A word on the water crisis

My fellow earthlings, I know we have a water crisis. I know about climate change, about all those people in Africa who need to walk miles for meager amounts of water.
However! Not flushing in the loo is not going to help with the crisis in the long term… in any term for that matter. If you feel really guilty, build a water harvesting structure, or donate to Africa or something. And if you *must* economise on flushing, please do it in your house. At work, please spare the rest of us from the consequences of using the loo after you.
I’m fairly certain the African kids’ll be pretty understanding. Yes?

The one thing we havent yet outsourced..

Put nights, are Friday nights with friends of mine that go by in a haze. The average put night, is like a Times of India article-  good fun, but not much by way of intellectual content, which is exactly how we like it.

The latest one however threw up a gem of an idea. While channel hopping, we landed on one showing Jumanji, dubbed in Hindi. It had a black (differently coloured, for the politically correct) cop generally behaving dumb, in much of the comic scenes towards the end. Being a Hindi dubbing, he was made to mouth lines like “Ayyo meri gaadi”, when his car was washed away,etc, you get the picture.

Mando, who is into theatre, and has an MBA as well (both backgrounds will be important to what is to follow) pointed out that the comedian’s facial contortions resembled that of that stalwart of Tamil cinema, Vadivelu. The South Indian twist to the cop’s dialogues only served to heighten the similarity.

The comparison being moderately funny, we chuckled and got ready to move on, when the business administrator in Mando struck upon a brilliant plan- given how South Indian comedians, seem to look a bit like their African-American counterparts, what if someone were to outsource them to Hollywood? Low cost blacks, straight out of South India, we can let them hire *our* minority for much less. Producers of low cost Hollywood films’ll have tears in their eyes as they’re able to rein in expenditure, and who knows, one of ’em might even be the next coloured person after Denzel Washington to win the Oscar.

So, um, how do you go about hiring ships? Anyone? I’m just asking..

Fame!

haha! Feel special people, for you are reading the blog of a man who is famous- I now get people on the blog searching for “sudharsan five point someone”!
So after shows when no one came up to me to congratulate me or merely gawk (as they were doing with other male cast members), I thought they didnt care, but apparently they were shy, and decided to go home and google me! muhahaha!
(Also they’ve got my spelling right in the search, which is very heartening)
Of course there are also those who search for ‘photo of smelly dog’ and land at my blog, but we’ll ignore those for now..

Mortification

What with all the (google) Buzz updates, I almost missed one from a friend that went ‘never put your tongue where it doesnt belong’.

Obviously curious, I eagerly enquired where he’d stuck it, and was stunned to learn it was his laptop charger. And he’d done it at because he was bored at work.

My first thought was what if someone’d seen him? Imagine coming off lunch, a little sleepy, preparing yourself to grapple with that dratted project when you suddenly see a random colleague sitting in his cube with his laptop charger in his mouth. Dunno about you, but I might’ve thought he’d just swallowed the laptop.

But you know whats worse? What if he’d died? Can you imagine how embarrassing life’ld be for his friends (thats us)?

Shocked friend: Oh my God, P just died..

Well wisher: What? I’m sorry.. how did it happen?

<Awkward silence>

SF: He.. er stuck a laptop charger in his mouth..

WW: ???!!

Seriously people, if you’re going down,  do it with style. Think Michael Jackson, or Navjot Sidhu (he’s gone right?) or something.

(Ironically P runs a webcomic called chronicles of the Riddiculous. Okay.)

Why Yoda-talk doesnt always work..

Friend1:Understand this you will not..
F2: Huh?
Me: (Getting it) Yoda-talk, it is..
F1: Right you are
F3: (Not a star wars fan) Suck you guys
F4: (Not getting it at all) Um.. no thanks..

p.s. Lame I know, but its been months and I just wanted post something. Funny drunk incident post coming soon..

Crisis

The problem with running a humour blog is that a lack of ideas for posts implies a lack of humour in life.
Must come up with something.

Your own 6 rack.. er pack

Warning: Subject matter is a story seen in DNA (the paper). You know what to expect..

Its 1:30 AM and I’d almost fallen asleep a couple of minutes back, when I heard the gentle chirp of tweetdeck. I could have rolled over under the quilt in which case I’d have been asleep now, but I decided to check the tweet instead ( you see, this is how I use the laptop) and was stunned to find a link to an article about a stage hypnotist who claims he can enlarge breasts!

