Goodminton

So the second half of April just passed me by in a jiffy and before I realized its already the end of the month. This means, I ain’t gonna get much time to write any more blog posts this month. Trying to squeeze in one before I say goodbye to April 2011.

Trying to live up to my blog’s reputation as a “sports blog”, I figured that I should give you practical tips about the only other game that I play (and have still never mentioned about it here) – badminton. I know the moment you hear the word badminton you have flashes of Asian people stepping around the court gracefully and smashing the shuttle down the moment it is inches above the net in between. Now if you imagined me to be anywhere close to that, you are way over estimating me. So let me set the record straight.

To begin with, like I told you guys before, I like to invest in top-of-the-line equipment for my game. That means I bought the best Yonex racket that I could afford (and to tell you frankly its way too good for me!). Well, I used to play with an ordinary non-branded racket before. But I kinda lost to every Tom, Dick and Harry that I played with. I figured that it was only the racket I could blame (for me, I was as graceful as I could imagine!).

So now with this new racket I go play at this really nice indoor court with a nice wooden flooring, excellent lighting and generally nothing to complain about. And I got this badminton buddy who plays with me after having done a 2 hour football practice (you can imagine his stamina). An ordinary game goes like this – I serve – he strategically places his return – I run – I return – he places the shuttle somewhere else in my court – I run – I return – he places the shuttle at the other corner of the court – I run again …. This ordeal continues till I start seeing multiple shuttles in the air (that's called – getting dizzy and hallucinating) and try to hit the wrong one. I hardly get to make a few points here and there (mostly because he makes a mistake rather than I earning it!) and he wins with such a wide margin that it further hurts my already hurt sports ego. I have tried all sorts of tricks with him, trying to drop the shuttle around the net, smashing him around etc. But somehow he magically takes everything that I do.

One thing that I truly like about myself is, I still don’t give up. I still go with him to play, and I still challenge him to a match and I still lose only to try again. So what is the moral of this blog post you ask? Well, the moral is – I play every sport equally bad.

Unsung heroes

I am sure we all know a person in our life who is a celebrity or has done something great. I haven’t had my share of celebrity friends (yet) but I think I know some truly great people. And here is a description of one of them.

We went for a company team building event yesterday. It involved a trek to a fort. I geared up in my usual shorts and t-shirt attire and off we went for the trek. Since its scorching hot in and around Mumbai these days, I carried a 2 litre disposal water bottle with me.

At the destination I figured that there were around 70 of us and most of us had anticipated the heat and were carrying huge water bottles. Now the average age of a person in my organization is 27 something. For such outings that average goes down to 24 something (yeah I was above average!). So you can imagine the entire group was young and fairly educated. That fits in the definition of – environmentally conscious people.

The trek was extremely exhaustive and in no time, we all finished all the water that we were carrying. The inclines were rather steep, and carrying anything on us was extremely tiring. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that a few youngsters started discarding their used bottles on the nature trail. It was disturbing, but considering that the circumstances that we were in, I felt it was “okay”. I kept mum (yeah I didn’t throw away my bottle – cause I didn’t find it that inconvenient).

I have this friend cum colleague that I know for close to 7 years now. He fits the usual definition of what we call “a perfect guy”. Smart, intelligent, humble and nice. But what he did yesterday bowled me over. As everyone started discarding their bottles, he silently collected them on the trail. Without making any fuss about anything, he stuffed in as many plastic bottles that he could in his sack. Even after his sack was full he found out a novel way to carry more of those bottles on himself that involved using a rope to awkwardly tie the bottles around his waist. Just so that people don’t notice he kept at the back of the entire group. Now imagine doing all this on a difficult trek, all the way up and then bringing the bottles all the way down, only to discard them at the nearest bin that he found at the foothill!

We consider ourselves environmentally conscious, but how many times have we gone out of our way to protect it? Considering that the entire group was in the new generation, I would have assumed that we are more conscious of our environment. I have a million times seen people throw stuff here and there. But I never bother to go pick it up and throw it in a bin, if the person doesn’t do so. I just give them that “oh you are so uncivilized” look and walk away.

