The flight seat secret

As you guys have already guessed by now, I travel a lot for work. But unlike the typical "Business traveller", I don't get to travel "Business Class" and good airlines. I typically go cheapest, fastest, shittiest airline that I can find on the route I am going. What that means essentially is that I need to strategize and fight to get whatever little creature comforts that I can get.

Now there are 2 types of passengers - The Aisle sitters and The Window sitters.
If you are a window sitter, this blog post is not for you. However, if you are an aisle sitter - I have discovered what I believe is an important life-hack for you. Before I share this, please note that this is my little secret. If everyone in the world found out about this, it can no longer be a secret and everyone will start using it. Now, I know that you (my dear reader) is good at keeping secrets, so here it goes:

In aircrafts that have a middle row (2-3-2, 3-4-3, 2-4-2 seating plan etc.) the middle row aisle seats are a good seat for the "single" business traveler. Whenever possible - I recommend that you should chose one. Let me explain why:

Centre row Aisle Seat

Typically seats in an aircraft fill such that the window and aisle seats near the window are taken up first. Subsequently people start occupying the middle row aisle seats. The last set of seats that are taken are typically the middle row center seats. Now, while you are booking if you take the middle row aisle seat in a row that has the other side aisle seat already taken there is a very high chance that the center seat will not be taken. So you end up in a situation where you are sitting on an aisle and the seat next to you is empty! (More space to keep your stuff and stretch your legs!).

Centre row Aisle seat where the other seat is already taken

Now, if the flight you are taking is a full-flight, there is a very high chance that the middle row center seat is taken by 1 person from a couple. In that case, the other aisle seat is obliged to get up everytime their partner wishes to go stretch their legs or go to the toliet. This means - though you have a neighbor in the center, you never ever have to get up for them! So you get an aisle, and you are never disturbed! Isn't it awesome?

Now be a good friend and keep this secret to yourself.

GPS Dummy

I drove in the US when GPS navigation devices were not that easily available, smart phones were rare, Google maps were just released and we actually had to use paper maps to navigate. That was more than 8 years ago. I kinda knew the roads around my neighborhood so well, that I could actually navigate without the need of any directional aids. For long trips, I bought the fold-able maps (AAA) and studied my route before I made the trip. If you took a wrong exit or a wrong turn, you would pull-up on the side of the road, open your maps and figure out how to get back onto the right track. And I actually understood the Eisenhower National Inter-state system

And then this time I went, I overly relied on the friendly Google Maps on my phone to navigate me to every destination, including the neighborhood grocery store. I felt dumb, incompetent and totally dependent on the GPS. So much so that, I had no clue of even basic directions around me.

Not that it matters, but I feel like geographically knowing where you are in the bigger scheme of things helps you feel in more control of your journey. It's just me. I know.

Guide to a good sleep onboard

Most of my adult airline travel life has been spent on uncomfortable economy or budget class seats trying to catch a few winks before I get sucked into the dreaded customer meetings or work on the other side. Having worked in not-so-well-to-do companies, I have never had the luxury of traveling a day in advance to recuperate or travel anything better than the "cheapest seat on the cheapest possible airline at the last available minute to the destination".

Anyway, all this misery has taught me that it is vital to be able to sleep on an airplane. The worst I can do on the other side of my journey is doze off in an important meeting or presentation. Over the period of last several years, I have slowly and steadily improvised and figured out ways to catch up on those precious winks. While many well-to-do business travelers insist on dressing up while traveling, I am completely against it. Formal clothes aren't comfortable enough to sleep on an economy or lower class seat. If you insist on dressing up for your journey, I am mighty sure you are the upper class snob. Period.

So how do you get the precious sleep? Here is Girish's guide to airline sleeping:

1. Dress as comfortably as possible. As a guy, I have gone down to wearing extremely comfortable lounge pants, a t-shirt and a hoodie (or sweater).
2. No accessories, no wallets, even specs go into the cabin baggage. Wear removable shoes with socks.
3. Take a window seat so that you are not obligated to get up to let go off any passengers for their bio-breaks. You go in there and stay there till you have to get up. No one else can bother you.
4. Wear a balaclava or a knit cap on your head such that it can be pulled down to cover your eyes and ears when sleeping. Not only does it help you to keep warm but it also forces you to sleep (you can't open your eyes if the cap's fabric is on them).
5. Carry a medical face-mask to cover your nose and mouth. Not only does it provide some level of protection from the perennial germs lurking in the aircraft, but also it helps you to sleep (by not drying up your mouth and face).
6. Finally, the only thing you do once you get inside the airplane is - sleep. That's it. Wear your seat belt and sleep. No reading magazines, no watching television, no chit-chatting with neighbors. And no caffeine since 2 hours before your flight. Don't wait for the flight to taxi/ take-off/ announce random weather news or duty-free items. When food shall be served, the stewards will wake you up.

