The Burp Aspirant

I stood at the back of the class to soak in some knowledge as I went to pick the daughter up from her school. The conversation I witnessed was illuminating to say the least, and of course I am always eager to illuminate my readers with the pearls of wisdom picked up from elementary school classrooms so here I am.

One boy seems to have triggered the discussion – when asked about his aim in life, this boy fearlessly set aside what he had learnt at his mother’s knee and answered. He said with a very serious face that he wanted to learn to burp really loudly.

To which the class responded in a first class manner. They positively received this response, beamed at him, giggled and cast him admiring glances. One chap whose eyes were gleaming with mischief even got up to congratulate him. I am not sure I would have liked to be the teacher just then. I don’t know what I would have done – probably attempted to burp loudly myself and show them how disgusting that sounded – but there is a reason I am not teaching elementary school classrooms.

The teacher groped for a while – he was evidently taken aback – but these school teachers are made of stern stuff. He came back nicely and told the class how it was easy to learn certain things later in life, but some other things it is easiest to learn when young. The burp aspirer did not seem convinced. He used a line used earlier by the same teacher that being young made it easy for them to learn things quickly. According to him, due and diligent practice at burping will make him a A-grade burper just the same way slogging at Science would fetch him A-grades in Science. There was merit to the line of thought obviously and I found myself unable to uproot myself from the discussion.

I could have given the boy career advice had I known the lucrative charms of being a world class burper, but alas I did not know that myself. Moreover, it was a competitive world out there – do you know how many people can burp loudly? Millions. So, what was the point of intimidating a burp aspirant no matter how young and inexperienced he is?

What I could have just done was to invite him for our Diwali lunch. I am not sure everything fits into the frame here, but there it is. A no-burper could have managed an A-grade burp after this meal.

BURP! Happy Diwali to everyone!

Japan to China on Jet Skis

There is something about software and the speed at which it evolves that makes blogging a challenge.  Just before I write about something, something else has come along making the older something obsolete and so on. But here is a gem I couldn’t miss. I love Google Maps – there is something about the app, that puts you in a trance. Once, I looked for a village that I am sure the folks at the village post office had forgotten existed. The only activity I’d seen in that village was when the bus came once in three days and honked at the end of the road thrice before leaving, and probably delivering the mail. I wonder if anyone has ever visited a place like that. It is eerie. Yet Google maps found a place very near it and even located a water tank for me.

I wonder how they mapped the place – maybe they used the dogs to bark out locations and recorded it via a dog frequency receiver. I would never know. It was like magic.

One day, I was sitting quietly and minding my own business when everyone looked excited and right enough their screen had Google maps on it. Close observation of the situation disclosed that somebody had tried googling directions for “Japan to China”

Google maps tries its very best before throwing its hands up in despair. So, it spat out directions that involved “Jet ski across the Pacific Ocean 782 km”

(Try any place in the USA to Japan, maps will ask you to kayak across the pacific ocean for 3000 odd miles! It’s actually a geeky practical joke played out by Google. – Anand enlightened moi!)
Well it is no surprise what I did after that – I tried ridiculous directions, but Google came back every time. If not the exact location, at least some place close. I finally got it stumped. I tried London to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and this time the poor engine groaned and sat with its hands on its cheeks sullenly.

Not yet linked to Fantasy Worlds – but Japan to China here I come. Get those jet skis ready.

Pumpkins and Shotputs

I don’t remember the last time my shoulder and arms felt this sore. Probably not since that disastrous attempt at shotput in School many eons ago. Funny how the physical education directors of the day thought about life on the Athletic field. Of hurling shotputs and javelins, they let us experiment. There was one time when I went up to the shotput arena in awe. I’d seen folks with biceps the size of my thighs (then of course) go and make light work of it. The confidence a teenager can muster up is simply amazing. I walked up and stooped to pick the thing and remember the deadweight pulling me down so I was stuck in a sort of limbo between hands being pulled by the shotput to dear Earth again while my feet were plucked reluctantly away from the shores of the Earth.   I managed with all my will power to lift the thing. I still don’t know what I expected to do with it; given it was taking all willpower just to stand upright holding the shotput in my hand. But, being a keen observer I knew that snorting works better than power in cases like this, especially on the sports field. When in doubt, snort and grunt is the motto. I gathered up steam from the very bowels and snorted like never before, lifted the shotput to my shoulder height and heaved. Elephants uprooting trees don’t concentrate as much, I am sure. I felt the shotput leave my hands and held myself back firmly on the ground – I refused to fly with the shotput and become the laughing stock of the town.