The first question that came to mind was- What is the equivalent effect in men? I ask only because I have for some unknown reason been a target of online marketers of er.. organ enlargement drugs, creams and even techniques (don’t ask!). Given that my inbox has been bombarded by all types of people looking to.. lend a helping hand, so to speak, I was surprised that I hadn’t heard of the hypnosis thing.

Reading the article however quickly solved that puzzle. Apparently the routine involves playing a CD with the chap intoning “Your breasts are growing… they are growing larger..”.. ah, well done sir! A very specific treatment, rules out any side effects. A spouse stepping into the room with his wife listening the CD for instance, wouldn’t suddenly find himself in the embarrassing position of inexplicable sexual excitement (although he might be very surprised, if not downright shocked to hear a disembodied voice commenting on his wife’s breasts).

But of course, where one clear advantage of such a specific approach is seen above, there is a huge disadvantage too. Given the chant is aimed squarely at breasts, without discrimination towards age, colour or more relevantly gender, in case it does work, a male might not want to be too close to CD, lest he falls asleep and wakes up to find the dratted thing had been playing on a loop all night! Gasp!

Sadly, the article (yes I knew you’d want to read it for yourself) wasn’t much longer, and ended with the hypnotist’s rebuttal to a BBC show, that has apparently rubbished his claim. Reading it, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the guy. There, a well funded network has used its airtime to tear into him, and all he came up with was a sad plea that the BBC “could at least have tried it”. Does sound like a nice (if mildly eccentric) guy, doesn’t he? 😀

In which I go star gazing..

So there’s this pretty active astronomy club in Bangalore (BAS) that I’ve wanted to check out for almost a year now, only couldn’t because most of its activities are in North Bangalore, an area that I’ve only heard tales about, never actually set foot on. So when I found out that a star gazing session happening near my office, needed volunteers, I quickly signed up . The evening came, and though the boss gave me some last minute work, I managed to give her the slip, and started off towards the rendezvous.

In college, every once in a while I used to drag my mattress to the terrace and sleep there. I suppose it is here that my fascination with the night sky and stars began. The sight of that vast, wild expanse as I lay all alone on a large terrace with winds blowing strong and cold, always soothed my mind. And I was actually expecting to see something like this through the telescope.

Night sky

So it was with sprightly steps that I landed at the appointed place and hello-ed the BAS guys present. They were busy looking through the telescopes and adjusting them. For a while, I was the life of the party, so to speak. Sure astronomers don’t really laugh too much when they meet, but hey I can tailor jokes to suit the company I’m in (I cracked one involving Pluto no longer being a planet).

It didn’t hit me right away, but chatting with them as they were setting things up, I suddenly realised that ‘volunteer’ had referred to someone with at least a slight knowledge of astronomy- I could barely make out a star from an aeroplane! As a result, the periods where the BAS people would look up at the sky rather seriously for long periods, were very awkward for me. I had no clue what they were doing, but followed suit anyway, and just to preempt any questions being popped in my direction, I asked mysterious, knowledgeable sounding ones (“Which direction is South?” and so on).

Soon however, I was spared this pretence as people began to crowd around the telescopes and the volunteers started pointing out Jupiter (the only clear celestial object on view) to them, also showing its moons and explaining a bit about its gaseous atmosphere. It was all fairly enjoyable, except I had to wait quite a while for my first view through the telescope. When I finally got my turn, I stepped close to the lens, psychedelic images of the milky way taken from space swirling in my mind. When I looked into the lens however, I was nonplussed to see just two large, bright spots, one bluish and the other cream coloured. Quickly I discovered that the blue spot was just something on my eyelash, and removing that only left something resembling this in my field of vision.

Jupiter

I stared on into the telescope with numb disbelief, but no cosmic revelation came. Slowly I stepped back and pushed my way out of the crowd pressing in for a glimpse. But even before I recovered from the shock, a man who’d just had his view came up to me to for explanations, assuming (er correctly) that I was a volunteer.

RandomMan: So waat is this?

Me: (Slowly recovering) Jupiter

RM: hmm… what are its features?

Me: (wtf?! Its not a digi cam dude!) er.. nothing, you can see 3 of its moons through the telescope… (not even sure if that answers the question!)

RM: How far it is from earth?

Me: (thinking)

RM: How many kilometers?

Me: Um, not in kilometers, there’s this unit called lightyears…

RM: (No longer interested in the answer) We can live therea?

