MuaaHaaaHaaa

Did a super stupid thing this morning. In my rush to get out of the house, I forgot my wallet at home! And that meant I had no money, no badge to get into the office, no driving licence, no identity card and no credit card. Not even my emergency money. YIKES!

So had to be careful not to get into any situation where my ID would be required or where I would have to pay. Made it safely to office and borrowed money from a buddy to keep me going for a day.

Here's the kicker. Had to go with another buddy to pick up a HDD and an SD card so that I can help him hack his Wii. Got a super deal on a 4GB CF card for the D200 at home :D Ended up saving more than Rs 1200 :D

It's been a good day, considering.

Mua Haa Haa! :D

More than a 1000 people have something to talk about

So I might as well scream from the mountain tops.

I LOVE MY NEW SHOES!

This might make me sound gay (and as Seinfeld rightly pointed out…Not that there's anything wrong with it), but I just have to tell you guys about the shoes I have. They're called the Vibram (pronounced wii-br-um) Five Fingers and they are the closest I have felt to barefoot while still wearing shoes. You have to check these out.

I got these shoes two weeks ago and ever since I have put them on, I have not wanted to put any other shoe on…and if I have to, I do so grudgingly.

Now these shoes don't exactly look like the shoes you are used to. These are distinctly different and actually have a pocket for each toe, hence the name Five Fingers. They look a bit different and so get used to people staring at you. If I'm in the elevator, the whole elevator stares. If I'm in the bus at the airport taking me to the airplane, the entire bus stares. If I'm in the office, the entire office has asked.

Since the time I have gotten these shoes, there must be at least a thousand Tamilians with a new story to talk about. And at least 200 Bangaloreans. Which should tell you how much time I have been spending in Chennai for the last few weeks.

Long story short, the shoes attract attention…and usually the wrong sort of attention with people sniggering or smiling or just shaking their head at the contraption I am wearing on my foot. And most of your friends will try to make your life a living hell over the shoes. Only 2 out of those >1000 people have looked at them and said "They look really comfy. I wanna get them."

Luckily for me, I really don't care about what anyone has to say. And at the end of the day, my feet thank me. And that's what matters to me.

Thank you Vibram for creating this fantastic product and I am proud to be an exponent of this fantastic piece of footwear.

My feet are sooooo much happier these days!

U.S.B. 2.0

I have a daughter who's 9, but thinks (and behaves) like she's in her teens.

The other day, she kept going on how her hair is not right, how her skin colour is too dark and how she is - in general - quite ugly. No matter what we said or did could change her opinion of herself. And she really is quite a pretty girl (if I might say so myself), so I could not really understand where this was coming from.

So I went to youtube and showed her a couple of videos (specifically this one and this one) to show her how, as a society, we have a distorted and false image of beauty and that it matters more to be a beautiful person from the inside rather than worry about what people think of you from the outside.

I knew I had softened her opinion, but I had not won the battle.

So I went reverse psychology :-)

By some sheer coincidence, an advert for "Ugly Betty" was coming on TV at exactly that time. So I said to her, "yeah, you're right. You're just like her. But you're not really ugly, so you must be stupid! So from now on, I will call you Ugly Stupid Betty…USB for short!" And I would call her that every now and then. Every time she complained about it, I would remind her that I was merely agreeing with her original opinion, so she had no right to complain.

Finally, she looked at me and said "look, see my face, do I look ugly? I don't! So stop calling me USB"

So I changed it to USB 2.0 (Unbelievable Sundar Baby)…for those who don't understand Hindi or Marathi, Sundar means beautiful. So now she's USB 2.0 with the caveat that if she ever reverts to her original opinion, I will revert to the original name.

She hasn't once mentioned anything other than how happy she is with the way she looks the last few days...

Crisis averted! :-D

Answering your iPhone in the cold

A couple of my buddies did a very interesting tour across Europe during the last couple of weeks. They went from Vienna to Budapest to Warsaw to Krakow to Auschwitz to Berlin to Copenhagen to Munich and back! PHEW!

And the killer point…it was snowing quite heavily!

So naturally I was curious as to what they did on the trip (as I want to do a similar trip, but not in the cold).

