that there is a dangerous virus in the system to one side ( because the window can't be closed) and continue working.
3.Gals don’t like Quick Launch, they prefer everything on Desktop
4.And since there are too many confusing Icons on the Desktop we prefer to use the Programs Menu anyway.
5.Outlook Express will have additional stationery options with little hearts, bows, roses…..guess you get the gist by now.
6.The monitor will be festooned with colorful ribbons, little teddy bears and dried flowers stuck with tape. And the keyboard will have colorful stickers looking like sores all over.
7.We have never been to C and D Drive and do not know of its existence.
Anyways a recent incident led to a sea change in my attitude towards my PC and Laptop. I now swear by frequent virus scans. It all started with this innocent incident at a meeting after a presentation on my Laptop.
Boss: Ok guys! We have to strategise this quarters Brand Promotions activities.
A pop up window pops up from my Laptop with this message: Looking for Brand Promoters? Your search ends here. Contact ABC Brand Consultants.
(My hand reaches mechanically with years of experience of closing Pop Up Windows and I close the window without blinking an eyelid.)
Boss: So what are the Events that we plan to do as a follow up to the promotional activities?
Popup Window: For Promotions and Event Management contact Best Events!
Boss: ahem... silverine, have you cleaned your machine lately?
Popup Window: Clean your PC today. FREE adware scanner , download NOW, Click Here.
Me: huh! Why do I need to clean my machine?
Boss: Well... there is an awful lot of popups in your machine.
Popup Window: Free POP UP BLOCKER, click here
Me: (closing the window automatically) Where????
Popup Window: Your search ends here. Find Everything at where.com.Try The Hottest New Search Engine
Colleague No 1: Please run the Norton Anti Virus from time to time.
Popup Window: Get professional antivirus software and advice - protect your pc. Click Here
Colleague No3 to Colleague No 5: I think I am coming down with the flu.
Popup Window: Cold and Flu Treatments. Click here for your Guide to Herbs & Vitamins Proven To Prevent, Relieve, Speed Recovery
Colleague No 4 to me : (whispering) “Hey there is a sale at Metro Shoes today, Lets scoot from office early today ok? “
Popup Window: Shoes: Buy It Cheap On eBay, Low Prices, New and Used
Boss: ahem girls…lets return to the topic of discussion shall we?
Popup Window: The Key to Choosing the Right Topic for Discussions - Tips and Advice from Bright institute.
Boss: For Gods Sake!!!! Somebody shut down that laptop !!!!
Popup Window: Searching for God??? God wants you to seek a close relationship with Him at holyblessings.org
My lappie and me have since then been grounded. *sniff*
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Things people type on search engines!
I recently installed a Stat Counter in my blog. I was amazed to see that my blog has recorded 1000 hits in 5 days!!! However my celebrations were cut short when I clicked on another feature that the Stat Counter offers.....”Key Word Activity” (KWA). It lists the key words people have entered in various search engines, which have led them to my blog due to these words being present in my blog or post titles. Here are some examples.
1. getting someones password for yahoo
(please, please pass me the details too)
2. unholy relationships
( now how does one enter into this kind of relationships? Date Lucifer?)
3. mallu brides
( you want mallu brides? hey, polygamy is a punishable offence in India !!!)
4. mallu aunty
( this has to be a mallu ungle! )
5. cooking guys
(if you find the recipe do send me a copy. ps. Lemme know how it turns out)
6. mallu gals
(I would recommend taking a train to Kerala)
7. susan aunty
( so.... susan aunty is lost in Cyberspace? )
8. chemical silverine
( wow they have named a chemical after me?!??! Or are they trying to eliminate me? brrr )
9. bangalore traffic police fining
( yeah, they are very ‘fining’ gentlemen, believe me )
10. mallu cooking
( now you want to see a mallu cooking or you want to learn kerala cuisine? )
11. fowl playing
( well, I have never seen ‘fowls’ playing too, please send me the link)
12. malu masala group
( mallu speaking masala's of the world unite! )
13. colds cure caffiene ( note the typo)
(so when you get a cold, you know what to do. cure Caffien of whatever ails him. )
From now on I will refrain from using words that bring such scum to my blog.
Oh no!! I just used the word ‘scum’ !!!!! I dread the creatures that will now come visiting :(
1. getting someones password for yahoo
(please, please pass me the details too)
2. unholy relationships
( now how does one enter into this kind of relationships? Date Lucifer?)
3. mallu brides
( you want mallu brides? hey, polygamy is a punishable offence in India !!!)
4. mallu aunty
( this has to be a mallu ungle! )
5. cooking guys
(if you find the recipe do send me a copy. ps. Lemme know how it turns out)
6. mallu gals
(I would recommend taking a train to Kerala)
7. susan aunty
( so.... susan aunty is lost in Cyberspace? )
8. chemical silverine
( wow they have named a chemical after me?!??! Or are they trying to eliminate me? brrr )
9. bangalore traffic police fining
( yeah, they are very ‘fining’ gentlemen, believe me )
10. mallu cooking
( now you want to see a mallu cooking or you want to learn kerala cuisine? )
11. fowl playing
( well, I have never seen ‘fowls’ playing too, please send me the link)
12. malu masala group
( mallu speaking masala's of the world unite! )
13. colds cure caffiene ( note the typo)
(so when you get a cold, you know what to do. cure Caffien of whatever ails him. )
From now on I will refrain from using words that bring such scum to my blog.
Oh no!! I just used the word ‘scum’ !!!!! I dread the creatures that will now come visiting :(
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