Saturday, July 30, 2011

Internet Amnesia

Just read an article about how the internet is making us lose our memory. Now along with making me dumb, it is also the chief cause of memory loss (that reminds, what exactly I am writing about? Ahem, I forgot already!).

I have another thing to blame on the internet. Specifically on social networking sites. Facebook took away the charm of remembering birthdays. I used to painstakingly remember the birthdays of all my friends and wish them just so that I could make them feel good on their special day. Then Facebook came along and took away all the fun. Now everyday when I login, Facebook shouts, today is Ms Y’s birthday, go wish her!!

Now, everyday I wish a 100 people a very impersonal – “Happy birthday! Have a great day!”. Call me old, but I still miss the charm of receiving a physical card with a thoughtfully written message from my friends on my birthday. Which reminds me, just because I decided not to reveal my birthday on Facebook, most of my friends have decided that I am born no more and I have no birthdays.

Anyways, why the rant you ask? Well well, I forgot to wish a very close friend of mine on his birthday. And I have been feeling bad since then. Figured, if I blame the social networking sites, I will feel a bit better.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Rain Romantic

Long term readers of my blog know that I love driving and have this thing for rains. So when I get to drive in the rains, I generally love the feeling. But lately, nature played a very wicked trick with me about rains and driving.
My office has 3 locations in Mumbai. 2 out of the 3 are quite close to where I stay, but the third one is far far away. To reach there, I have to cross rivers, climb mountains, fight fire-breathing dragons and drive through generally very congested roads.
Last entire week, I was summoned to the farthest office. Last week, Mumbai also experienced some very heavy rain days of this season. Naturally, I was all excited about the opportunity of driving in the rain.
Water logged roads
But I realized that driving in the rain though a romantic notion is completely different from “commuting in the rain”. The romantic notion assumes that you have empty roads in front of you, the rain is falling longingly on your wind shield and everything outside is pleasant, soothing and perfect.
While you commute, it doesn’t start that romantic. You are actually racing with million others towards your place of work. So there is a sense of urgency. For my commute, after I cross the fire-breathing dragons section, I get to drive through severely damaged roads. The only reason they could be called roads are because every other car is also on that piece of broken tar. I think this is the only place in the entire world where cars make a unique sound. The sound of your suspension bottoming out. That sound comes when your suspension is so badly compressed that the top end and the bottom end touch each other. My heart goes out to the pain that the car goes through when I drive in these potholes.
Anyways, after I am done with the crater section of the road then I come to the river section. I am not joking when I say that I have to drive through at least 2 feet of standing water in sections. Sometimes I feel, I should just switch of my engine, take out a paddle and start rowing my car in the river.
After I am done with all this, the last section involves getting stuck in traffic. That congestion brings out the worst amongst each one of us. No one wants to yield and we stick to each other’s bumpers so close that even a fly can’t fly between 2 cars. Sometimes I feel if we were not termed a “civil society” we would have pushed each other off the road to go ahead.
Anyways, the last of my romantic notions of driving in the rain is dead now. I have becoming a zombie commuting on Mumbai roads. Alas! Where do I go to seek romance now?

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Lazzy

How to spot I have been bumming around and being lazy without doing anything at all? If you answer – by looking at my messy room – you are absolutely wrong. My room is always messy. I believe in the school of thought that says “Why should I clean my room when its going to be messy again?”

The only thing that I religiously clean every once in a while is my feed reader. Last month I have been ignoring it as well. Its soo messy now that there is no practical way for me to go through all the blog posts that are unread. Imagine! Even my favourite tech blogs – Engadget and TechCrunch have been lying unread for way too long.

imageimage

Huh. That's why I need (its not a “want”, its a “need”) to be on the internet every single day. Now I have decided to do the inevitable. I am going to clear all unread blog posts in my feed reader without knowing what they ever contained. Imagine – more than a month of tech news, silicon valley gossips, takeovers, lawsuits and juicy unboxing videos will never be read. I shall never know the secrets behind Google +, the availability of Skype in Facebook and the product launches that happened in June and July 2011. Tch tch, I here by strip me off my wanna-be geek title. From now I shall just be lazy and live up to my title of the “God of procrastination”.