One of the funniest things I heard was how they answered calls on their iPhone. And the reason its so funny is that since they were in multiple layers of clothing and heavily gloved, and the iPhone needs the user to "slide to answer", they used the strongest muscle in the human body to do it.

They used their TONGUE!!!

Yep, thats right! They used their tongue to slide and answer the phone.

I thought that was really REALLY funny and yet and amazing solution to answering the iPhone in the cold.

Just make sure that the phone is clean and has not been to any disgusting places :-)

I love you, ComedyCentral!

Oh Boy! This is going to be good...

I have a habit of checking up on the ComedyCentral website every morning for last night's installment of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. This is usually how I start the day and those few moments of laughter are the best way I have found to start it. Whenever the Daily Show is on vacation or there is no broadcast, I usually have to resort to watching older clips just to keep me going.

Imagine my surprise - and a pleasant one at that - to see that ComedyCentral has completely revamped The Daily Show website and have added a timescale which allows me to browse all the available videos ever since Jon Stewart took over as host of the show in 1999. Oh, this is fantastic news.

For someone who follows every single episode of the Daily Show and who thinks that Jon Stewart is absolutely great, this is a God send...To be able to see shows from 1999 will keep me occupied for a while now. I highly recommend you to go and have a look yourself. It's all there.

America to the Rescue

Watch this part of last night's episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". Watch as Jon, very astutely and yet with a lot of hillarity, points out the root cause of all the conflict that the United States is in the middle of right now.

No one could have said it any better or with more clarity or with more humour. I love this show!

Update: Comedy Central has taken this video off...you can watch it at http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/23/daily-show-three-generations-of-america-to-the-rescue/

French Class, Prince of Persia & the MRT

What do all of these things have in common? Nothing except three seperate experiences I had.

So French classes, huh? Yep. My wife and I had been wanting to do this for a while, especially since our daughter is learning French at school and we wanted to at least understand what she was learning and to participate with her. It would also help us if we travel to some parts of Europe (we have been wanting to go there for a while now). So we picked a class that my wife found on the Net.

Our teacher (for lack of a better word) is a cute half French half Italian blonde called Letizia. She made the two hours that we spent in class a fairly engaging experience. But what I found most surprising was this: She had been living in Singapore for around 7 years and had only started to pick up English after she moved here. That fact was so evident as she proceeded to talk Singlish through the entire conversation. While speaking French, her accent was like you would expect a French person's. But while conversing in Engish, she sounded as much like a Singaporean as anyone I know. The same expressions, the same gramatical constructions. I was quite surprised about this fact.

On to the Prince of Persia. As you might have noticed from a few of the posts, I am fairly engrossed in this game. Whenever possible, I try to complete at least a level in a day so that I can feel better (why else?)

Yesterday, I finally defeated the second monster, the one who moves really fast and the one you need to slow down time to fight with. It took a while (she's cheeky to kill, but I finally did it. Problem was...it took a while before I could save tha game (there was no water receptacle in sight for a while). So obviously my wife got pissed off about me spending a lot of time on the "stupid game" as she calls it. But that was not it. After playing the game for 45 minutes, I was completely drenched. My shorts were soaking wet and so was my t-shirt. I actually had to take a bath at 11 in the night before I could get into bed. How playing a video game could cause all of this...Go figure.

Then there's the MRT and the inevitable journeys one has to take when one travels in Singapore. Most of the time people don't bother with sitting down, even when there are seats available. And a lot of time, I have seen people offer their seats to people who need them. Today, I saw the opposite for the first time.

I was sitting in the MRT going towards office. There was one seat available across from me which had not been occupied despite there being more people in the train. At the next station, two people got on, both eyeing the same seat. The guy who entered from the door closer to the seat moved towards it and had even turned to sit down when the guy, who actually entered from the door further away from the seat, rushed up to it and slid into it from behind the other guy. This guy was left standing with a dumbstruck expression on his face. I'm sure he was experiencing something like this for the first time.

Three completely different experiences, but all in the span of 24 hours. Not a bad deal, huh?

Is he completely daft?

