Who is your (sugar) Daddy?

Caveat Emptor: I drafted this post circa June,2009. Thanks to the hassles (or joy, depending on how you look at it) of putting in my resignation letter, I never got around to posting it, until now that is. Pliss be to excuse if the incident has gone from sweet to sour.

SCENE I: A shopping mall

Last weekend, my roomies and myself went over to purchase some clothes from the Big Bazaar in Mysore. As you may be aware, guys visit Malls to shop for clothes only when something catastrophic happens, such as a wardrobe burning down. Most other times, we make do with wearing clothes inside out or if the situation is out of hand, *Shudder* getting our Laundry done.

We were almost done with our purchases, when we heard an announcement informing us that for every 1000 bucks worth of stuff bought, they were giving away 5Kgs of sugar. Since sugar is the staple diet of Indians, we decided to up our purchases to 2000 bucks, thereby netting us a cool 10Kgs of sugar. Once the bills were settled, we went up and claimed our 10Kgs of sugar. Which was when we realized how much 10Kgs of sugar really is. It may not sound like a lot, but believe me, it weighs a lot, probably even more than 15Kgs of sugar. Considering that we had already gotten it for free, we lugged the 10Kgs of sugar back home and made up this elaborate story on the way :
We enter shopping Mall. See 'buy one get one free' offer applicable to 5Kg sugar packs. Brains get boggled at the Potential Savings. Purchase a 5Kg sugar pack. Gloat at how recession-wise we are.

SCENE II: Our House in Mysore.

Like the spoils won from a fierce battle, we cradled the sugar in our arms. On opening the door, my roomie is surprised to see a huge packet of sugar paying him a visit. Lesser mortals would have gotten spooked, but not my roomie. No sir, he caught onto the fact that we were hiding behind the packet and offered to help with the heavy load. In one swift move, he took the bill out of the shopping bag without disturbing the sugar packet in my arms. We were depressed that our game was up, since the sugar, being free, would have never been billed.
Hearing my roomie go seething mad, slightly changed that opinion. He was absolutely horrified by the 10 Kgs of sugar printed on the bill, even more shocking was his discovery that apparently, we had paid for it. Although we were a little taken aback by this fact, we decided to play along. Needless to say, on explaining our recession beating idea to him, our roomie went ballistic. He began giving us a lecture on how much sugar an average Indian Family would use, how the average production of sugar in some states is less than 10 Kgs, yada yada yada. Needless to say, we burst out laughing on hearing this, which only added fuel to his flaming rage!
Much madness ensued, until our ears were sore from listening to all the choicest epithets, some, in languages that we were unfamiliar with. (What the hell is a *@%#*!@ anyway?)
Finally, good reason prevailed and we explained how we got it free. Now the problem changed from one of Cost Accounting to one of Inventory management. Apparently, we had no storage space for 10 Kgs of sugar. Which was when we hit upon the next bright idea of the day: Give away 5 Kgs of sugar to the Landlord. Although we didn't get the drastic reduction in our rent that we expected, we had saved the day and probably the whole district from an ant invasion. To this day, I can think of the Landlord paying his milkman, cable guy and other assorted folks in sugar. As for the 5 Kgs that we had with us? 2 packets of Gulab Jamun mix and we were almost half way through. Now excuse me while I get myself tested for Diabetes.

The Secret Identity of Zoozoos

Once the dust from the money making binge sporting event called IPL2 settles down, people are going to be left talking about one thing: How the KKR royally screwed up. Wait-a-minute, that is the current topic of discussion, although the insane laughs provoked by them, could very well be from the neighborhood Laughter Club. I must resist the temptation to joust with this rather harmless group of knights and get back to my conspiracy theory for the day.

Which involves the Zoozoos. Like 'em or Hate 'em, you cannot ignore 'em. People are going to be talking of them long after the IPL is done with. I thought I would get ahead of the pack by disclosing their (secret) identities. They are *Hold your breath* Mallu*. Allow me to disclose my findings, shocking as they may be:

1) Physical Appearance: Any beer/toddy guzzling, meat eating Mallu worth his salt will have, diplomatically speaking, a chubby figure. Take a close look at the Zoozoos: The beer belly, the cherubic face, the short stature and the smooth, fair complexion(Ok, maybe not that last one) all display startling similarities to our physical appearance.
2) Cuisine: The 'International Roaming' ad portrays a male Zoozoo following, what is hopefully, a female Zoozoo begging for "Poottum Kadalayum" and "Kappayum meenum". These are probably the only two things that would make us Mallu guys chase the lady of our dreams around the world(most other times we just find another lady-of-our-dreams closer to home). You wouldn't believe the number of romantic Malayalam movies with plot lines cooked around these venerable dishes.
3) Behavior: Did you see the 'Group SMS' Zoozoo Ad? If so, you would have noticed how quickly(and effectively) the Zoozoos gang up on people, a trait inspired by us. Any Industrialist in Kerala, which I hear is a mythological creature similar to the hobbits, would let you know how quickly we can gang up, float a left leaning party and lock down any signs of Industrial Progress.
4) Romantic Conquests: Our romantic conquest are such tragic defeats that volumes have been written on it. I haven't helped the cause by revealing key plot elements of Mallu romantic flicks. Which brings us to the 'Dating tips' ad and how it might have been inspired from real life. It is quite possible that one of our very own Casanova would have gifted a Jack-In-the-box to his loved one. You have to understand that ever since the recession hit us, things have been bad: a spring and a stuffed boxing glove are all that we can afford nowadays.
5) Nada/Zilch: This last point has been put up to convey the impression that this is a well thought out post, which is a rather silly thing to expect on this blog. If you have any further thoughts on my theory, do voice it out in the comments!

Mandatory Disclosure: This post has been written by a true blue Mallu, the kind that does not hesitate to take a dig at my own community. Although most of this post is exaggerated satire, I am expecting (quite) a few will not get the joke and be offended by it. I have a few words for them: "Mathaikku ithu verum pulla".

The Twitterist Manifesto

When I decided to reboot my blog, I had derived a formula for the frequency of posts. If you are the kind of uber-geek who has to see formulas to believe in their existence, here you go:

Please do not ask me what the letters stand for*. All I am aware of is that the formula tells me that the optimal number of posts per week is 1. If I stick to that frequency, it tells me that I stand a good chance at being nominated for a blogging award, getting a gazillion subscribers and probably landing a 6 digit book deal. These, like the hot neighbor next door, are the things that everyone secretly lusts for and publicly loathe. To be honest, I did not start blogging for any of these perks, which may be why I initially kept up the magic frequency of 1 posts per week.

Lately though, I haven't been able to keep up with that frequency. This has been mainly because I jumped onto twitter and the rest, as they say, was (the recent past) history. There has been a lot of information regarding twitter in the media and in the online space, a whole lot of which tells you what you should do to gain new followers. As you may be aware, A lot of folks consider gaining new followers to be the holy grail of twitter. I, for one, have lost count of my 722 followers. However, there are a lot of folks on twitter who are block-worthy. While hopping through twitter profiles(Yes, I really ought to get a life), these are the folks whom I hit the block button, even if they aren't following me! For your convenience, I thought I will classify and explain the various categories of such tweeple (twitter+ peeple = tweeple). Behold, the Twitterist Manifesto:

1) Twiarrhea - This is a twitter syndrome that is very similar to a much loved medical condition. Its symptoms are: Tweets are short, Tweets are furious,Tweets are most often crap. People with this condition most often think that twitter is about chopping up a blog post into chunks of 140 characters.
2) Sir Follows a lot - This lot follows people by the truck loads. It is their sincere desire to replicate the twitter public timeline in their stream. It can be safely assumed that your insightful tweets(ahem) will get steamrolled by the aforementioned truck load of followers.
3) H4CK3R5/SMSWRTR - This category of people believe that its rather fun to keep their followers guessing what language their last tweet was in. They carefully type out their tweets in English and then attack the vowels with a chainsaw. It is rumored that a couple of their tweets have even stumped Robert Langdon and his cipher cracking friends.
4) Abraham Link-en - People with this twitter syndrome do nothing rather than post links all day long on twitter. This can be pretty informative, until it starts to look suspiciously like an RSS feed from Google News. They frequently urge you to retweet their useful links although it makes no sense to you.
5) Nekkid Chick - Following the webpage listed on their profile inevitably takes you to a sleazy webpage. More often than not, it will have an offer to meet hot and sexy girls somewhere close to your house. Strangely these girls follow me around when I travel across the country, an unwarranted side effect of my magnetism, I suppose.
6) All follow and no tweet- This category of people can easily be identified by the stats: 10,000 following; 1000 followers; O Updates. Apparently, these people are followed because of the 'You kiss my ass, I kiss yours' phenomenon. You can also classify them as 'All fart and no shit'.
7) Celebrity\Female Stalker: This lot of people wants to know what the ladies on twitter are upto. Especially if the ladies in question are celebrities. Their tweets consists solely of @ mentions directed at their target segment. Lets not question their motives though, some of them left orkut and signed up on twitter only 'to make the fraandsheep'.
8) Concern for your follower count: This is the most genuine group to grace this list. They are so concerned for your follower count that they would repeatedly bombard you with tips and tricks to increase it. Their concern for your heavy wallet also shows when you are redirected to a shady looking site asking for your credit card number.
9) Rediff transplant: This group of people have quit flaming the red-iff message boards and have moved onto greener pastures, namely twitter. Their 'holier-than-thou' attitude, their lack of respect for a contrary viewpoint and their complete disregard for the Queen's language go a long way in identifying them.
10) Mallika Sherwani(or something like that) : No comments. Avoid like the bubonic plague.