As for my friend, he generally likes to keep a low profile. But what he did yesterday proved to me that if you are really passionate about a cause, you will go to any extent to defend it. And after I noticed what he did, I feel bad that I didn’t even bother to help him in his crusade!

The “Like Me” Experiment

So, it has been two weeks since I started my shameless “Like me on Facebook” campaign. I am sure at least a few of you must be interested in what the results have been. Before I get into the statistics, I think you all need to know some background.

Long long ago, in the days of dial-up internet, I consumed most of my information on the internet through – news websites and search engines. So everyday I would login to the internet and then go to a news website (like Yahoo News, Google News, Times of India, etc). Then as the internet matured, I could subscribe to receive emails from these websites daily in my inbox. These emails were called newsletters and the internet was consumed through the inbox. Then we further matured, and I started using Atom/RSS Feeds. As I started reading more stuff online every single day, it was not possible for me to read it in my inbox (too many mails to go through!), the easier option was to login to a feed reader (Bloglines, Google Reader etc) and then consume the information from there. I have realized that over the last year, I have been mainly consuming all my news and information from the News feed of Facebook and my Twitter timeline. Though I still read news from my feed reader, it seems to me that slowly, we all are shifting towards friend generated news. That means, for my blog to be read, I have to be on Facebook. This meant that I had to make people “Like” my blog so that any updates I publish start appearing on their wall.

Now, why I want you to read my blog is beyond my comprehension. The only plausible explanation I can give is – I am a narcissist and I love it when you read what I write (yeah, it makes me feel as if I am doing something – influencing your thought process, making you laugh, smile, cry or simply – irritated!) Anyway that motivation put aside, now I come back to my experiment.

After cajoling, pleading, calling up and at times bullying people to “Like me” (at least a few of you), I have reached a number of 20. Now that’s an achievement in itself (Thank you for giving in to my pressure!). But alas, Facebook doesn’t give me an independent existence if I don't cross the magic figure of 25. So that is where it ends.

I am dejected, but that doesn’t mean I will stop writing here. You will hear me rant about my sadness for a while, and then I will be back again to my usual silly self. So enjoy!

Like Me, Please!

After 4+ years of existence, I have decided to engage myself in a bit of shameless marketing of this blog. Besides pestering all my close friends to go read my blog, I did the next obvious thing – listed myself on Facebook as a “blog”.

Marketing wasn’t my strong subject in MBA. I am good at criticizing other’s marketing efforts, but when it comes to my own, I suck miserably. So I spent yesterday afternoon figuring out how to setup a Facebook page for my blog. After numerous attempts and some funny results, I finally got it up and running. But well that was just the beginning. Now I figured, I gotta go and invite people to “Like” it.

Making people like my blog and publicize it is a different ball game altogether. After pestering and individually calling up my friends (yeah, that shameless I had to become!). I have reached a comfortable number of 4!

But I have decided not to give up. So I hereby ask all of you who regularly read my blog to “Like” me on Facebook so that I hereby enter the world of Web 2.0 and Social Networking.

(Link provided below)

And now begins the next embarrassing social experiment. Waiting for you to like me!

Magic Potion

I don't exactly qualify as a metrosexual male. My usual appearance sways between a caveman and a formally dressed gorilla based on the day of the week. The only grooming that I do is – I bathe (Thank God for it!). So when a friend of mine suggested that I start using a face-wash to counteract the ill effects of my age I went to do a research on the kinds of “washes” that you get off the counter. Not only is there a face-wash, but also there is a body-wash and a mouthwash. The fun part is trying to wash your face with a mouth-wash doesn’t exactly produce the desired effects.

Anyway, I went to a mall today to look for face-washes. And I realized that almost every men’s face-wash is a fairness cream as well. I mean every product of the shelf not only talks about how it clears your pores, makes you look younger, and refreshes your skin, but also it makes you look fairer! Naturally I decided to check out what the fairness creams do different!

The face-washes only claimed to make me fair, young, rich and intelligent, but the fairness creams did all that the face-washes did but also promised to make me handsome (that’s a tall order!). In the last 10 years that I have been seriously courting computers, science has made tremendous progress in fairness creams. Imagine applying the cream one night, and getting up the next morning as a fair and handsome knight in shining armour all with a shiny white horse waiting for you to board on. Then you go riding on it in Mumbai traffic (well, that would make for a different blog post altogether!).