Two things stuck with me as a memory from this disastrous foray into shotputting.
1) My hands felt like they’d been replaced with lead by a slow process that involved melting, searing and some more groaning.
2) While I scanned the horizon to see how far I’d thrown it, my soaring spirits were brought right back down to Earth when my friend showed me the shotput nestling snuggly near my foot.

There is something about aging that I hate to admit. The same lead like pain in the hands was what I got for a lot less than a shotput now. This time, it was the pumpkins. My maiden attempt at pumpkin carving yielded the same result. I had no idea the pumpkins were such hard-to-work blighters. Or I may have gone completely awry in the skill department. Maybe, I should have used a carving knife suitable for 12 year olds instead of 5 year olds. I suppose I thought the daughter would help to carve. Nevertheless, a friend and I managed a bunch of pumpkins (for the daughter and her friends) for Halloween this time.
They would not win any pumpkin heaving races, but it is my maiden attempt and I shall hold it up for the World to see just as soon as I can lift those hands.

Happy Halloween! The supermen and mermaids will be here soon.

An ogre or gingerbread cookies?

I picked up one of those best selling thrillers for light reading a few days ago. I must say! I am a software engineer and all that, and yet it stumps me every time I read one of these techno thrillers. Get me started on some code, and try as I might to design and think of all possible scenarios, seldom is there a time that I have the blasted thing to work in the first attempt. If nothing else, I would have taken care enough to miss a semi-colon in a particularly hard to spot spot. Without a once-over, I am bound to have let something slip.

Yet, these fantastic heroes and heroines of these thrillers just sit there and whiz through complex networks and hacking into the most complex systems set up with millions of lines of security code in a jiffy.

All I can do is sigh, and hope the sigh would transfer some of that luck over to me. Imagine how much time I would get to muck around with what to write if I could only do that?! Here, allow me to wallow in some scenarios for you…

Scenario 1:
The question in the practical examination in the Engineering examination read:  Design and code the shortest path algorithm and come up with the best route to get from the USA to Sevapettai village.

What happens to me if I were brilliant heroine like above?

The question could have stumped everyone, but being an excellent programmer, she had got it right in the first attempt. She actually proved that Djikstra not only had a spelling that wasn’t the shortest possible, but his algorithm could be improved as well. She was left to think and write about the pros and cons of having ogres as pets in the house for the remainder of the examination.

Scenario 2: I forgot my password.

What happens to me if I were brilliant heroine like above?

She never forgot her password because she was so good at cracking them. It took her 2.56 seconds to break into her own password and transfer all the data she needed, leaving her with 59 minutes and 58.44 seconds to twiddle her thumbs and wonder about whether gingerbread cookies had ginger and bread in them and why they were called cookies if it were really bread.

See the possiblities? Sigh again.

I Dare!

I wonder if you have seen or heard about the Ariel advertisement for detergent in India. The media company did not go for actresses, models, sportsmen and even politicians to star in their advt and went in for the serious effect. Watching a spot of Indian television always seems to remind me of the inordinate amount of time we spend thinking about and caring for our clothes. It tugs at my heart strings a bit to see that I don’t accord more than a second’s thought in selecting detergent. It is mostly void of thought while yanking on the phone and lifting it off the shelves at Costco. If this is the lackadaisal attitude I take towards something that is advertised for 1/3rd of all the slots, I wonder what I would be serious about. Tut Tut.

