Friday, February 17, 2012

The Low Suger problem

Yes. Most Indians like sugar in their caffeinated drink. I am no exception. Though I have stopped taking sweet coffees, I still completely enjoy my tea with a lot of milk and a little-bit of sugar.

We had non-sweetened coffee machines in our campus before. That meant that we had a self-serve container for sugar kept beside the dispenser for people to add sugar to their own tastes. But as a part of cost cutting measures, a big bad vendor managed to win our contract this time around and in one single day, all the coffee machines were replaced by this big-bad vendor’s new slender machines.

The Low Suger Drink

Now I am a caffeine junky. On an average I drink 3-4 cups of coffee everyday. The new coffee machines are designed to dispense sweetened coffee only. The vendor’s default setting makes the drink so sweet that it actually tastes like coffee flavoured kheer.

Desperate to get my daily dose of caffeine I actually toured our entire facility to find a place where I could get decent coffee. I finally chanced upon a machine labelled “Low Suger” coffee. Happy to find coffee of the non-kheer variety I poured myself a cup of hot vending machine coffee only to find that it was as sweet as the other “High Suger” machines.

Now along with the cups that need to be washed, the high sugar coffee has actually forced me to cut down on my coffee drinking habits. And I am sure there will be more people on the campus who must have faced the same dilemma. So, not only are we collectively cutting down on our coffee expenses, but also we are unknowingly caring for the environment (lesser use of vending machines means lesser use of electricity and lesser washing of cups!).

If you think hard enough there is a positive side to everything in life!

Sunday, February 5, 2012

My advice to Bollywood

I have always believed that my expectation from cinema is really low. I just want the movie to keep me engaged the entire duration. I don’t care about the plot, the acting, the set, the locations, songs or anything else you can think of. I completely enjoy senseless movies, nerve wracking action as well as movies that make me question my existence.

But, I still come across so many movies that can’t stand up to it. I went for a blockbuster Hindi movie yesterday. The first half till the intermission went quite okay. Then I bought my popcorn and the ordeal started. I am sure I showered my neighbours with quite a bit of popcorn while I went all “Nahi! Nahi!” in my seat, Hindi movie style! Fully knowing not a single director worth his name is ever going to read this blog post, I am still writing my advice to them. So if you are a menial like me, read on:

  1. Not all Hindi movies have to beat the 2 hours 30 minutes time. If there is no storyline left, please don't stretch the movie using item numbers, twists that add nothing to the storyline, weddings, emotions and other useless stuff (If I were the director, I could have ended some of our movies in 15 minutes flat).
  2. The helpless mom, the abused sister, and the best friend who is killed by the bad guy plots have been overdone. Please think about something different to make us feel bad about the good guy’s plight next time around.
  3. If the bad guy is 6 times the good guy’s size and the good guy has got a gun, make him use it on the giant first. Once the good guy is sure the bullet has done its job, then he can try being a man and beating up the giant with his bare hands. I don’t get the obsession of Bollywood of making the petite good guy drop all his weapons and fight a giant when he could have easily had him in a shot (and saved the viewers 30 minutes of a useless fight in which both get beaten to pulp)
  4. I know your dialogue writer is really good. But sometimes, its better to kill the bad guy first and then explain to us why the lead actor is so pissed off with him.
    When you have to shoot, shoot – don’t talk!
  5. We are completely okay with senseless movies and stupid screenplay. But then make sure your entire movie is that way. We will happily watch it with popcorn. Please don’t make the cardinal mistake of having a serious movie with senseless screenplay, that just makes our popcorn taste bad and we writhe in our seats waiting for the movie to get over. 
    Yeah! – Andaz Apna Apna