Funny men

Read an interesting article about how funny men can literally laugh women to bed! Which probably translated in layman’s terms means – females like funny males. Ah ha, now that's interesting!

I bet there are levels of “funny” that attract different types of females (to bed). The funny level that I belong to kinda attracts only the females from a species called Anopheles.

If this was not  disheartening enough for me, I also chanced upon an article that bouts of sneezing are actually triggered by “sexy thoughts” (wonder what that means!). And I always blamed the mites in my room for all the sneezing and coughing I did. Huh, next time you see me sneezing, I hope you interpret it the way it is meant to be :) !!

And before you start questioning my intentions and “how” did I land up on these articles? Well, these are the top stories in the feed that I subscribe to for news from India.

Sesame Street

Have had a heavy dose of Sesame street and Elmo this last week thanks to a friend of mine introducing me to one of their videos lately! Haha, though I didn’t actually grow up seeing Elmo, I did spend a lot of my time in my summer vacations in school watching Sesame street. I thought I hated all those irritating characters from the series (now that I am grown up and all!), but still the sight of Oscar singing  “I love trash” is so endearing that I couldn’t help sharing it with all of you here! Give it a look …

“Oh, I love trash!
Anything dirty or dingy or dusty
Anything ragged or rotten or rusty
Yes, I love trash”

And then came across this video of Norah Jones singing “Don’t know why” on Elmo’s World because the letter of the day “Y” didn’t come :) !!

For those of you who do not remember the original song here it is ..

Friend with a ‘O’

Well, today I was backing up my phone book (once a year ritual, I know I should do it more often!) and I figured I have friends with names starting with every alphabet in the English language other than ‘O’. Haha, perks of having an international friend’s list is that you have friends with names starting even with X, Y and Z. Cool, so this means, I just need a friend with a name starting with an O in my phone book :) !!

(PS – I checked my calendar and figured that I indeed know a guy whose name starts with an ‘O’ – “Om” but the problem is, he is like 24 years younger to me, and is still too small to own a mobile phone!).

Encounter with a roach

So I went for my regular bathing ritual after a dip in the pool today and as I reached for my only saving grace in a public bath (my towel), I saw an angry looking cockroach with his two antennae staring at me intently. I am not generally afraid of cockroaches, and have been brave enough to kill a couple of dozen as a kid (Missed having a digital cam then .. else would have taken brave pictures of me with the dead cockroach hanging by his antenna in my hand!).

Anyway, when you are wet and have nothing to hold on to, and your only saving grace is under his control, things get a bit messy. I decided to fight it out and tried the oldest trick in the book .. “shooo” the cockroach with your hand. The only problem was, my hand was wet, and the cockroach decided to take flight at the same time, and lo behold his wings got stuck to my hand. Haha, now I had a fluttering cockroach on my hand and my towel in my other. Anyway, I had the presence of mind, and turned on the shower to get rid of the cockroach. Got my towel completely drenched in the process.

Since I had this amazing start of an eventful day, I thought I dedicate this post to the cockroach that I met in the morning. And for those of you who thought I killed a cockroach, don’t worry “No animals were harmed during the making of this blog (they were just splashed with water!)”. Wikipedia says that cockroaches can survive for 30 minutes under water. So I bet this one survived to scare someone else today!

Salon

So I spent more than an hour waiting for my turn to get my small hair cut further at the salon on campus. 1 hour wait time for what you ask? Well, I actually saw a south-east Asian girl turn blonde!!

This particular incident has kind of made me a sexist. I am now totally against having uni-sex salons. Men's salons should be different from those for women. Men should not be made to wait for women. The kind of stuff a gal can do to her hair, is mind boggling. Combined with gossiping about the latest reality show with the hair stylist, some girls can sit their for perpetuity.

Here is what actually happened: I had to get my routine hair-cut. I popped into the salon and saw an innocuous looking teenager sitting on the chair getting something done to her hair. Since it was only one person, I thought I wait it out. And there is where the ordeal started.

