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 :) !!

Little Durian Star

Durian is amongst the first fruits you notice once you come to Singapore. Pardon me for my limited knowledge, but to me, it looks like a Jackfruit but smells like ….. Yeah you guessed right. Durians are sooo pungent that you cannot miss the presence of a Durian within 50 feet of wherever you are (and I ain’t kidding about it). The fruit smells so bad that it is officially banned on the local public transport. Anyway, God has also blessed me with a limited sense of smell and taste, and I kinda like to eat Durians (cause they remind me of Jackfruits but taste better if you ignore the smell).

There is a Durian vendor close to where I live and each time that I pass by, I am tempted to buy some. If an Apple a day keeps the doctor away, then a Durian a day keeps everybody away. If you wanna be anti-social the easiest thing to do is have a Durian early in the morning and then burp away to glory the entire day. No one would wanna talk to you anymore.

Anyway, if you have not been living under a rock, you are probably already aware of the World Expo 2010 happening in Shanghai this year. Singapore has chosen a cute little 5 year old boy named “Little Durian Star” as a mascot (I searched for the Indian mascot as well, but I couldn’t find any. Here is the Indian pavilion though). I like the way he has been given an entire personality with Hobbies, Values etc etc.

“Little Durian Star is nuts about durians, but they're not readily available in the places his family travels to. To help her poor son who's always thinking about the pokey fruit all day long, Little Durian Star's mum made him a delightful little costume. And now Little Durian Star looks like a little Durian. Wherever he goes, this little king of fruits makes other children green with envy!”

And his favorite food? – Durians, Laksa, Hainanese Chicken rice, Black Pepper Chilli Crab and Roti Prata :) !! (Which reminds me, I gotta write a “Girish’s guide to food” soon :) !!) Its funny though, they have not listed his favorite brand of perfumes. Some company can make a killing out of advertising their brand as “Even a Durian can smell good”.

The Finger Print Scanner

Yeah, sorry for the techie title but this thing has been bothering me for far too long to not write in my blog :) !!

The place where I work is like a hi-tech organization with all the latest gadgets for geeky minds to play with. So to be in with the times of "biometrics" all our office doors are secured shut by Finger print scanners. For the uninitiated they look like devices that got holes in them to put your finger in, to be identified as an employee.

Now, I personally don't like inserting my finger into holes where others have put their fingers in (pardon me if my imagination is running wild here but it is for obvious hygiene reasons!). I am quite ok with putting my finger in to mark my daily attendance, to get into the server room etc. But the one place where I really dread is the scanner right outside the restroom.

To start with, I haven't yet figured out the need to have a scanner to enter a bathroom. I can't think of having anything secure inside the bathroom that only people with a "legitimate reason" to be there have to enter! (Yeah before I wrote this post, I did a reconnaissance operation inside the men's room to see if I was missing something (I have not completely neglected the possibility of having a highly secure code on the toilet paper).

Statistically 23% of people do not wash their hands after relieving themselves. So statistically there are people in my organization who fit that description. And then statistically, I end up putting my finger in the same scanner after they have put in theirs (Its the same reason why you are not supposed to eat free peanuts kept in a bowl in a bar!).

Anyway, I decided I had to do something about it. So I complained to the HR and Admin department about the obvious lack of hygiene in the fingerprint scanner outside the bathroom. Luckily, they agreed, and viola, we got a hand sanitizer installed next to the scanner.

Now here comes the fun part. Hand sanitizers dispense a gooey liquid that takes time to evaporate. And scanners can only scan "dry fingers". And since most of us don't have the patience for the sanitizer to evaporate before we scan our fingers, we now have rendered a scanner useless by inserting our gooey fingers in it. The device now makes us insert our finger a couple of dozen times before it finally recognizes "Oh its you!". The sad part is, its the only place in the entire office where you are in a "rush" to get in. So much for technology!

The Big Bang Theory

So I have practically disappeared from the face of the planet for the last few days. The only place I am forced to go is office. I patiently wait for my office clock to tick 6:00 pm to run home. Reminds me of my good old days in school, when the last lecture was practically spent staring at the second hand of the school clock waiting for the magical school bell to ring.

Anyway, the reason you ask? Well well, I have been completely hooked onto the comedy sitcom "The Big Bang Theory". Its semi-geeky, very funny and I haven't been able to stop myself from watching it. I finished watching the first season in 4 evenings and I have this sleepy red-eyed look that makes everyone feel that I have been working really hard ;) !!

That also means that I haven't had the time to update my blog, eat (I have had cornflakes two times a day), wash clothes and do rest of my daily chores :) (that explains my obvious anti-social behavior)!! Haha, anyway, I am done with the first season now and before I start with a marathon second season, I thought I take a break come back to the mundane world (called reality!) and let you all know about it. If you have not yet seen the sitcom, I would highly recommend that you start watching it, and if you already have been seeing it, then I am very angry that you didn't tell me about it before ;) !!