Still such is life. If I haven’t been too worried about that slight yellow tinge in my creamy whites before, why start now? Yet, I was forced to think about it with a trifle more seriousness when I saw a person I thought was worth emulating go on screen and telling you about how she cares for her whites. The guilt pang is a bit strong as the household has no whites to talk about anymore. All whites in the house are systematically washed with runny colours and their peace is shattered. I see to it. I give it enormous odds of 5 washes, and if by then I haven’t ruined it, I will change my name. I am not nourishncherish anymore! I shall be whitewash.

Given all of this, why do I ramble on about detergent? Well..I confess I felt numb when I saw Kiran Bedi go out on television and tell me how to soak the darn things. If she told me how to react to a poor child unable to fend for himself by the roadside, or even told me about how to rescue a stranded cat from high up a telephone pole, that was different. But, Kiran Bedi telling me how to wash my inner garments seems as un-Director-General-like as it is possible to be in Modern Civilization.

I remember my adrenaline high for several days after reading her biography, “I Dare”. To the feminist teenager, that is the sort of story that fills you with willpower to achieve and dream. I actually attributed my lack of spectacular success to the fact that I did not have to swim across a river everyday to get to School. I remember my friends asking if everything was okay with me, and I said, “Yes…I will!” or some such equally irrelevant answer simply fused with determination.

So, here it is. Just thinking of “I Dare!” has awakened that spirit in me. I will take a couple of whites and try Ariel Oxy on them to see if the Director General is as good as she claims.

Yogic Alcoholics

I travel quite frequently by local buses. The travel itself may not always be pleasurable or aromatic for that matter. The buses cater to a large cross-section of the populace – many of whom do not seem to bother with aroma therapy. I don’t blame them – far from it. But sometimes, you also have quite the belligerent bloke.

One time, I am standing in the bus surrounded by the soapless – my tummy neatly tucked in for longer and longer periods of time before exhaling slowly and then inhaling again swiftly. All of this in an unconspicuous manner mind you. For they get upset if they think their body odours offend you. So, I have this nice Yoga routine going on when one bloke with tattoos all over his body looks at the bloke next to me,and says , “Yo! What – getting smart with me eh?”

To which tattooless odour replies nonchalantly, “Yeah .. ” and turns his back on him and starts looking out the window. By now, the female next to Mr. Tattoo casts him a glance that had nothing but admiration dripping from it. There is something in admiring looks from the opposite sex that seem to act like dish soap, baking soda and vinegar(the combination makes it foam like a volcano)

Mr.Tattoo upped his belligerence quotient a bit and took to shouting. Now folks who know me will attribute this sensitivity to the length of my nose, but I smelled something different in the whole melee. Alcohol. I am a careful sort of person and prefer not to be in the limelight, if at all possible. So, I tried to discreetly move away from the spot, when tattoo guy spots me inching away and thinks his bravado has impressed me to such an extent that I actually decided to move away, and he gathered all the energy at his disposal and shouted. “You want to see how hard my punch is? Ya da?”

The tattoo less one meanwhile takes indifference as the best option and continues to look out the window. He then turns and catches Mr Tattoo’s eye for an instant, and that was enough for him. He launched into it – with a vim and the kind of energy that would have been more productively used on soaping himself. Then to my horror, he pulls up his pant legs. Now I am all for self expression and all that, but this was getting a bit thick. I was just thinking of getting down and walking down the rest of the way, when Monsieur Tattooless decided to do the same thing and mercifully exited the bus.

I turned to see that Mr.Tattoo was actually brandishing a knife in his sock when he pulled up his trouser legs. I tumbled out of the bus at the next stop. Crawling was better than risking my life. To my knowledge, all Tattooless did was say “Yeah..”. For that, if he got shown the knife, I didn’t know what would happen if he found out that I was inhaling and exhaling rather slowly to keep the many smells emanating from him at bay.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/drunks-see-intent/

Then, I see this news article talking of how alcohol makes people see intent even when there isn’t any. Like any bartender would gladly tell you, or I will, having had that exp. on the bus. Maybe, every glass of alcohol should be served only after a few minutes of Yoga. Make every one of ’em Yogic Alcoholics.

Woof Woof!