She first got a "hair wash". I thought that is something you do at home under the shower when you are taking a bath. But then, the hair stylist was combing her hair under water for what seemed like eternity. Then the kid wanted a "blow dry". Which consisted of using a scary looking contraption called a hair dryer which actually just blew air onto her hair!

Then all of a sudden the hair stylist wore surgical gloves and took out a paint brush! And then started applying some funny looking liquid on each and every strand of that teenager. I still cant believe what I saw! She actually applied that paint on *every* strand. After what seemed like ages (yeah I dozed off in the middle!) the hair stylist got a futuristic looking contraption from the wall and put it on her head. Finally, her attention turned towards this motionless body sitting on the other end of the room, yours truly, and motioned me to sit on the other chair while the gal sat inside that futuristic contraption. And within the time that they discussed the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives” my monthly ritual was done. Just out off curiosity I hung around for a while to see what the contraption actually did, and lo-behold, the gal actually turned from black haired to blonde inside that thingy (well after her hair was washed again!). Cool isn’t it?

Why I am not an iPod fan?

Wow. I know I am gonna ruffle quite a few Apple fans by writing this particular blog post. So before I get started, let me post a disclaimer which says - "I am not a Microsoft fan boy, nor do I specifically hate Apple or any of its products (iPod/Mac/iPhone included)". "I also believe that Steve Jobs is truly an inspiring person, and though I don't sit late into the night to party, I have always followed his keynotes live in WWDC and Mac World live whatever time of the night it is!".

However ever other subject that I study (Strategy/Technology/Marketing/Branding) in MBA somehow touches on the fact that Apple is a great company and they are good at everything that they do. How iPod/iPhone was a revolution and how everything about Apple is so cool. And then the class discussion is generally led by the Apple fans who go gaga over the amazing Mac OSX and how everything "just works" right out of the box. And we always conclude that iPod was the most amazing thing that happened to mankind after the discovery of the wheel.

My opinion is that, most of the iPod users out there are just ignorant of the fact that there are other digital media players available in the market, and also we generally tend to buy things that our friends have already bought (and do not experiment with new stuff). This behaviour which I think is rightly described by Scott Adams as "Moist robots".

As for things working right out of the box, I never had issues with my laptops and desktops (PCs) and they all to worked out of the box. (Yeah, the desktops I assembled, but the processors and Mobo and RAM just worked out of the box you see :) !!).

The worst part out of all this is, if Apple does commit a blunder tomorrow, the analysts and people will start bashing it and then suddenly what Apple does would suddenly become "so wrong". I always feel that Yahoo! and Palm do not deserve all the bashing that is meted out to them today. Same is the case with Michael Jackson and Britney Spears. We like to make ordinary people and companies Demigods and then all of a sudden one fine day we start hating them to the bone! And then we blame the media for all the pain and gore in this world when in reality it is we the consumers who really like things that are sensationalized :) !! So in the end my opinion is Apple is just another good company trying to maximise shareholder value and personifying it into this massive benevolent organization out to change all that is bad in this world is simply wrong!

Before I end this blog post, I thought I show you all this clever advertisement made for the Blackberry Storm which somehow never saw the light of the day. Nice one...

The Anti-sleep arsenal

Continuing on my fight against dozing, I hereby display my arsenal of tools that I use to get up in the morning.

So, I initially started by just keeping an alarm in my mobile and then snoozing it away to glory. Over time, I got so accustomed to it, that I started turning it off than snoozing. Realizing that this is kinda scary, I decided I needed "more" :)

Then came the alarm clock. The intelligent me would stagger the times that the mobile and the alarm clock go off so that I didn't over sleep, but yet I successfully snoozed both of them to glory for atleast half an hour everyday. And then the inevitable happened. I could successfully turn both of them off and go off to sleep again.

Finally, I got the most killer alarm that I have ever used. A clock radio. Yeah, I  know most people do not believe in the power of a clock radio, but having successfully used it for more than 6 years of my life, I decided its the only thing that can get me out of bed everyday.