Phew. There you have it: The 10 most irritating behavior on twitter (in my opinion). The lack of these traits wont make you follow worthy, rather it will just prevent people from scrambling for the block button.
Do you feel that I have left out any other irritating twitter traits? Do let me know in the comments section!

*- Do you still refuse to believe that I derived the equation? Persistence wins. Read about it here. Perhaps you could try explaining it to me, in English. Sigh.

A Tale of two WHAT?

Before starting of with this post, let me apologize to anyone who maybe offended by me taking the name of a classic in vain. Considering the fact that movies have to put up with name changes thanks to offended communities, it wont be long before we have people offended with nonsensical blogposts.
However, I refuse to apologize for this story I put forth. This incident takes place in my engineering days, when I was an inmate of the men hostel. Isn't it strange that they refer to people who reside in Hostels as inmates? I thought inmates was used to refer to those-who-we-don't-dare-make-fun-of-for-fear-of-our-lives. In other words, People safely locked away in mental asylums and prisons.
Come to think of it, our hostel was part loony house and part correction facility.
In our mad house hostel, we used to have these impromptu gatherings in a hapless victim's room. Dapaankoothu music was almost always on the CD players, barring the few months when we repeatedly played Jassi Gifts 'Lejjavathi'. We imposed a moratorium on 'Lejjavathi' once we realized that we had started talking to each other in Gibberish rap, the language in which the song was recorded. Some of the studious types amongst us were never happy with the idea of us taking a break in their rooms. A classic case of which was Dildesh*. Needless to say, this reluctance was a green signal for us to invite ourselves to his room.
So there we were, chilling in Dildesh's room, soaking in the music, discussing Advanced Digital Signal Processing the hot girls in our rival college. All of a sudden, the ring of a cellphone interrupts us. As Dildesh was taking a shower, one of us in the room goes over to answer the phone. He picks up the cellphone and barely takes a look at it, when he rolls onto the floor, laughing rather hysterically.
Not realizing what had caused this reaction, we were all shocked for a moment. Impossible scenarios darted through our analytical minds: Could it be something like 'The Ring'? You pick up this phone call and laugh yourselves to death?
I braced for the worst and stepped over my still-hysterically-laughing friend to pick up the phone. I picked up the phone and looked into the display. Which was when I realized what had prompted the ROFL reaction:

There, on the display was the innocent message identifying the caller:

"Papa3 Calling..."

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*- Dildesh was a typical example of the innovative nicknames we had in college. No, I wont be revealing what it means. No, I wont tell you what mine was.
P.S: It wasn't what you thought it out to be, you Perv! Dildesh went on to clarify that as his ancient phone could only store a number against a contact, this was his ingenious solution to store his Dad's many phone numbers.

Take the bus, make big bucks!