Me: No! Its fully gassy.. not to mention the temperature is not right, plus it doesn’t have water.

RM: (Suddenly shifts to a conspiratorial whisper ) This news of water on the moon… its correcta?

Me: (Er, yeah, ask me like I sent an independent probe to verify it) Yes it is

RM: So we can live on the moona?

Me: (Ok this guy obviously has major problems he has to get away from). No we can’t..

RM: (stoutly) But it has water..

Me: Can’t live there.. sorry..

RM: (Looks wistfully at the night sky) Even not now, later they find some place to live… (and with these words of wisdom, he finally walked away)

By that point, I’d learnt most of the things people asked related to Jupiter, so I answered a few people’s queries, and despite the initial disappointment of being able to see just a random point of light on the telescope, I began to enjoy the whole experience. By looking at it harder, I could actually notice a couple of bands on Jupiter (formed by its ‘clouds’), and also managed to spot its third moon (everyone could see three, but I could find just the two, and for a while had to pretend that I could see all three).

We had set up the telescopes at an unused bus shelter, not far from a busy main road. So when there was a fair crowd, a passing police patrol stopped and asked what we were doing. The cop was a hefty guy, who seemed pretty pissed (never a good combination) about the crowd spilling over onto the road, so we were sure he’d ask us to clear out. When we told him about the astronomy thing, he seemed surprised and asked who it was for.

Everyone, we told him, and were pleasantly surprised when the burly copper, hummed and hawed a little before asking if he could take a look through the telescope too! Laughing (not to his face), we obliged, and the guy was so fascinated, his poor junior had to remind him multiple times that they had ‘urgent work’! Heh, like I said, not a bad night in the end…

Nostalgia

I saw a pic of these hot, crispy jalebis on facebook (they just looked that way, I of course had no way of knowing if they were hot. Or crispy), and suddenly remembered that I had eaten some mindblowing jalebis recently myself. Except, I simply couldnt remember where.

After a considerable time spent in earnest recollection, I finally remembered where I’d eaten them and with whom, but by then it was 10 at night and the place was shut. So there I was, all alone at home suffering from intense jalebi-craving, when I saw the friend I’d had the jalebis with online, and pinged him.

(Chat transcript with translations provided)

me: dei suddenly remembered those jalebis we ate at forum da, semma craving now!
10:01 PM
N: dei panada (You worthless *$#&)

kadupethada (Don’t irritate me)

I wanted to talk to u abt one thing da dog (Explained succintly in English by N himself this time)

me: ?

N: I went for one fitness class yest

me: woah!

super da
10:02 PM
N: Do u know what they asked us to do?

<Interruption>

At this point I should update you on the nature of our friendship. I, am always looking to play a prank, and N, always seems to be looking to fall for one. So over four years of college, I (along with an accomplice) have pulled a variety of (admittedly) cheap, but really funny ones at N’s expense- from convincing him at a restaurant that the finger bowl in front of him was really the restaurant’s famous clear soup (or vice-versa, I don’t remember) , to making him lie on a bed with a dumbell on his stomach and an eye shade, while we gathered the entire wing to watch the spectacle (we’d told him it would help flatten his tummy). Looking back, the eye shade was as funny as the dumbells, I mean sure he thought the dumbells would tone his tummy, but I have no idea how we convinced him to pull shades on to go with it!

We, were of course pastmasters at pulling a quick one off, leaving the ever trusting N at a considerable disadvantage. Once we were in my room with the music  playing on my system, when N asked me how he could increase the volume. I was reading a book, and without batting an eyelid, told him to jump on the spot he was standing. Of course, I didnt expect him to do it, and was stunned when a second later, I heard a dull thump, and looked up to find a puzzled N wondering whether he’d jumped correctly.  The rest of us in the room had a dozen funny things we wanted to say right then, but just couldnt because we laughed so long and so hard, we just forgot it all.

So it was this N who had something important to tell me. Apparently.

<Continuation>

me: I know whats going to come next

N: keep dumbells on the abdomen

me: haha

N: assss

me: hahahaha!!

I KNEW IT

N: ivolo naala (all these days)

enna epidi kalaichenga (you were killing me about that incident)

rem book la ellam pottu (and even put it in our frikkin rem book)

me: dei, seriously? illa thirpi emanthutiya? (You sure it was for real? Or did you just fall for the same thing again?)