So why do I like a clock radio so much? Well, first things first, even if a radio starts playing in the morning, I rarely turn it off. I can happily sleep with the songs playing in the background, and at the same time, some where in the back of mind I am always aware that the songs are playing for me to get up. And then, if there is news going on, I get to subconsciously hear the news for the day too :) !!

The only movie that gave celebrity status to a clock radio is definitely Groundhog day. So here is the scene from that movie for your viewing pleasure. And if you have not seen the movie yet, its definitely a must see ...

And those of you who have not yet figured out the song that plays when the clock strikes 6:00 AM in the movie, it is "I got you babe" by Sonny and Cher. Here is the live version:

MBA and Time management

So finally, I got sucked into the vicious circle of "being short of time" for everything everyday. My first trimester (though tiring) didn't really eat into my sleeping time, which I comfortably had still held at an average of 7-8 hours (that's a luxury by an MBA student's standard). And I was smirking to myself that having sleepless nights in MBA was a myth. If you work smart, you can always sleep well.

Then came the last 3 weeks of trimester 2, and I realized that "smart working" is a myth. If the professors try hard enough, they can actually make you sleep less. Having multiple submissions, presentations and tests on the same day became a norm, and Mr Smart Pants could no longer stick to his routine!

Though I still don't do all-nighters (every student's worst nightmare!). I have come down on my sleeping hours to an average of 6 (which means at times I have gone down to the magical figure of 4 hours a day!). Hahaha. I know this is still a lot more for most of you. But at 6 hours per day, my brain stops working and I am like a walking zombie. Looking at people and registering an hour later that I just saw that person!!

If you know, zombies are not much creative people. Same here. My sense of humor has diminished to the level that even reading the word "humor" makes me laugh :) !! If I wrote blogs at that state, I would sound like a news reporter (I bet you already noticed it here!).

My Trimester 3 starts on Monday and I await another onslaught of assignments, presentations and tests. Not that I am complaining, but then, I am not made for sleeping less :) !!!

World Citizen

The part of California that I lived in, there were a lot of South and Central American immigrants. I for never once had doubted that I look anything else than a pure bred Indian. However, I had a tough time acting dumb with strangers who would break out into a long Spanish rambling with me, assuming that I am of South American origin! The problem had become so bad, that I actually had to learn to say "Na Habla Espanol" to let the people know that I do not speak Spanish!

The past year had been relatively great, and I no longer had to prove my Indian identity. Since the new year however, I have been asked at least by a dozen people in my college hostel if I am "Persian"?!!

Now that's kinda funny. My mirror shattering looks can actually get me into half a dozen countries in the world without being looked at as a foreigner :) !!

The mythical productivity index

Before I even winked since my last blog post, I figured that it has been almost a month already. And all the while, I was thinking that we are "just" into the new year! So much for my new year resolutions of 2009 (not that I had any!).

This trimester I had made a resolution that I will be updated with all my readings, cases and submissions right from Week 1, so that at the end of the term I won't struggle any more. After all, haven't we all heard that "slow and steady" wins the race?

Yeah, so this time, I started working on all my assignments in and around Week 1 of my trimester itself. And if you guessed it right, I am still working on them (last 2 weeks of my trimester are left before the exams!). So much for starting early! Not only did I not get time to write blogs, day dream, and go about town, but also I spent days in front of the computer writing that one killer sentence in my assignment for days together!

After a lot of research ;) , I have come up with this "Productivity Index" of yours truly. Accordingly, I have figured that at the start of the trimester my Productivity is close to zero. Which means, if I have to read a chapter which I would normal read in an hour or two, I would spend more than 8 hours "ruminating" on it! Finally at the end of the trimester when I know that I have hardly a week to submit, my productivity magically goes up, and I finish loads and loads of documents; sometimes in a day!

Whew! So what's my resolution for the next trimester, you ask? Well, I am gonna start working on my assignments in the last week of the term :) and spend my earlier weeks pursuing the good things in life :) !!