The Problem with Teleportation

Accents

So a little known game is causing a lot of furor amongst the Bloggers that I follow in Singapore. The reason being the leader of the rebel group in the game Just Cause 2, Bolo Santosi has a Singaporean accent.

Bolo Santosi

Yeah, some Singaporeans do have an accent. Personally I don’t think Bolo’s accent is that pronounced. For that matter, I had not heard the “real Singaporean accent” till I shifted to the new place where I live now. My neighborhood is as authentic Singaporean as I can dream of. Scavenging for dinner is an interesting exercise for me these days cause most people have no clue what I am ordering for (yeah my terrible Indian accent), and I don’t bother to think about what gets served in my plate later. As long as things don't start creeping out of my bowl, I guess I will be fine.

Singlish Chat

Most places I have visited always have had Indians around me. So I never felt like an alien before. But these days, I am actually like the only Indian guy out there. I get those “hey look at the alien playing with chopsticks” glances!

And since I started with accents, I thought I end with this funny video of Russell Peters about the Indian accent.

Indian Accent

Gaga gugu

Have had the privilege of staying with a 1 year old for sometime and thought I give my expert opinion on the subject ;)

Even though the kid hasn’t gone beyond basic sounds that range from “waaaaah”, “dah dah dah” “na na” to the very complex “kot kot kot” (which do not make sense in most of the languages that we speak with him), we as adults have already started speaking to him like 2 year olds. So all “r”s are pronounced as “l”s and “s”s are pronounced as “sh”s. A hypothetical Girish Singh would now be called Gilish Shingh (I hope you get my point!).

Today, I am proposing a new corollary. It goes – “Kids speak like they do because adults do not speak like adults to them”. If you think of it, I have never seen an adult speak like an adult with a kid. We always try to sound cute and make funny noises and sounds to them (If you don’t believe me, try recording yourself when you speak to a toddler, and then later play it back!). At the time when they are trying to learn a new language they end up sounding the way they do cause we speak gibberish to them.

And if this blog post sounds without purpose and out-of-the blue for you, well it is! I have been staring at my screen for the last one hour thinking of something witty to write, and this is the only thing I could come up with!! Well, well, while I am writing I generally listen to something in the background (yeah music somehow spurts my creativity – or I like to think of it that way!). But lately I have realized that I am stuck in the late 90s as far as my music taste goes (Uncle tendencies!). To update myself with what's happening in the music scene now, I decided to listen to Lady Gaga. So rest of the hour was spent watching her videos than listening to her. Then I finally put this blog post together. Anyway, I ain’t putting any of her videos here. If you are a guy, I would highly recommend you go watch them as well. I would just put Christopher Walken’s (Don’t I love my uncles!) rendition of her Poker face here:

Christopher Walken - Poker Face

And if you don’t remember Christopher Walken, then you should see his Weapon of Choice dance for Fatboy Slim. So what is the lesson for today you ask? Next time when you write a blog post – do not pretend to listen to “new” music!

Scandal Management

In the past few months, the media has gone berserk covering sex scandals all around the world. There was a golfer, a footballer, a singer, a director, a spiritual guru, a talk show host, another TV personality and the list goes on. Now, personally I don’t really have an opinion about whether it is right or wrong or its ethical or forged. The point I am trying to make out here is sooner or later, every celebrity in this world will have to face a scandal, whether he likes it or not. This my dear, in turn is going to require an expert to handle such crisis. A new job which I would like to title – “Scandals Manager”. The person who comes in to help a fallen celebrity handle all the negative publicity that he/she has managed to garner. This professional will state his/her expertise to be – help you get out of the $hit that you got into – knowingly or unknowingly.

Money is power. And with great power comes responsibility (yeah I know Spiderman’s uncle said that!). By transitive closure ;) – With great (a lot of) money comes responsibility. And we as normal  human beings are not taught to be responsible. We “act” responsible only when we are in the spotlight.

I also would love to quote a blog post that I read about these scandals which said “It is part of the life cycle of a modern-day celebrity: Get famous, be adored, do something stupid, be scorned, apologize at a press conference, make a public show of penance, launch a comeback”.

I hereby “announce” that I am an expert in understanding such crisis. So here is Girish’s guide to celebrities in a mess. This shall serve as my resume and credentials for this role ;) !!

1) Tell it to the people who really matter to you, before the media tells them.

Yeah. If you are doing something wrong and you figure out that someone is gonna leak it, do so before that someone goes and leaks it out!

Here is a quick guide to an ideal confession. I really love the way this talk show host handled his scandal. not only did he come out in the open with it before the media went crazy over it. He made it sound so funny that most people were laughing when he confessed and apologized. If this was not enough, he also sued the guy who threatened to leak his scandal and managed to get him arrested. Its like having the cake, blowing the candles and eating it too!

2) Apologize only to the people you have hurt.