Fair and Handsome

Anyway, like the gullible consumer I am, I have decided – what the heck – I might as well try to be a handsome caveman/ gorilla. So, I bought myself the “Make-me-handsome potion” (calling it a cream is just downplaying its miraculous powers!) and have decided to apply it everyday for the next 4 weeks (that's how long I have to apply the cream to become handsome!). So, for all of you who have never seen me, just wait for 4 more weeks, I will be a handsome young man (I pity my parents – I always blamed them for my mirror-cracking looks. How I wish I had known about this potion before!). Tomorrow, I go buy my knight armour and a horse. I might need a month to learn horse-riding.

Sports Blog

So the place where I work judiciously filters and blocks each and every website through websense. Probably the only domain that we are allowed to visit is Google and Wikipedia. My blog URL being on Blogspot before, was obviously blocked under “Blogs and Social Media” Filter category.

Since I bought my girishm.in domain, I was of the opinion that it must be no longer blocked. But I hardly ever got any time in office to go and check if it was really so. Today after lunch, while I was day dreaming, I decided to checkout my blog. Well, websense seems to have crawled to my new URL and has already started blocking girishm.in.

The funny part however is, my blog has been blocked under the category “Sports”. Classifying my blog as “Sports” is like calling an elephant a thin animal. My blog is as anti-sport as it can be. But what the heck, I am happy, at least someone in this world feels that I am into sports. Here is the screenshot captured to make me happy for eternity!

Absolute bliss!

Moonwalker

This time around when I bought a new pair of sports shoes, I promised myself that I will make sure that I buy a new pair within one year. Hidden deep inside this promise was the premise that I would use them soo much that they will wear out in a year and I would then have to buy a new pair. So why did I have this sudden craze for shoes?

Well, the last pair of sports shoes I had lasted me for 5 years. Even when I threw them away (donated to charity), they looked as good as new. And mind you, they were white. So to make them look new, I had to go through special efforts which included – never using them at all. I finally got bored of them, and decided to get a new pair (everybody needs change!). Which also meant that I felt guilty for wasting money on something that I didn’t actually need. That’s where the mental resolution to “use” them came in.

Now I have had this new pair for close to 6 months. I have (ahem!) hardly used them. I happened to find them today again and could see that they were shiny like new. Since exercising isn't my cup of tea, I decided I wear them and go for a walk (stroll!). After walking for a while, I however realized that I have been dragging my feet around a lot (as if I am moonwalking in the front!). Subconsciously my mind has been already busy trying to “wear” out my shoes! So much for my resolution! tch tch!

Michael Jackson Moonwalking

Government offices for Dummies

Over the last several months I have had the unique experience of visiting all kinds of government offices in India. I thought I pen my experience here to get rid of some fallacies and scare you of some more.

To start with, Indian government offices at the grass-roots level are not as corrupt as they are portrayed to be. For all my work so far, I have never come across a corrupt official whom I had to pay (or I may be too dumb to notice that he is expecting to be paid!). But, so saying, every task in our Government offices is extremely bureaucratic and the simplest of simple things will require you to be prepared to wait for at least 2-3 hours and visit the same office half a dozen times and meet a dozen other people. Some problems are mainly because we are a country of a billion people, and whatever you want to do, there are a million other people doing it at the same time and place along with you. Also, I wouldn’t call some processes efficient enough (and I am sure if we hire a good usability consultant she sure can optimize a 100 odd processes).

Initially I found all this unnerving, but if you look at it from the “experience” point of view then you end up enjoying the ordeal. I have learnt to be patient, very very patient. I have also learnt to be humble. Extremely humble and respect everyone in the office and make sure that I do not make any of the government official feel bad or argue with them. I also realized that in every such office there is this neglected person (like a watchman, a clerk or a cleaner) who can help you with your work even if you just approach them with respect and ask for help.

