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!

Singing Sensation

Being an Indian, I am expected to sing at social gatherings, irrespective of how bad (hoarse) I sound. Its more like if you sing well – you are good, but if you sing bad (like me) then you are plain amusing. I think this is a very cultural thing. When 2 Indian people get together we bitch about the third one, and when the third one joins we sing. And if the third one is like me, we make him sing throughout the night or till he feels so embarrassed that he leaves.

Over the years, after having been the most popular singer (grrr!) in most social gatherings, I have figured there are some Hindi songs that I can sing without losing breath. I mean people still laugh, but they just LOL and don’t ROFL. So here is my list of sing-able songs for guys who bray like me. The songs are definitely very nice, but they just “can” be sung (badly) without losing your breath.

Allah Ke Bande – Kailash Kher

This song was my first chance discovery. We were on our bus trip to Las Vegas way back in 2006. Well, it was a Chinese bus tour, but all the occupants of the bus were Indians (with a Chinese tour guide!). So immediately after the bus started rolling, everyone had to sing. Now, I generally can fall asleep immediately in any moving vehicle, and I guess by the second song I was already fast asleep with my mouth wide open. Somewhere in the noon, I was jolted awaken by my co-passenger – “Girish, go go your turn to sing”. And in my semi-dozed state I sang this song. Rest they say is history (last heard the tour guide took up Zen and has retired from the tourism industry altogether).

Josh walon ko – Jagjit Singh

This one was during one of my birthdays in Uncle Sam’s land (after the bus tour). My friends forced me to sing (specifically insisting on me not singing the earlier song). I tried to sing this one. Now its a very deep and serious song. I remember all my friends were crying after I finished (the kind of tears that come when you laugh so bad that it hurts in your stomach).

Hum Bewafa Hargiz Na The - Shaan

While I was stuck in the hotel this time around (without internet), for days together I had no one to speak to. I missed hearing my own voice and decided to sing. The only song I had on my laptop then was this one. I remember singing it throughout the day on one Sunday. In the evening I realized that the entire floor in my hotel was empty. Coincidence I say, that all people checked out on the same day.

Blogger’s block

I dont exactly qualify as an “author” to have a writer’s block. But what I have been facing lately has got to do something with my inability to update my blog. I know I have had a hectic last month, but I am sure if I think hard, I could have easily made way for an hour of updating my blog. But each time that I sat down saying now I am gonna write something over here, I spent an hour seeing Lady Gaga videos and just generally fooling around on the internet.

I researched on the internet about “Blogger’s block” and if it exists. Mighty Google told me it does and I indeed came across some very well written articles about how to overcome it. Some of my veteran blogger friends might find these posts useful.

So I decided I blabber a bit here. One of the tips to overcome blogger’s block is to write outside of your niche. Now, long term readers of my blog know that my niche is – cracking fat jokes about myself. (I know I have repeated them to such an extent that most of you shun away when I open my mouth). So without further ado, I am gonna write about - Theology.

According to Wikipedia, Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths. Deep indeed. My knowledge of theology is limited to understanding its meaning. So I leave it at that.

While I was researching about my article about Theology, I chanced upon what does the ado (in without further ado) stands for. Apparently ado stands for “fuss” or “delay”. If you spell your further ado as “further adieu”, you are using the French word for goodbye. So your statements actually mean “without further goodbye”. Thanks fluffy for explaining that to me.

And this also means two other things – I came over my blogger’s block by writing this idiotic post and I actually got you interested in theology. See! Life is simple. Now if I keep this post as a draft too long, I am sure I am gonna delete it. So just as I finish this sentence I press the “Publish” button. Here it is.

Respect

I have had the unique opportunity of speaking to more than 35 users in an organization to understand their problems as a part of an assignment I did lately. Being on the other side is an interesting experience in human psychology.

Within the first 5 minutes of your interaction, you are generally aware how forthcoming the person is going to be. Especially since it was a voluntary effort on everyone’s part, some people opened up, while others expressed their displeasure assuming that it was a completely futile exercise. Some people were arrogant while few others questioned my competency.

However, one thing I realized during the entire assignment was – respect can’t be demanded, it has to be earned. I mean, I would only respect someone if that person is in a position to deserve it. In today’s world just being a senior doesn’t automatically entitle you to “respect”. Only when you open your mouth and make sense is the time we start respecting you.

This also means that as an individual, it has become important for us to be humble and let our knowledge do the talking and not our position. It is funny how few a people actually comprehend this.

Hoteled

All of May I have been stuck in this one matchbox sized hotel room. I always envied people who got to stay in a hotel for long. But now that I am in a similar situation, I kinda realize how bad it can get.

Now before I start complaining, let me get the good things out. Firstly I got a very cozy king size bed all to myself. Its soo good that these days my back aches once I get up in the morning. And secondly, I get 3 fresh crisp towels everyday (or at least I think I do).

Everything else though is not so pleasant though. I got a closet that was meant for midgets to use. And I got only 3 hangers. This means most of my clothes have to be kept in my bag. And to make it more convenient, I got no iron in my room. Everyday morning I gotta go to the ironing room (a shady little room 5 floors below where I stay) and iron with a 19th century iron on an iron board which makes my shirts look dirtier than they were before I ironed.

Talking of clothes reminds me of laundry. The laundry service is soo freaking expensive that I might as well buy a new wardrobe every week than wash the soiled clothes. To give you a perspective - I can buy 3 undies in India for the price of washing one here. To make a mockery of my clothes, every time I give my undies for laundry, they neatly wrap them in paper with little bits of paper inserted at strategic locations and finally iron the undies. Its like saying "Dumb wit, we felt we remind you that you are paying dearly for our service".

And finally - Internet. We are in the second decade of the 21st century and still hotels conveniently charge you dearly for Internet. Its like charging for air or water in the room! The hotel actually offers free Internet for an hour if I go down to their lounge and order something. So, I have been having a coffee (the cheapest thing I can buy in the lounge!) everyday! So much that these days if a barrista forgets the recipe for a latte they just take a sample of my caffeniated blood stream.

I am looking forward to going back home soon! I wonder how people can live out of a hotel so long! And this blog post was written over two days (that means, my dear readers I paid for this through 2 cafe lattes)

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.