But if you travel higher classes, kindly ignore my advise and enjoy your flight. Good night. 

Stupid Walk

Cars in Singapore are prohibitively expensive. To control traffic congestion on the tiny island, the Government runs a Certificate of Entitlement (COE) scheme which effectively discourages poor people (like me) from owning cars on the island. The rational is to control pollution and traffic. The COE is auctioned monthly and let’s you own a car for 10 years with that certificate. To give you an idea, as of this blog post writing the value of COE is $67,601 for cars below 1600cc. The irony now is – people who can afford to buy the COE are so rich that the most commonly bought cars in Singapore are – Lexus, Mercedes and BMW. To be precise – the best-selling car in 2014 was the Mercedes Benz E-Class.

Fast & Furious stars react to car prices in Singapore

The public transport however is extremely well developed (amongst the best in the world) and walking is highly encouraged. There are pedestrian walkways everywhere. You got travellators, escalators and covered walkways to shelter you from the extreme weather. You can practically walk from one end of the island to another (because there are pavements and pedestrian walkways absolutely everywhere!).

My Fitbit says that I have walked a little over a 4700 km in the last 1.8 years that I have had it. Considering that I never ever run, that’s a feat in itself. I can partially credit it to the lack of private transport and mostly to my love for walking aimlessly.

Over the period of my lifetime I have done some extremely stupid walks. Places where I should have taken some means of transport, but I misjudged the distance and ended up walking a lot! Anyway, the height of stupidity is that – I have accidentally walked the entire length of 2 airports in Singapore looking for a bus stop where there was none.

I always thought that airport runways are just over a km long. But once after I walked the entire length of Changi airport in the dead of a night, I checked that the pure runway is 4.0 km and with the airport and it’s premises, my walk was over 6 km (and mind you, that area is pretty deserted – no body expects people to walk near an airport unless you are into plane spotting). And like I discovered there are no buses in the dead of the night servicing insane people walking near an airport.

Anyway, even after having learnt my lesson from my Changi walking incident, I ended up walking the length of another airport accidentally last week. This time luckily though, it was a private aircraft runway – Seletar Airport (so much shorter!). I ended up doing just over 3km.

I have decided never to start walking when I see big planes landing or taking off over my head. That just means that their is an airport somewhere near and there is no chance that I can get public transport!

Walk of shame

I don’t understand commercial aircrafts at all. I am like a redneck when I take flights. For me there are just 3 types of aircrafts – small, big, bigger. I haven’t yet had the chance to sit in the biggest. But I know there exists one. So if it’s small, it means I can’t sleep cause the seats are too cramped up. If it’s big, then I can sleep a bit (probably on my co-passenger’s shoulder). And if it’s bigger then I can get a good night’s sleep. Not as comfortable as sleeping on a bed, but I can at least recline my seat and catch a few decent winks for my day ahead.

Now, I have also noticed that in the small and big aircrafts, (assuming I am sitting near the front of the aircraft) I am let in from the front door. Now problem with this is the moment I enter, I get into the part of the plane that is reserved for the ultra-rich and the super-rich types. And airlines generally let these kinds in first. So the moment I enter, I feel like they give us all (the economy class travellers) a condescending look. The kind that says “You mere mortal, I look down upon you!”

Then they proceed to show their ultra luxurious seat/ living room complete with a bed, a sofa, a home entertainment system and other stuff that I don’t even recognize. Once they are done showing, then they sip on the ultra-rare wine made from the rarest of rare grapes found on this planet centuries ago. And then they let out a hush stretch their legs and settle down in their throne.

We the economy classes then scuttle past them with our head hung low. Holding on to our meagre belongings we make ourselves scarce and go hide in our corner seat/ rabbit hole, never to disturb the royals again. Sigh. I dread this walk of shame every time I get into those aircrafts. Can the airlines please not let us through this ordeal?

Train Surfing

So the lazy bum (yeah me!) has invented another sport for other people like me. It’s called train surfing and it involves riding in the first compartment of a driverless train. For the uninformed, Singapore now has 3 driverless MRT train lines and 3 driverless LRT lines.