😛
10:03 PM
N: naaygala (Bitch!)

seriously da

chha

me: so whats next, they play music and ask you to increase the volume by jumping on the floor?

lol!

N: next ill find de solution to the volume adjustment thing

me: haha

same train of thought!
10:04 PM
N: both co exist da

always

same day

both well trieds (College slang for ‘epic fail’)

me: ah, I was slightly tense because of work shit and this bloody jalebi craving

now memories of laughing so hard I almost died makes me feel better!

N: hehehe

And then N went offline, and for a while random memories from college kept floating in my head, making me smile. There was the time on the hostel terrace we got V (with voice like sandpaper, and the rhythm of man with a hacking cough) to sing any song, and he picked a melody, Azhagiya Asura (literally, Pretty Demon!!). One line into it, everyone was rolling around laughing, but I overcame a mighty inner battle to keep a straight face. But when V paused, gave the others a disdainful look and continued, even I couldnt take it. I almost fell off the water tank laughing, and that finally shut him up, even as the others erupted even louder. He was never even heard humming on campus after that!

Looking back, I realised we were always out to pull some poor fellow’s leg. There someone would be minding his own business, and suddenly we’ld do or say something and before you knew it he’d be the butt of a long running joke (although he’ld even laugh at it himself). Of course everyone gave back as much as they took, and everyone had their  turn providing entertainment to the others.

With the wisdom of my year out of college, I shook my head seriously wondering why we’d been that way, when I noticed N had come back online. His status message read ‘I wanna Chiggy Wiggy’.

Chiggy wiggy? Chiggy, wiggy?! Sounded like it involved squirming on the gym floor with a dumbell on your stomach! Already cracking up, I took a screenshot of the message, and logged into our wing group to post it for everyone else’s benefit. Laugh elicited, I lay back and felt a faint, warm feeling of wicked satisfaction spread through me, and then I knew why.

p.s. For the curious, we ate the jalebis at Shivsagar, in the Forum mall

Swine flu advisory

The swine flu going around seems to have a lot of people hitting the panic button- not with a measured push, but with repeated, frantic thumps. But I’ve found its hard to be worried about the flu when you havent yet seen your first mask-wearing person. So the H1N1 guidelines sent out by our ever dependable (if over enthusiastic) HR department  had me in splits, although I was the only one laughing on a floor full of sombre people carefully poring through the guidelines.

(Note: I have not made these guidelines up. Its an exact copy-paste from the mail we received. I have of course added the accompanying comments to explain the guidelines better)

Avoid close contact with people who might be ill. Preferably maintain a distance about 1 metre.

This single guideline tells you the magnitude of the problem. It is not enough to merely stay away from infected people- you have to maintain an optimum distance too. If you’re not sure how close 1 metre is,  the thumb rule is to stay just out of arm’s reach of the infected person (henceforth referred to as the enemy), the intention presumably being to be close enough so the enemy isnt offended that you’re neglecting him, but not too close that he gets chummy and tries to hug it out.

Reduce the time spent in crowded settings

Shortly after this mail, the entire office was called together for an all-hands meeting. I would of course have avoided it under the pretext of this guideline, but they had pizza, and so I had to go. Damn!

Don’t shake hands

With a pandemic looming, now is not the time to be friendly. You may once have greeted colleagues and acquaintances with a warm handshake, but make it clear to them that things have changed. Try scowling and looking menacing- this ought to keep away nagging hand-shakers. If however the person looking to greet you is your CEO, menacing looks might not be a good idea. In such cases, you may use a high five.

Improve airflow in your living space by opening windows

On the face of it, seems like a well thought out guideline, except our office has like two windows!

Practise good health habits that include adequate sleep, nutritious food and lots of fluid and keeping physically active

The HR guy apparently decided to play it safe and recycle some ‘good health habits’ prescribed for everything from heart ailments to hair loss complaints. Just in case.

Don’t spit in public

Only till the whole swine flu thing passes. The moment it does, your constitutional right’ll revert back to you immediately. Pliss to adjust till then.

No need to wear a mask when you aren’t sick

Use face paint instead for this year’s Halloween party. Unless you are actually sick. In which case you can totally wear a mask to the party.

Use a spoon to pick-up all eatables

Personnel from the HR will patrol the cafeteria at all times looking out for people who’re eating with their hands. Those found guilty will be made to go through a ppt with 47 more guidelines like these.