I'm not sure about most of you, but I deligently follow The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, one of the funniest and yet incisive political show in the US. While it comes on Comedy Central, the show has become a major success and is credited as being the reason for the Democrats regaining control of the Senate as well as the Congress in the US. It is also a multiple Emmy and Peabody award winning show.

It is mostly because of Stewart that I am paying a keen interest in what is happening in the Presidential campaigns in the US. Also I like Barack Obama a lot. And the affection is also thanks to The Daily Show (Obama came on the show and was probably one of the wittiest and most forthright politcians I have seen).

For a while, I could not see all the videos and so made it a point to go instead to iFilm, which is where a lot of The Daily Show videos are compiled. They are also neatly arranged by episode and so it's a great place to go to for these videos. Recently, I have noticed the sight slowing down and so have chosen to go to the mothership directly.

So every day, I go to the ComedyCentral website to see what Jon said last night. The best part of the site is that you can not only see last night's episode (in parts), but also parts of earlier episodes. So huge is the success of The Daily Show (and it' sister show The Colbert Report) that they have a seperate grouping in the Comedy Central video archives. Here you can see a lot of interviews Jon and Steven have conducted and with very influential people.

As I was sifting through the videos, I was listening to all the presidential candidate interviews that Jon has done. The most frequent on the show (from this lot) is John McCain. If you watch two of his earliest appearences, he starts both shows off with the same comment:

"What happened to the couch you had earlier?"

The first time, I can understand, but not after you come back again in another year and say the same thing. Is McCain completely daft? Some of his answers are also hilarious.

But fact still remains...He is the only Republican that Jon Stewart shows any respect towards. The rest of them are usually treated with utter disdain. Not that he spares the Democrats. They get chewed up as well. As he said during his interview on CNN's Crossfire (this episode that you HAVE TO watch):

"The absurdity of the system provides us with the best material. The only way it
would be hard for us to mock (the Democratic administration) is if their administration is less absurd than this one. But it will be hard to top this (the Republican Administration) one."

He makes watching news (even if it's fake news) worth watching.

15 "I'm a Mac - I'm a PC" ads in a row

Need I say more? :-)

A really funny sight

Last evening, I saw a really funny sight.

A caucasian woman wearing a cocktail dress was riding a bicycle! That's right, a bicycle. In a fairly short black dress that did not at all go well with the mode of transportation she was using. And it looked even funnier when she frantically waved to the traffic so that she could cross the street.

You get to see a lot of strange things in Singapore. Wish she could have slowed down a little bit so that I could have taken a picture of her to post here. Unfortunately, I was on the phone that time and could not.

Too bad...it would have been a laugh.

So where have I been?

I know, it's been a while since my last post. But as I mentioned then, I was supposed to travel to India for my mother's surgical procedure. I'm happy to say that the surgery went as planned, that she had very little discomfort during the recovery and is now on the way to a full recovery. A session of physiotherapy everyday and she's going to be just fine. So I'm looking forward to her being able to travel so that she can come here to live with us in Singapore.

After I got back from India, I was in Singapore for a whole three days before I left for an offsite meeting to Batam, Indonesia. It was a lovely time there, meeting up with some great people who work in our partner environment, a few of them with whom I got on very well. Then the ferry back to Singapore, just in time to pick up my bags and leave for London.

I was scheduled to be in London mid last week for a business meeting. Since one of my golf buddies has moved there last year, I thought it would be a good idea to spend a couple of days playing golf with him and catching up with him at the same time. The two rounds of golf, needless to say, were a complete disaster. Like the two rounds of golf in India (91 and 96), I shot 97 and then a 90 (on a par 70 course) to shoot higher than +20 for four consecutive rounds. The 97 was an even more disasterous round as I was hitting great 300+ yard drives off the tee and then screwing the shots up after that. Both I and my golf buddy decided that if we played as terribly the day after as we did on that day, we both would hang up our clubs. And sure enough, another terrible round ensued.

So, officially, I have given up the game of golf. I realized (after quite a few years) that I have invested a fair amount of time, effort, money and mainly emotions in this game for the last five years and I came to the realization that I am not getting good returns on any of my investments. So instead of making a mistake of investing more in the hope that there is a turnaround, I am cutting my losses and giving up the game.