The husband did well I thought, and yet they gave him a dog biscuit. I mean to say, I did think of rolling up my sleeves to bark at the fellow, but if a non-barker got a dog biscuit, what would a barker get? I was in no mood for bones at the moment.

The h. and his friends performed admirably at the San Jose Rock ‘N Roll half marathon. One of them actually ran like he had a fierce dog at his heels the whole way through and finished in an hour and 36 minutes.

Anyway, the point is when these marathons are conducted, there is a goodish amount of food given along the way and at the finish line. Having run a long distance, it is not uncommon to see marathoners sweating and panting , queueing up at these lines to pick up food. Bananas, oranges, water, rotten tasting fiber bars left to please the smarting eye on the kitchen counter till the lady of the house discreetly gets rid of it, salt tablets, foil cloaks – this is where they make their money back. I mean, these marathoners actually pay to run, so here is where they get their ROI is the general consensus. I once saw a fellow’s pants stuffed with assorted peanut packets, some chocolate chip cookies, three oranges and 2 bananas, and he wasn’t even halfway through the food line.

This, though was the first time I saw a dog biscuit packet in the accumulated finish line wealth. It is entirely possible one mistook the panting and yipped one at him, but I thought it mean. The husband was so biffed, he went and collected a beer bottle to make up for it.

Woof Woof and a Bottle of Beer!

Robots, Lord Indra & Global Warming

You know every time one of these scientists came up with a study on global warming, I shudder. I mean have you seen those photographs of what Earth would like in 40 years? I suppose we should get started on one of those research studies to see how we can spout gills to survive.

But the Summer of 2010, seems to have softened my fears a bit. We had a mild summer, with a few days of the Sun bobbing and fresh flowers. I spent all of this summer annoying my family and friends in other countries, mostly in Asia, telling them all about the mist filled mornings and the mild drizzles and the cloudy clouds. I don’t think any of them were too happy with this relentless gloat I had going on, but distance and love can be a great restraining influence, and I was therefore allowed to roam around sans physical injuries. Just before I transcended the levels calling for justifiable physical violence, the sun burst forth in all its fury. In fact, the Sun has taken it upon himself to expend all the summer’s worth of sun in one action packed week.

Just like we would not know how to react if we were to spout gills, some of us don’t really know how to react to this spot of Summer in the Fall. Some people have reacted to it most strangely by asking each other what they thought of Robots wherever they met. I am usually fairly quick on the uptake, but I was clueless – foggy if you know what I mean,  wondering what robots had to do with global warming. Maybe, I’d let a significant scientific study slip through the cracks.

Some others have become stranger still and talk incessantly about Lord Indra. I know he is the King of Gods and all that, but beyond that I am quite helpless.

All of these factors have left me with a sort of dull ache between the eyebrows. If the temperature goes up any more, and the robots become any matier with the Indian King of Gods, I might just do what the thermometer did.

Did you hear about the thermometer that couldn’t take it anymore? It burst.

I am sorry if that sounded like the rottenest thermometer joke in recent times, but it is the effect of a jarring note on a hot day. I was referring to the thermometer up in LA – it simply threw up its hands in despair and burst at 113 F

http://mobile.latimes.com/wap/news/text.jsp?sid=294&nid=23162863&cid=17190&scid=-1&ith=0&title=Local

To all you folks who think I just became cuckoo with the heat, I finally figured out that robots have nothing to do with global warming and global warming has nothing to do with Lord Indra.

The folks are all buzzing about Endhiran, the new Rajinikant movie about Robots released this week. Since, it would be odd for folks to behave madly in the middle of Fall in the Bay Area, I suppose these movie chaps prayed to Lord Indra to tune up the temperature a bit. The passing madness could be attributed to the sun on the bare head, you see?

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=219283&id=690222330

All is well – watch the robots and wait for the gills to spout.