Driverless trains are a technology marvel in itself. These trains steer, start, stop and accelerate all by themselves without having anyone physically in the train to drive them. Though NEL was the first driverless train in Singapore, the designers did not really put a big front glass window for people to gaze out at the track in the front while the train is travelling. However, the subsequent lines – Circle and now the Downtown line both have a huge window from which you can peek out at the track in front.

So what exactly is train surfing? My definition is – you get into a driverless train and stand in the front compartment near the window and then enjoy the ride. These trains can reach speeds up to 80 kmph. So in a way you are out there standing in a pseudo-roller coaster that can go that fast. And the cool part? You can do it while you are commuting to your boring day job, day-after-day every day!

And what do silly train surfing fanatics like me do? Well, they plan their route to the destination in such a way that they have to take these driverless train (even though it’s not the shortest distance!).

The newest addition to the driverless train family in Singapore (Downtown Line) actually has bright lights on the front of the train lighting up the entire track ahead. In the Circle line, the visibility always has been a bit of an issue for train surfers, but with the new lights, we can now actually look into the future. How cool is that?

The Experiment

When I say Justin Bieber is the greatest entertainer in the world, I am not being sarcastic. At the tender age of 19 he has achieved more in his life than most other artists do in their entire lifetime. He is the most popular celebrity on twitter (and internet) and he has the capacity to cause widespread sorrow and joy for millions of people around the world by his actions.

But (yeah there had to be a but there!). His clientele (fan-following to be precise) seems to be uniformly distributed across the teenage girls age-group. I am sure there are middle-aged men who swing to his grooves, but I am also sure that they are statistically insignificant.

 

While Formula 1 as a sport is wholly uniformly distributed across men in the older age group and the category of men listening to Justin and seeing Formula 1 should (I am presuming) be a significantly low number.

I am not exactly sure about what was going on through the Singapore Grand Prix organizer’s mind when they decided to bring in Justin for the closing concert for the F1 Grand Prix. I mean, men my age, don’t particularly mind *seeing* Rihana, Shakira or Katy Perry in concert after an exciting F1 race. But seeing Justin would not exactly be a manly thing to do.

As someone pointed out to me, this could very well be the organizer’s last ditch effort to get teenage girls to come see F1 (cause I have heard that generation can do anything to see Justin and also loves to spend a lot – any marketer’s dream). So to see him live, a 3 hour race with cars roaring and zipping by is not really a discomfort. And after these gals see the race, they love the excitement and become avid F1 fans.

This probably will be the most significant marketing experiment of the century and business schools all around the world will study this event as an amazing  showcase of appealing to a new segment altogether by just bringing in their most favorite celebrity to perform. Or, I guess, I am really missing something really really big here.

The Feb that was!

Whoosh. Just realized that the entire month of February 2013 vanished right before my eyes.  I have had busy months in my life before, but never has a month passed since I started blabbering here that I didn’t get time to rant something. So with a lot of pain and melancholy I wave good bye to February 2013. Never will have anything to say about you, my dear month.

So what exactly was I doing last month? I thought hard and I thought deep. Technically, I didn’t do anything much. Stuck to my routine, travelled a bit and moved houses yet again. I mean, yeah, I again went through the routine of packing-trashing-moving-unpacking and rearranging my tents all over again. When I look at all my friends living the high-life on Facebook, posing in front of the Great Wall for breakfast then the Golden gate bridge for lunch and finally partying their night away in Rio, I wonder whether I should be even mentioning what I do.

Anyway, the highlight of last month was – I got to sit inside a aircraft parked on the tarmac of an airport for 2 hours in the blazing sun. After a while, once all passengers were sautéed they decided to open the aircraft exits (just in case all the steam released from cooking the passengers builds up pressure inside the cabin). With blatant regards for anyone’s safety the exit doors were left open with nothing whatsoever for safety. One of us sautéed veggies could have easily leaped off the door. Anyway, to add garnishing they also redirected my flight and a journey that would have not taken me more than 5 hours, ended up being a 12 hour nightmare. And did I mention that they also ran out of food? So much from an airline that I praise so much all the while.

   

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.

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?

Its a man-thing

Other than my man-voice and man-beard, I am pretty much a chicken in man’s clothing. So you wont generally find me doing man-kind activities (if you are a damsel in distress, don't go all bachao bachao on me, I ain’t gonna come and help ya!).

