One Suit Wonders

Mumbai is generally a hot and humid place. That means our formal clothing doesn’t include a coat and a tie other than when the westerners come to meet us (and we have to pretend to be formal). Having had ourselves ruled by them for more than a century, we have adopted some of their lifestyle into ours. Now that includes – wearing suits for our wedding receptions.

So certain section of Mumbaikars I know (yeah statistically insignificant) buy suits only for 2 occasions in their lives – first if they do an MBA and later when they get married (Yes I come in the first category). What that generally means is – every time thereafter when we have an occasion to wear a suit, we just reuse the same one.

Now, I had been using my MBA suit every where till I realized that I have many occasions I need to wear one. Then, my count of suits went up to two. However I know of many people who continue using their one and only wedding suit everywhere they go. Every client visit and every formal meeting I see certain individuals in the same suit oblivious of the fact that everyone in the room knows that the suit that they are wearing was the one they bought for their wedding. For any normal human being, wedding is probably the most photographed event of their life (and probably the most sweaty – those videography lights are hot). So boost the economy. Get the money flowing. Expand your wardrobe, buy more suits. And please dry clean your wedding suit.

Issued in public interest by a hapless guy who had to sit through a meeting next to a smelly man in his 8 year old wedding suit.

Water Bottle Day

22nd March is World Water Day. Nice attempt at making us aware of the importance of water! Now, I decided to do my bit towards water, by doing a product review of my favorite water bottle of all times. Its called the Nalgene OTF.

I am very particular about my hydration gear. I don’t believe in reusing empty soda bottles to store water. Besides hygiene, those bottles are not meant to be reused. And I don’t like my water tasting like a cola. Considering that we are expected to drink close to 3 litres of water everyday, we better be serious about our hydration gear. Besides it also helps measure intake and that way meet daily water intake targets.

 

So what's so special about the bottle you ask? Well, well, it is what I would like to call – a “perfect” and well designed water bottle.

To begin with – it is made of Eastman Tritan copolyster. That makes it – BPA Free (better than Polycarbonate bottles), absolutely clear, durable, microwaveable, odor resistant and impact resistant. To top it all – it is “Made in USA” (Okay – I know that the cap is made in China, but at least the bottom is American). In consumer durables only two things that I have ever discovered to be made in USA are – Nalgene bottles and Corelle dinnerware.

It also has a wide temperature range resistance ( – 40 F to 212 F). I like to take my water a little warm. I have damaged many of my earlier bottles by pouring hot water into them. Not this one. That makes it easier to wash with warm water as well.

The cap with its loop shape and a nice lock that can be opened on-the-fly (hence OTF) makes it easy to carry around and to drink water with only one hand (no need to wait and unscrew cap). It also has a nifty metallic lock at the top that makes it leak proof. So I can casually keep it in my bag knowing that the bottle wont open by itself and spill water.

Finally, the spout is big enough to fill water into it without unscrewing the top. It is also big enough to drink water in a hurry without pouring water all over yourselves. And it is contoured in such a way that water falls correctly off the bottle without sipping on it. That keeps it hygienic and multiple people can share the bottle!

I think I can go on and on and this is not a paid advertisement. So that's my advice for the World Water Day. Hydrate yourself through a well made bottle.

Off-roads

Indians are good at planning. Some great planner figured out that we are going to shit and pee a lot more in the coming decades (before your ideas run wild – its just because of population explosion) and its time that we put in bigger underground sewage pipes to handle the load! So far so good.

Though the work started a long while ago, it was progressing at snail’s pace. However, with the financial year end approaching, the work has been now sped up (to remain in this year’s budget). So now almost the entire area around where I stay is dug up. It is dug so bad that whenever a vehicle passes by there is actually a dust cloud and we got mountains of gravel everywhere.

Technically we now only drive through rubble. All we have is uneven surfaces that we are expected to drive our vehicles on. The fun part is, at places where they have already started resurfacing the road with tar, it has just become more uneven. We no longer have any thing called a “road” left. Combined with our insane driving skills all of us now go off-road adventure riding in our own backyard.

To capitalize on this state of affairs a daring Indian bike manufacturer also managed to introduce India’s first “trans-roader”. On road, off road bike. If we look through the marketing crap it is essentially a made for Indian roads bike!

Now, my dear rich kids, imagine riding your Ferrari and Lamborghini on these roads and cry!

The 29th February Post

I wasn’t intending to write anything today, till it dawned on me that if I don't, I wont be able to write anything on a 29th February till the next leap year in 2016.

And how special was the day for me? Hmm, I got up late (these days I have been ignoring my alarm with alarming accuracy!) then I scrambled to get ready for office. Reached office a little later than usual only to find tonnes of work waiting for me. Paced myself the entire day hoping to leave office on time. However, (like always) had to stay late to finish all the work for today! Then drove home. Got stuck in traffic. Didn’t do anything rest of the evening and finally I am writing this blog post. So much for spending a special day that comes once every 4 years.

So I went down the nostalgia path to see what I was doing 4 years ago on the 29th. Apparently, it was my last working day in the land of dreams – USA. Life goes on. Its been 4 years since I left Uncle Sam’s land. I have become older (wiser? naah).

I hope we all have a very rocking 29th February 2016. If I am still blogging till then, we shall revisit this blog post. Till then – have fun and thank you for reading!