It will take a while for the game to get flushed out of my system. I still take practice swings whenever I see a reflective surface. Most of the quotes I know are either about golf or made by golf personalities. A lot of my book collection, including books that I reach for most of the time, are golf books. But I am sure it will pass.

So long, golf.

Coming back to the London trip...my golf buddy took me to this bar in the city where I was slapped with a strange realization. The story goes thus.

We landed up at this place quite late in the night as we had to drop everyone (his family) home and then abscond for a boy's night out. After we stepped in, we decided to check out the lounge which, for some reason, appeared to be roped out. Since the music was playing there, we decided to ignore the ropes and walk in anyways. Only after a while did the fact sink in that most (read all) men were there wearing tuxedos and the women wearing cocktail dresses...we had crashed a private party. So without making it too obvious, we slinked out to the main club.

As the floor was quite packed (and since we were feeling so thirsty for Stella), we chose to stick close to the bar. Here's where the story gets crooked.

There was this girl who was being quite boistrous and dancing quite wildly around the place where we were. When we landed at the bar, she seemed to be with someone (since he was buying all her drinks). She however did not seem shy to grind away as she danced away with her back to mine. Being the gentleman that I am (stop booing, you ingrates), I did not take too much of notice.

After a while of dancing (and quite a bit of drinking on this lady's part...she was really drunk), she started dancing even wilder than before. She caught hold of my pal and had a few swings with her. And then she pulled him closer to ask him something. I chose to ignore what was happening and was instead checking out the other pretty attractions in the bar. My pal comes back as tells me that she was asking if I was gay!!!

I was sending out a gay vibe? Naah! Not possible, right? But then, how would I know? I attributed it to too many drinks on her part and let it go. And then the double whammy hit. A guy came over to me (seeing my ManU t-shirt) and asked me if I was going to Athens for the Champions League final. I politely told him that since ManU were not in the finals, there was no point in going to Athens.

But the gay vibe statement had been underscored. With red lettering in size 72 font. I had to do something and quick to get rid of that. Otherwise it would haunt me for a while.

So I turned my attention to the lady at the bar.

She was dancing as wildly as before, only this time, she was dancing with me. So we jived for a long time with me mostly trying very hard to stop her from falling. Which I succeeded in doing except for once...when she kept stepping back and did not notice the stairs behind her.

CRASH!

I'm sure she would feel the fall the next day, but that night she was on her feet again and wanted to continue dancing. The guy she was with kept trying to get her to dance with him, but I don't think she had any intentions of dancing with him. Cause we were having a great time dancing by ourselves. So instead, the gay kept buying her drinks, all in the hope of getting her completely drunk so that she would have no clue who she was with and where she was going. And we continued to dance.

We left that bar quite late, completely drunk out of our wits, knowing that we would get to hear a mouthful from my buddy's wife once we got home, but also knowing that there was no more gay vibe being sent out.

I think people just assume that if don't mess around, you must be gay. I don't think anyone pauses to think that you might be married and that the whole thing does not agree with you. But then, I guess putting up a show is as important.

Oh well...that was the London trip. Or at least the juicy part of the trip. The rest of it is the business meeting and a short walk I took to see Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Picadilly and the London Eye.

Oh, and I also met with my Grandfather who's lived in the UK since...forever. Met my first cousin and her son for the first time and had a lovely dinner at their house...which was a pleasant change from the night before.

Then it was back to Singapore to be in time for my daughter's birthday. Yep...my little girl turned 7 last week. And I got her a Nintendo Wii as her birthday gift. She, and surprisingly my wife as well, loved the game console so much, I got another Wii remote (Wiimote) so that two people could play at the same time. The Wii is such an engaing game console which I think gets the fun back into gaming. Instead of just using your thumbs to press buttons, you now actually play tennis, do bowling and boxing. The first time we played bowling, my daughter beat both my wife and me with the highest score. In fact, my wife and I actually go exhausted boxing against each other. She complained of her arms aching even the day after. I guess it's good excercise!

We're now customizing a Mii (a personalized profile) for each of us. It's a fun console. I would very strongly recommend it.