That means, I don’t man-swear (f#$k, b$%ch), man-drink (hick), man-drive (zooooom), man-ride (yeah I look like a sissy on a motorbike), man-fight (I prefer running), man-flirt (yup, I suck miserably at that) or man-body build (the less I talk about this the better it is). All this, like you already guessed, hurts my fragile man-ego a lot.

So today after ages, I got to do a man-kind activity. Yeah, I changed my car’s punctured tire. Now for you man-beef guys its no big deal, but for me its been an accomplished. It took me well over 20 minutes and well, I was sweating, huffing and puffing, but I successfully pulled it off. And now my back and my wrist hurts, but well, those are minor inconveniences suffered while doing man-kind activities.

Yeah, I am that good!

The Lamborghini Mystery

Disclaimer: I am bad with numbers, charts and interpreting them :) !!

My blanket statement about new Lamborghinis every week has got me thinking. The showroom I pass by everyday has approximately 5-6 cars. Assuming that 2 new cars come in to replace 2 sold every week, it makes 2*52 = 104 Lamborghinis sold every year. That's a huge number for a little red dot.

So off I went to do my research on a lazy Sunday evening. The LTA publishes the car population by model for each year. Here is a quick snapshot of the number of Lamborghinis on the island each year, in the last 10 years. As of 2009 there were 201 Lamborghinis and 294 Ferraris. To put it in perspective, I have compared it to the Ferraris. Since, apparently Lamborghini entered the car manufacturing business to build a better car than the Ferrari.

Some interesting things that I discovered in the numbers. Singaporeans are indeed going crazy about the Lamborghinis (its just not me ;) !!). If I am the Ferrari marketing guy, this is something I need to worry about. The numbers also show a dip in the number of Ferraris on the island in 2003. That’s a bit weird. It means either people sold off their Ferraris to the people in adjacent countries or those cars were indeed scrapped! Wow that's lot of money in the scrap yard in one year.

Anyway, coming back to my so called “research”. There are only 201 Lamborghinis on the island. The maximum cars sold in a year till now is only 46 (in 2008). So 104 is indeed an impossible number. However, 1 car a week puts it to 52, which is not that far a number from 46. So I might as well be seeing a new car in the showroom every week and because of the lack of caffeine in my blood assuming that there are many new cars! Have I just discovered a highest ever sales trend of Lamborghinis out here? Hmm, only time and LTA can tell :) !! Anyway, now I am off to bed. I will put myself to sleep by counting Lamborghinis (lame joke!).

The Double Decker anomaly

So I take a double-decker bus to office everyday. Well, not that it is my only option, but somehow I find the inconvenience of leaving perfectly good single-deck buses and getting up early to get this one bus; small enough to fulfill my fascination for them.

And anyone who has ever been in a double-decker bus knows that the best seat is the one above the driver. Anywhere else and you are not really doing justice to the bus. You might as well get off and take an ordinary bus if those seats are not empty.

And then on my way to office, I pass this Lamborghini showroom that makes me go weak in my knees every time I see those gorgeous cars staring at me (remember I am seeing them from the top deck of a bus, so better view :) !! The showroom somehow manages to replenish its stock of Lamborghinis once a week. Considering that Singapore is a small country and there are only approximately 576988 cars on the road as of 2009, that's a miracle that I have not figured out yet.

However, there is this slight technical problem. The showroom is on the left of the road. So if I have to feel like a king and at the same time ogle at the cars, then the only option I got is to sit on the front left seat. Now all this while, life was good. I had my left seat to myself, I would get up early, get dressed and go wait for this prized bus of mine.

But lately there is this 6-7 year old school going kid who is causing me problems in my quest to world domination. Not only does he want to sit in the front of the bus (ok fine!) but he also wants my seat. Yeah, you got it right. MY Left seat. Its like someone trying to steal my throne.

First couple of times, I let him do that cause I felt he is a kid and he can have the pleasure. But then I figured, enough is enough. He has a longer life to live and might end up driving a Lamborghini sometime in his life (for that matter, I don’t even know why he likes the left seat – he could very well take the dumb right seat in the front of the upper deck and be happy about it!). So I started competing with him to get into the bus first and go grab the seat for a while. Unlike me, however he is small and agile and beat me to it almost everyday. (Ok I am not that slow, but yeah, I carry an office laptop and can’t really run around in the bus like he does!). But what I lacked in agility, I feigned as an act of kindness towards him. So I let him take the seat for a few more days.