And never do the mistake of wearing a “western outfit”. Wear pure khadi clothes especially a kurta and have a unshaven look. Carry yourself with dignity. In India, it is very difficult to differentiate between an ordinary guy wearing traditional Indian clothes and the local politician or goon. So if you dress like one, people naturally give you respect (Yeah, I have shamelessly taken advantage of that fact several times!).

Once you reach the office, you shall be approached by a lot of people. They are generally touts or agents. They will scare you that the officials at that office are extremely corrupt, and only the agents can get your work done. Pay no heed to them. These are the guys who have vested interest in naming the government employees as corrupt. Approach the neglected person that I introduced in the earlier paragraph and find out where you have to go to do your stuff.

The only irritating part of everything is “we the people”. We do not form one single line at any counter. We form what I like to call “concentric semicircles”. So if there is a window you have to go to, and if there is a person standing there, then we don’t stand behind him. We stand next to him. We do that till there is a small semicircle formed around the window. Thereafter when more people come to the counter and they realize they can no longer squeeze into the first semicircle, then we start forming concentric semicircles behind. And now you ask who decides the priority of who comes next in these semicircles? Well, we Indians have a rule – the loudest and most scary looking guy gets to do his job first. Other weaklings and meek-lings wait (Now I hope you realize why I warned you about the outfit!).

That's all I have to say about it. Go to a government office – just to get a kick out of the whole experience. Trust me, you wont repent!

Vertically challenged

As a roly-poly kid, I loved wearing horizontal bold striped shirts. The kinds that accentuated the contours of my oh-so-round stomach. Being a kid, I never cared for the world and everything was happy and fun till one fine day one over friendly uncle pulled me over and advised me “Never wear horizontal stripes – they make you look fat!”. “Instead, wear vertical stripes – they make you look leaner and taller than you really are.”

Being the young impressionable mind that I was, I guess, I really took his advice to heart. From that day onwards, I subconsciously started getting attracted towards striped clothes in all shops. Though I bought boring shades, I think I subconsciously made sure that they had vertical stripes to make me look “leaner and taller”.

After two decades of buying my own clothes, yesterday while I was pretending to arrange my wardrobe, I realized that my entire wardrobe is now a vertical stripped mess. Every piece of clothing that i have now has vertical stripes on it.

I am sure none of you who see me regularly think that I am tall or lean. But I am sure everyone feels that I am a clown with my stripped dressing pattern. So, what is the learning you ask? Never let your kids take advises from overfriendly uncles. And if you are fat, no amount of vertical stripes are gonna make you look thin.

Height of decency

This is a new postulate that I have come up with:

“The level of what is considered decent in a society is directly proportional to the height of the partition between urinals in a public restroom”.

Before you guys start bashing me up. I have observed men in restrooms, changing rooms and gymnasiums in 3 different countries and I have evidence to back-up my postulate.

To start with, in India, the level of decency that you are expected to maintain in public places is very high. So, for example, if I wear shorts and go around in public transport, people give me the “look”. The “look” is a very powerful message which says – “Dude, you are not welcome here in these clothes”. Same is the case in swimming pool changing rooms. You are expected to cover yourself up in a towel, till you actually go to the pool and dip yourself into it. Anything less and people give the “look”. Naturally the partition between urinals in men’s restrooms in India is so high, that at times you wont even know that the guy using the urinal next to you is a celebrity.

The first time I stepped into a public urinal in the US, I found it awkward that they have no partitions whatsoever between urinals. Imagine, you can actually measure the pumping speed of the guy next to you in the urinal and compare who is faster! And then being in your birthday suits in public changing rooms is considered absolutely normal.

Then I went to Singapore. Urinals out there have partitions. But they are just big enough for you to not accidentally see the other guy’s tool. But you can very well chit-chat and strike a conversation – “How are you”? Same is the case with the public changing rooms. There are doors for every shower, but then closing them is strictly optional, and people won’t give you the “look”.

And then the level of what is considered decent also varies in the same proportion in the three societies. Sometimes I wonder why we don’t have awards for making such discoveries!! I am sure I would land up in a couple of record books for this.

While researching for this article on Google, I came across this video which teaches men restroom etiquettes. And, for a moment you thought only I had all the time in this world!!

Male restroom etiquette