The Pictuaraguan @ The Asian Games

All hopes of the tiny island nation of Pictuaragua were pinned on Wilpat Shue as he walked up the stairs to the weightlifting arena. Nike had promised him an advertisement slot if he could bung in a gold at the Asian Games in New Delhi. To the Pictuaraguan President, this was huge. This meant, Nike would enter the markets and little boys who wanted to play ‘Seven stones’ will aspire to play ‘Seven stones’ wearing fashionable Nike shoes, and that may be just the boost Pictuaragua needed to turn its poor agrarian economy around.

“No pressure Wilpat”, said the President pompously stroking his goatee, “the entire nation depends on you and the Nike deal, that is all!”

Wilpat was the hot favorite for the gold medal, but he had a somewhat annoying habit, one that is employed by quite a few top athletes. He made heavy noises – he claimed weightlifting was strenuous.
“GRUNT! OHHHH!” He would scream and then he would flex his gleaming muscles and issue the following “HAARRUMPH! OOOMPAAA! BBEERRRRR AAAH  GRRREEAADDDDYYYYY?” with increasing intensity. And then flex them muscles once more for good luck and lift.

True to form, Wilpat surveyed the audience and issued the first of his grunt – “GRUNT!” Nothing happened. In fact, folks looked mildly amused and a couple of dogs peeped in to see who the new animal was. It was during the HAARRUMPH” stage that the first grumblings of dissent were heard from the building. It did sound like an elephant herd practicing for the Jungle choir. The OOMPAA was not as long as the HAARUMPH, but built on the previous one was too much strain. Wilpat bent down and started on the BBEERRRR and picked up the rod when he felt something solid bunging him on the back of his head. GAAARR he continued and another one hit him unconscious. He dropped the rod on his foot and crashed with a resounding thud on the ground.

The tiles from the false ceiling in the arena had just collapsed unable to bear the strains of Wilpat’s vocal chords. Poor Wilpat lost points and did not win the Gold Medal as predicted because he had dropped the bar on his foot while falling. “Anywhere else…”, said the judges, “but rules are rules.”

The Chief Minister of Delhi rushed on to the scene and urged everybody to retain their optimism. She said minor glitches such as this will not hold the prestigious Asian Games from being conducted. She also urged future competitors to not make as much of a noise as Wilpat did, and asked them to walk onto the arena gingerly on their toes like ballet dancers. If they could do that, and if care was taken not to cheer anybody, there was nothing preventing the games from proceeding she said.

Instead of saying “Quite a Tournament!”, we will say ‘A Quiet Tournament!” she joked. Nobody laughed for fear of the roof.

PS:

http://www.hindu.com/2010/09/23/stories/2010092357330100.htm – Now, tiles on false ceiling collapse in weightlifting arena (after the bridge collapse, the deplorable state of housing for the athletes, now tiles).
“Glitches won’t bring down Games”: Sheila Dikshit,  Delhi Chief Minister

LinkedIn & Slur Motion Photography

“Please stand back – we will answer all your queries.”
I wave to my adoring fans who would like to just have one word with me. I stand next to my second level contact in LinkedIn, while he is looking dazed with all the attention. I assure him that all will be well, and I am there to take care of the number of people who jostle around him for photographs and such. Not that I wouldn’t like a photograph with him myself. I can entrust the camera to the one person I can rely on. The husband. He would never lose the camera; but what he does with it is an entirely different matter.

I am not sure whether he would attempt that new technique in photography he was so enamoured with the last time I was around a mini celebrity, I hope not. The technical term is ‘Slur Motion Photography’ or the ‘Earthquake Effect’. The results were fine if I were viewing them sitting on a vibrating machine or one of those massaging chairs you see in malls with old men burping loudly on them. But if I were to see them standing still, it took a practiced eye to find me, and that is not the state of affairs one wants when being photographed with your Second Level Contact in LinkedIn whenever that maybe.

So, who is my second level contact on LinkedIn? None but the President of the United States, Barack Obama! To all you skeptics who don’t believe me, I snapped an image of my screen.

Obama.jpg

Here is a sample of Slur Motion Photography, that I personally find admirable as long as you are not looking to retain memories of yourself in it and such.

For more pictures of the same calibre, please go to http://suroba.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/one-more-take-saar/