But then, how many days can someone not ogle at the Lamborghinis as you pass by the showroom? That's just injustice to the cars. So now, being the nice guy I am ;), I get up half an hour early to catch the earlier double-decker, so that I can sit on the right seat, see the cars for a fraction of a second in my entire journey and then reach office half an hour before time and impress my boss as the "hard worker”. Sometimes life is just too good :) !!

Happy for Force India

Finally after 29 races, Force India scored championship points in style after Giancarlo Fisichella stood second in the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday. Formula 1 for the last 2 years for me has been fun with this dual role of supporting 2 teams:

1. Hope that McLaren makes it to the podium
2. Hope that Force India scores a point

So yesterday’s race was exciting for me. Not only did Force India score points but also it made it to the podium.

Last time Force India was close to making it in the points tally was in the Monaco Grand Prix last year till Kimi ended Sutil’s race by knocking him off from the behind. The Belgian race for a brief time ended up being a fight between Giancarlo and Kimi as well.

This whole event has me super excited for the Singapore Night race scheduled for the 25th-27th September. Now I know which team jersey I am gonna buy this time :) !! Huh .. I can’t hold my excitement anymore…

Made History

So I went for the practice session of the first ever grand prix held at night in Singapore. My first experience of watching a F1 race live. Breath taking indeed. Figured out that F1 cars are really noisy and very fast. So fast that your ordinary point and click camera can do nothing but click photos of the track sans the car.

Also figured that F1 merchandise is expensive and the city looks awesome under lights. I am saving the ticket to sell for millions of dollars 30 years from now to fund my retired life. This is what I call planning ;) !! Those of you who want to drool on the priceless artifact, it is made available here for your viewing pleasure only.

 

Thought that this picture of the track makes it look serene ... enjoy!

Candle lit...

I did the most romantic thing that a single 27/M/Mumbai can think of. Yeah, I had a candle lit shave! "Candle lit shaving" is the art of shaving in candle light when you are getting late for office and the electricity in your home is cut off. Its the pleasure and pain of cutting yourself and not figuring out till you apply after-shave. Its the grandeur of leaving stubble at hard to reach places cause the candle light wasn't bright enough. Its the magnificence of making your face look like a lawn mowed by a drunkard. All said and done, the romance was soo intense that my face is still burning 3 hours after the act...

Horn OK Please?

So Mumbai decided to observe the World Health day by designating it as a "No Honking day". The city where the first thing that you do after buying a truck is paint "Horn OK Please" on the back of it with a motley of colors available at your local painter's shop (with his take at artistry) its ironic to expect people not to honk for a day.

I decided to not honk and live up to the expectations of the Traffic police. And lo-behold I took 45 minutes for a 3 km drive which I otherwise took 20 odd minutes coupled with honking :)

Well, not honking in my city is not practical. For us to not honk, we should first learn to follow lanes. There is no lane discipline. Most of us just inch towards our destination by pushing our vehicles in every conceivable place on the road that we can imagine (that includes the oncoming traffic lane too!!). Also, almost every road in my city has been dug up. It feels more like driving between craters, than on roads!! All this with people crossing the road, the bicycles and the auto rickshaws (The article on Autorickshaws in Wikipedia is very informative, check it out :) !!). I bet the only reason auto rickshaws are built with a single wheel in the front is for them to sneak into spots that 4 wheelers cant go and create trouble. All said and done, this is my first "protest" blog. Please follow lane discipline, and silence and peace will follow :) !! I really pity the Mumbai Traffic Police. They have a tough job to do!

Bambaiya

So I am back from an amazing vacation, and I thought I write about a small observation that I made.

We, the people, are fond of smelling each other's armpits. Don't believe me? Check out the rush for suburban trains in Mumbai. Everyone is eagerly waiting at the platform to catch the train so that they can smell someone's armpits. The moment the train approaches the station everyone runs for the door so that he can get the best armpit to smell.

I traveled a couple of times by the train, and me too caught onto the habit. I chose the armpits in the second class compartment. I was eagerly waiting at the station for the train to arrive. The moment it got into the station, I jumped in it, even before the people interested in getting down could do so. I chose the smelliest armpit and stuck to it. On the other hand, in no time atleast 4 other people stuck to my left and right armpit. I enjoyed the smell till the last station. It was a memorable journey.

