Today I will teach you some fun games that you can play during meetings so that you don’t accidentally doze off and get all the work assigned to you. (because everyone thought your silence was a sign of acceptance.)

Game #1 – Bingo
In this game, you and your friends pick 3 ‘jargon’ words that get repeated endlessly in meetings. Examples include ‘issue’, ‘QA cycle’, ‘production’, ‘hard deadline’ etc… Whenever someone in the room uses one of your words, you get a point. After you reach 5 points for any one word, stand up and yell ‘BINGO’

Game #2 – Train-Of-Though
The idea of this game is to try to make the speaker loose his/her train of thought. This is a timed game, so the faster you get the speaker to stammer or forget their thoughts, more points you win. Some strategies you can use:
(a) Look at the speaker and blink profusely. Then stare at him continuously for 30 seconds. Alternate between blinking and staring.
(b) Pick a random point behind the speaker’s shoulder and stare at it disbelievingly. Then, look horrified and act as if you are about to scream.
(c) Look at the speaker disappointingly (like your teachers did in school). Shake your head and roll your eyes. Look at the speaker as if saying ‘You couldn’t even think of such a simple thing?‘

Game #3 – Profound Statements
For 2 or more players. The idea is to interrupt someone mid-sentence and say something profound in jargoneese. Example:
“It is imperative to recognize the client’s build requirements with respect to issue 6543GK23. In my opinion, changing to .NET 2.0 enables the use of frameworks for highly optimized bytecode implementations to suit the iterative QA requirements. As Socrates once said – ‘Nescio quid dicas‘ “.
The number of people nodding their heads after your statements adds to your points tally. You get a bonus point if the speaker you interrupted doesn’t remember what he was saying before you interrupted him.

You can even have a ‘meeting olympics’ in your project and play a combination of these games. The winner gets to give a presentation in the next meeting.

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Todays post is a Cartoon. If you can’t view it, click here.

Cartoon illustrated by Navin. Copyright © 2007, Aditya Kulkarni. All rights reserved.

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* I used to think Computer viruses where the disease carrying kind that “infected” computers. That’s why they never used to let us wear shoes to the computer lab.

* My dad told me that when he was in school, the English alphabet was only till ‘q’. He said he couldn’t help me with my homework because of all the “new” alphabets like ‘w’ and ‘r’ that he didn’t know about.

* I used to think that ‘black money’ was fertilizer. I once asked my dad to show me some black money and he told me he had buried it behind the house. When I asked him why, he said it was for the Money Plant that we had just planted. Plus, the newspapers kept saying things like ‘black money has gone to the underworld’. I assumed that meant it was fertilizer for the plants.

* I used to think that you needed to continuously move the steering of a car to make the car go forward – because the people in old Hindi movies kept moving it and never held it still while driving.

* I used to think that women got pregnant because they ate too much and their tummies swelled up.

* I used to think ‘try try till you succeed’ meant that you needed to try only twice before giving up. If they wanted you to keep trying, they would have said ‘try until you succeed’.

* My mom once told me that ‘ice cream’ was spelt ‘aaaiieee – scream’ because a monster would make you yell like that if you ate more than 1 scoop.

* I never understood why some billboards on the road had only ‘Contact 546-4567′ written on them. I used to wonder why the company didn’t just put the product ad there instead of requiring me to call them and ask ‘What are you advertising?’

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My wife and I are getting ready to go out on a Sunday morning. I’m getting a little irritated because she’s taking forever.

Looking into the mirror, she asks:

Wife: How does this dress look on me?
Me : Great! Awesome!
Wife: Really?
Me (trying to be a smart ass): No, I’m lying.
Wife (giving me THE LOOK) : WHAT?
Me (panicking): No no no…I was kidding about the lying. I was trying to make a joke…
Wife: You’re making jokes about the way I look?
Me : No, no. You got me wrong there. Nothing about the way you look, per se, but the …aa…. the way the dress looks on you…
Wife is giving me a stare
Me : …No no, the dress looks good on you, but the dress in itself is a little …a..aa…
Wife is frowning AND giving me a stare
Me : ….No no, the dress itself is fine, but the way it fits you is a little …hmm……
Wife: Are you saying that I look fat in this dress?
Me : No no no, absolutely not. You got me totally wrong there. What I was trying to imply was that the dress itself is not good enough to compliment your perfect beauty. Yeah, that’s what I meant.
Wife: My Mom gave me this dress as a gift.
Me : Like I was saying, the dress looks great, and is a perfect compliment to your beauty. I was earlier referring to the color of the dress under the daylight. I’m sure it looks great in the indoor lights. The color is a little …hmmm…..warm.
Wife: You don’t think the color looks good?
Me : No no no, the color looks good, it looks great in fact, it …

Wife’s phone rings. It is her friend from college. Thankfully, she gets distracted and starts chatting on the phone. I’m feeling relieved.