You don't owe anything to the world. I still am trying hard to figure out why a golfer in US apologized to me for his philandering. I am neither his wife, nor one of those women. My life in no way is affected by what he has done (well not really, I read a lot about his scandal online – but that was popcorn entertainment for me – I should thank him instead!)

Most celebrities don’t really owe us anything when they become celebrities. We expect all of them to be saints. And then they come out and apologize to the world to the fans and to everyone – it  sounds so fake and made-up.

And here is a quick guide on how to apologize only to the people who were affected by your scandal. The same guy again!

3) Have a conscience.

Well, I shouldn’t really be saying this. Cause if you really get a conscience, my job as a Scandals Manager is threatened. This statement is like an Oil company asking you to drive less or a Cigarette manufacturer telling you that smoking is injurious to health :) !!

4) Do not deny.

The more you try to deny the more your dark secrets get revealed. Investigative journalism makes a whole lot of money out of unearthing scandals because you like it or not we like to sling mud at our heroes.

If any celebrity who reads my blog needs a Scandals Manager, you know where to reach me :) !! Free services for first 10 callers!

How to be a good host?

So a good Singaporean friend of mine decided to go out for dinner with me last week. And since we always had non-Indian cuisine before, he felt a bit adventurous and asked me to treat him to my choice of Indian cuisine.

For people who are in the know, there are 2 kinds of Indian cuisines. The kind that you eat when you take non-Indians out with you (the Mango Lassi and Butter Chicken variety), and the other kind which you eat when you really crave Indian food. (That reminds me; heavenly food for me is – dried fish chutney – the way my mom makes it!)

Now since he was feeling a bit adventurous, I thought I might as well introduce him to what I was totally craving for, that day. So we feasted on Chettinad cuisine. The spicy Tamil variety. The kind which requires a constant flow of tissues and water. Being the mild Singaporean he is, he just could mumble “nice”, “nice” before he broke down into a river of tears and then started appreciating the Naan.

When a foreigner starts appreciating the Naan, you can guess for sure that the main course is out of his reach. But I think the devil had gotten into me that day. To finish our hot and spicy meal, I ordered for the Madras filter coffee. Its no latte, and it is sweet and has got milk. A hot drink after a spicy meal makes sure that you cry enough to make the person sitting on the table next to you pity your misery. My poor victim bottomed that as well.

As a final treat, I made him eat Paan. I think that was just too much for him. He finally pleaded to me that this is all he could take. I could see his face turning pink, as his throat turned numb because of eating all the betel nut pieces put so thoughtfully inside the paan. It was so bad that for close to half an hour the only thing he could do was ask me if he was gonna be alright!

He bid me good bye and left for his home half crying, half choking and generally feeling very miserable. On my way back, as I recalled the ordeal that I put him through, I kinda felt bad (I mean it). So this is a guilt laden blog to apologize for the pain and agony I put him through :) !!

Rebuilding temples

India is caught on the craze of rebuilding temples. Some of the most amazing temples that I visited as a kid have been rebuilt. I don’t get it. Most temples are architectural wonders of their times. They add to the awe of the premises. Rebuilding is destroying our heritage. I understand that the temples were built around the idols of the deity inside and people for all practical purposes go to pray to the deities inside the temples. But I guess, what adds to the sanctity of the temples is their ancient look and their architecture made by countless workers having toiled over years to achieve the perfection that we can derive out of machines in a minute today!

I understand most of them are dilapidated. But isn't it much better to restore them than rebuild? I know restoring would cost a lot more than rebuilding them from scratch, but I bet most big temples have enough money in their “trusts” to afford a restore!

16 boxes

I love this particular blog post by Seth Godin that he wrote more than a year ago. Its titled 16 boxes and he talks about how our career or business is not a single entity but is made up of so many different parts (that he refers to as boxes). I have always read this post when I am low so I thought I share it with you all as well.

I feel that just like our career or business, even our life is made up of several different interconnected parts. We have our health, wealth, family, job, children, friends, career aspirations, social circles, ambitions etc. These could all be titled as different boxes that make up our life. Now at any moment, not all boxes may be doing good at the same time. Things might be going wrong in some aspects. But life is not a boat which needs no leaks to float. Even if one of our boxes aren’t doing well, our entire life is not gonna sink. We can still sail around.

But when things actually go wrong, we always focus only on the boxes where things are going bad. We don’t even bother about all the other good boxes that we have in our life. I read somewhere that our primal instincts make us focus on things that are wrong, because when we as a species were still in the jungle hunting for food, not having something right was a matter of survival. However, today that’s not the case. We as a species however have not yet evolved to ignore things which are not in our control. We still continue to worry about the things that are going wrong and many a times end up affecting the other boxes which are perfectly normal till then. So next time when things go wrong with you, try thinking about all the other boxes in your life that are perfectly normal and don’t just focus on what is wrong with your life!