Ferrari Spotting in the wild

Every guy's dream machine. If you can't spot the difference between a Corvette and a Ferrari, your life is doomed to misery.


My proximity to Walnut Creek and my infrequent visits to Beverly Hills have helped me to do one thing in plenty - drool on a lot of Ferraris in the wild. I mean, I know every guy on this planet has seen a picture of a Ferrari atleast once in his lifetime, but watching her zip past you is a different feeling altogether. I have been privileged enough to have seen more than 10 Ferraris (mind you it still is just around 10 in more than 2 whole years!). I remember once I followed a Ferrari F430 for 6 miles (completely away from my destination) just so that I could see her. The funny part of the entire session was that every signal we would be together and then the car would zip past me only to hit her brakes again (remember the speed limit on most California city roads is just 35 mph?) and I would happily catch up with her till the next signal :) !!!

Well, the reason for this post of mine is two fold. I not only shamelessly followed a Ferrari 360 Modena today (again!), but I also got to take her picture. Well, so close was I, that I actually could see "Ferrari" written on her brake calipers!! Yippeee... I feel soo good. I know I should be dreaming of owning one, but the feeling of seeing her itself is ecstatic :) !!

And for the uninitiated amongst us, Ferrari 360 Modena is the same car that Fiat gave to our beloved Sachin Tendulkar...

Nano?

I bet all of thee motor-souls have already read the news that India built the "cheapest production car in the world!" Holy cow, Tata could actually fit a whole 624cc 2 cylinder engine along with 4 wheels, chasis and a steering and then extract a 54mpg from the engine while still meeting the Euro-IV and Bharat Stage-III emission norms in the Tata Nano!! Sometimes I feel that some of us Indians are simply crazy :) !!

And, now let me take the pleasure of introducing my most favorite portrayal of an Indian. It sure is "Asok the Intern" from the Dilbert comics. Not only is he extraordinarily brilliant, but also he knows telekinesis and shape-shifting!! If this is not enough, he could also re-incarnate himself :) !!

Haha, I bet the mysterious land of holy-men, snake charmers and software engineers has more in store than what meets the eye ;) !! Watch out world, a land of 1.1 billion people can't be just sleeping...

Undying love..

Okay Okay!! Thanks for your concern. I know that you guys are really worried about what has happened to my dear car!! Hmm, thought I write a blog and make it clear!! Whoosh, please don't express thy sympathies any longer :) !! When I said "I do" ;) (I mean when I signed the title in DMV), I made it clear that I shall accept her as my car "In sickness and in health, in poverty or in wealth...."

It all started almost a month ago when I went to Pepboys for a regular oil change (that mundane lowly thing that everyone does once in three months!). The friendly Pepboys mechanic advised me that I need a tire change cause the tread was wearing out. Being the gullible ideal customer that I am (I hate to call myself stupid, but I guess you get the idea :) !!), I succumbed to his innocuous suggestion, and then the ordeal started.

When he raised my car to change the tires he told me that there was a leak somewhere (and the stupid me fell for it too!). Looking at my "I am an idiot" expression, he thought he could trick me into buying a service. But, you guys know how spendthrift ;) I am, I refused.

Huh... I drove away my beauty in new tires, only to realize that she was somehow getting attracted to the oh-so-well-built Hummer in my left lane. I passed it off as just another fling (for her ;)!!), only to notice that she did that even when there was no car in the left lane.

Back, I went again to Pepboys, and the friendly mechanic advised me that I get a Wheel Alignment done. Huh, and then I had to go three more times to their place for them to just fix my alignment! I did some research on the Internet and figured out that wheel alignment is done by computers (no wonder they messed it up thrice then ;) !!). Being a computer programmer myself, I decided I forgive them.

Though I had declined service from Pepboys for the "leak" that they spotted (I had heard horrid stories of how car mechanics trick you into buying multiple services from them!)., I did my own research and went to an *exclusive* transmission specialist, Aamco. I thought, they are the experts, they will really let me know if there is a leak.

Off I went to Aamco, and lo-behold they could not find a leak at all!! If this is not enough, they told me that my transmission is in serious trouble and I need to change the fluid. I remember having done that before, but the mechanic is the God, and I decided to do that again.

All said and done, now my car has new tires, got her wheels aligned and now has new transmission fluid. Not that she gave me any trouble, but I thought I spend some hard earned money on some car mechanics around my area :) !!

That's about it. Now you know, don't ever go to a mechanic if you have no problem, cause they will create one for you.....