I have read about how, after an aviation accident, airlines take out full page ads informing their passengers how safe flying really is.
However, the fact remains that I refuse to buy any of it. This could be a direct result of the pre-flight instruction: "In the case of the unlikely event of a water landing....". At least they called it right. Crash landing on water and making it in one piece is as unlikely as touring Pakistan, as a cricketer,without being shot upon. All of a sudden, we realize why the Hudson miracle was touted as a miracle.
Keeping this in mind, its heartening to know that there are others who are taking an in-your-face approach towards apprehending the fears of passengers.
The other day, I had boarded a K.S.R.T.C Airavat heading towards Bangalore. Being really bored with the familiar sights whizzing past, my eyes fall on the latest edition of 'Travel Karnataka'. I pray that you do not rush to a newsstand, as chances of picking up a copy of the 'Travel Karnataka' from a newsstand is pretty slim. Supposedly, its circulation had reached an all time high of 1 magnanimous reader as soon as I took it out of a waste basket. Anyway, this ad, placed in it by K.S.R.T.C. , grabs my attention:
In case you got carried away by the oh-so-fake graphics and the funky green background, I request you to check out the encircled point:

Yes, I know. What an effective way to persuade people to take the bus, right? Not only are they sure that you are a goner on traveling with them, they have even insured you for such regular occasions.
So the next time you are traveling in Karnataka, take the bus, grab a copy of the 'Travel Karnataka' and salivate at the thought of the big bucks that you could (God forbid) make!
P.S.: This blog post has been brought to you from an exhausted N82.
Mandatory disclosure: No Nokias were hurt in the making of this post.

My Question to Jamal

Over the past few days, unless you have been living under a rock, you would have been bombarded with predictions and analysis of Slumdog Millionaire's chances at the Oscars. Since the Times of Twism is meant to reflect the err.. times, I would like to ask Jamal this question:

How many Vijayanagar IInd stage's are there in Karnataka?
A) None
B) One
C) As many as the pink chaddies received by the SRS
D) I quit, Mera paas Oscars hai!

This may sound like a trick question, the kind which Anil Kapoor should have have asked if he really wanted Jamal out of the show, but it really isn't one. If it isn't a trick question, then what is the deal with Vijayangar IInd stage in Karnataka?
Quite frankly, there are too many places named as such, spread over many cities. This is not an isolated occurrence. Hoysala, Hebbal are some of the other places which have a tendency to be repeated across cities. To make things worse, there is also a conspiracy to have the same names repeated within a city. A good example would be Mysore (where I currently reside), which has a place called K.D. Road and for confusion's sake, another place called K.D. Circle. The people who were involved in naming cities here were either sinfully lazy or had a limited repository of names to choose from. Like the sub prime crisis, this can lead to disastrous (and comical) consequences.
With that out of the way, you would be tempted to ask, Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? After all, one could argue, almost every city (in India) worth its salt has an M.G. Road. I intend to silence my skeptics with an incident that would have made Murphy (of Murphy's Law Fame) proud.
A couple of months back, I had received a call from one of those people who pester the salaried population between Jan and March. Contrary to what everyone might think, its wasn't the taxman but an investment adviser, (read as glorified policy salesman) who wanted me to invest in a tax saving mutual fund. Being in a particular tax savingsy mood (this was when the Sensex was in the heady 20,000s), I ask him to come over to the police station at Vijayanagar IInd stage, which is a prominent landmark close to my place. After an hour or so, he gives me a call and we have the following conversation:
Salesman: Hi, I am currently standing in front of the police station at Vijayanagar IInd stage.
Me: Are you sure that you are beside the police station at Vijayanagar IInd stage?
Salesman: Yes.
Me: In that case I should be able to see you. Can you wave your hands?
Salesman(frantically waving): Can you see me now?
Me: Nope. In fact I cant see anyone there. Can you checkup with someone there if you are at the right place?
Salesman: I am 100% sure. I had asked the chai walla across the police station and he had confirmed that this indeed is the police station at Vijayanagar IInd stage.
Me: What? There is no chai walla anywhere close to that place.
Salesman: What are you telling me sir, the chai walla is right across the police station. In fact, a B.M.T.C bus has stopped right in front of it.
Me: B.M.T.C bus? I thought those buses ran only in Bangalore. Since when did they start services to Mysore?
Salesman: Sir, B.M.T.C buses don't have any services to Mysore. Who is in Mysore?
Me: I am in Mysore.
Salesman: This is not fair sir, you had told me that you would meet me. Why did you go to Mysore?
Me: @Q#@%^#$@#$

Yes, sh*t happens to all of us, but it teaches us a lesson too. The mental picture of me trying to pick a guy waving his hands across a street, albeit geographically separated by some 100+ kilometers, taught me why it would be prudent that only a few place names (such as M.G.Road) should be repeated across cities.
By the way, if Jamal had pushed his luck to answer my question, we probably would have had the most anticlimactic ending ever for a movie, probably involving Computer Ji blowing a fuse trying to figure out the right answer.