So now you know...the reasons for not being able to post all these days. Hope this was a long enough (and juicy enough post to sate your appetites). I hope to be more prompt with my blogging henceforth. I still have to figure out how to purge all that beer from my systems :-)

This is one of the best stand up shows I have seen

This is Bill Hicks' legendary "On Night Stand" stand up routine. And I realized (after seeing it, of course) why it is considered so legendary.

Just a suggestion...don't be judgemental when you watch the show. Try and listen to what he is trying to say. In the end, you will agree it was a good show.



Oh, the language in the show and the messages are definately not for everyone. So in case you feel offended, Don't Watch It!

And in case you aren't offended, feel free to enjoy it.

You have to see this if you like Rowan Atkinson

This is a great video of Rowan Atkinson Live. Really really funny.

But you will probably only appreciate it if you like his kind of humour. All in all, I found it was hilarious!

Are you sure this is what I am?

In my general browsing (read useless meandering on the Net), I took this quiz on which science fiction author I most resemble.

And the answer is:

I am: Jules Verne The 19th century Frenchman who made science fiction into a successful commercial genre.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Since I was wasting my time doing these things, I thought I will take the other "silly ass quiz" that was also mentioned on the same site...one which would tell me which classical composer was a moron like me.

And?

I got bored halfway down the list and decided to forget about it. You, however, can go for it if you like.

Bickering in the middle of the road

This scene unfolded right in front of my office building this afternoon.

Two woman drivers (go figure) collided with one another and then started a screamfest right in the middle of Havelock Road which, in case you did not know, is a really busy road.

And here I thought this kind of stuff happens only in India. Lo and behold, it happens in Singapore too!

I learn everyday. I am a better person today... :-)

Congratulations, Mr. Khan! You are truely the Dilip Kumar to Amitabh's Raj Kapoor!

This is what Steven Colbert, of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, had to say in his "new" section called "We the MEdiators".

The section is about celebrity fueds. The first two are about Rosie McDonald vs Donald Trump about the Miss USA (Tara Ried) controversy and the next is Angelina Jolie vs Madonna on the adoption case.

Then he unexpectedly (for me, that is) moved to Amitabh and Shah Rukh Khan and the disagreement over B not attending SRK's new year party. It's funny hearing Steven pronounce the names of the Indian actors.

Have a look and wait until the end. You won't be disappointed!

Isn't this one of the cutest videos you have ever seen?

Microsoft Firefox?

Sounds like an oxymoron, right?

When The Register reported here that Microsoft had released a version of Firefox with certain improvements (which sounded, in true Reg fashion, hilarious), I just checked the site out.

The site is called www.msfirefox.com and is one of the most authentic sounding hoaxes around. It allows you to download MS Firefox 2007 Professional (which is actually an IE7 distribution) and is complete with a support section.

Check out, however, some of the notes from the support section...



The "Note" actually says (and I quote)

* Note: Previous installations of browsers such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, will automatically be overwritten. The removal of Microsoft Firefox from your system violates international copyright law. Therefore, you cannot legally uninstall Microsoft Firefox.

WHOA!!!

Even the British can't spell right

Hmmm...

I was reading the EPL (English Premier League, for all the people who don't follow it) highlights on their site as I had missed the entire weekend's worth of football (business trip...what can I say).

The fantastic news: Manchester United destroyed Bolton Wanderers at their home Reebok Stadium by a scoreline of 4-0, Wayne Rooney helping himself to a hat-trick of goals just a few days after turning 21.

What I really found funny: Gary Neville being quoted on the EPL site. Check out the headline and the summary below it. Well, since you're so lazy, I am pasting a copy here (no offense and copyright infringement meant to the EPL).

NEVILLE: CONSISTENCY KEY TO UNITED SUCCESS
Gary Neville believes the seeds of Manchester United's blossoming title challenge were sewn at the back end of last season.

Sewn? SEWN??? I thought they were talking about seeds! If it's seeds, it should be SOWN!!! Cause that's what you do with seeds... You sow them! Sew is what you do with a needle. And so that would have made sense had they been talking about the plans for ManU (at least a little bit).

Even if sewn and sown are pronounced the same way, they convey very different meanings. I would have thought the English would know better(considering the fact that they are called just that: The English)

Funny, huh?