25 minutes later, she keeps the phone.

Looking into the mirror, my wife asks:
Wife: “How does this dress look on me?”

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Have you noticed how some people always seem to have the latest cell phone? Every time a new phone comes out, they want it real bad. Their conversation seems to revolve around what the latest phone is.

Well, I applied my higher powers of reasoning and figured out why these people are so phone-crazy.

It’s obvious. They are aliens.

They use their cell phone to capture all our brain waves. That’s why they are always showing off their phones to other people. When you’re looking at that cool new phone, they’re actually tapping into your sub-conscious.

After some time, the phone’s memory gets full (with all that brain-data), and they need to “upgrade”. Is it a co-incidence that newer phones have more memory? I think not!

The phone manufacturers are alien motherships. They make these phones and distribute it to the other aliens. And because they don’t want people like us to get hold of their brain-wave capturing devices, they make the phones very expensive.

With all this insight, you must have also figured out why the aliens seem to talk so much on their phones. They’re downloading all your brain-data from the phone.

But don’t worry. I’ve figured out a test to check for these aliens. You take something pointy (like a pen or a stick) and poke the person. Preferably behind the ear. If it’s alien, you will see its face mask open and the little green alien will be sitting inside.

Try this the next time you see a person talking excessively on a phone. You’ll see what I mean.

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My sister got this painting the other day and hung it up on the wall.

I get home and look at this painting.

Me: “What’s this?”
Sis: “It’s a painting”
Me: “Really? I’d never have guessed. What’s it doing here?”
Sis: “We bought it today. It’s nice isn’t it?”
Me: “How much does it cost?”
Sis: “Look at the brush strokes. It represents the tribal art traditions that go back thousands of years.”
Me: “It looks like it was drawn by a 8 year old who just found out about geometry”
Sis: “It’s beautiful isn’t it. The simplicity of it is striking.”
Me: “Why are there so many triangles?”
Sis: “It represents a new renaissance in the art from traditional India. Post-modernist influences blended with aboriginal bases. Brilliant”
Me: “Post-modern who?”
Sis: “Strikingly priceless”
Me: “About the price. How much did you say it cost?”
Sis: “I haven’t told you yet. Maybe you should sit down”
Me (Sitting down): “Why would I need to sit down?”
Sis: “10,000″
Me (Jumping up): “For how many copies?”
Sis: “Copies? There’s just this one thing.”
Me: “WHAT?”
Sis: “See, I knew you’d like it. You can tell good art from the emotion it elicits from the audience”

And that was my introduction to the high world of art. Like Calvin once said, “The problem with art is knowing who’s fooling who”

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I don’t understand why people exercise. People will get out of bed 5 AM to go run around in circles while they have only owls to keep them company. They might also get in a car, drive to a smelly ol’ building, peddle a bicycle that doesn’t go anywhere, and drive back. It makes absolutely no sense to me.

I’ve listed down the common arguments that these people use and my own counter arguments. You can see that these “exercise” arguments are all obviously wrong:

Argument: Exercise is good for you!
Counter Argument: Ice cream is good for me. I know because it tastes good. If it tastes good, it has to be good. Hence proved.

Argument: It helps you stay fit. You’ll live longer.
Counter Argument: Soon there will be pills and medicines that will let you live longer. Plus, they’ll come in chocolate and strawberry flavors dipped in cream. But because you are dieting, you won’t be able to take them. Then I’ll be laughing at you. Actually, let me start now. Hahahahah!

Argument: It’s fun!
Counter Argument: No it’s not. You only pretend it is fun to try to make me jealous. But I am above such petty things.

Argument: “No Pain No Gain“. If you don’t take the pain, you won’t get any gain.
Counter Argument: My mantra is: “No Pain, No Pain“. If you don’t cause yourself any pain, you don’t have to take the pain.

Argument: Health is Wealth!
Counter Argument: REALLY? Can you buy Chocolate IceCream with your Health? Can you ? Can you? Didn’t think so. Besides, I have mathematical proof:

    Health = Wealth ....[assume]    

   Wealth = Money  ....[Common sense]    

   Time   = Money  ....[Because Bill Gates said so]       

   Therefore,    Health = Time   ....Call this equation [1]

It follows that you can increase health by increasing the amount of free time. And you can increase the amount of free time by not exercising.

Therefore, not exercising improves your health.

What better proof do you need?

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