About a year ago, I was visiting China. I’d just gotten off the plane, and had ventured out into the City with a couple of friends looking for Lunch. We had been thoroughly warned of the difficulty of finding edible food in China, but I brushed aside all those warnings. To be a true traveler, you have to live like the locals. When in Rome, do like the Romans. What I soon realised was that whoever said that never visited China.

So the three of us walk into this restaurant. At least it looked like a restaurant from the outside, but when we entered, there was a line of fish tanks on either side of a long corridor. Just as we were wondering how we managed to get into an aquarium, a cheerful young lady walked up next to a couple of locals who were standing in front of us. They seemed to be deciding which fish to buy as a pet for their little nephew back home. One of the guys pointed to a fish, and the other guy nodded in agreement.

The hostess then proceeded to open the top of the fish tank. She then put her hand into the tank, and in one swift motion, caught the fish in her bare hands and pulled it out of the tank, put it on a large white plate with the fish still gasping for air, and disappeared behind the corridor. The 2 guys, satisfied with the result, went around the corner and sat at a table.

Oh My God! This was a restaurant after all, and the two guys had just picked out their lunch! Straight from the fish tank. Talk about eating fresh!

The three of us looked at each other in disbelief. We decided that we didn’t want to eat our food this fresh, so we decided to order off the menu instead. The waitress was very helpful, despite her not able to understand a word of English and our inability to understand Chinese. After a 10-minute game of dumb-chareds, I think we managed to convey to her that two of us would have the Chicken, and our third friend would have anything that was vegetarian on the menu.

Some ten minutes later, our waitress returned with our lunch. But something wasn’t right. She was carrying what looked like a whole chicken, and had it’s mouth stuffed with Cabbage. She put the Chicken on the table and smiled at us.

Me: “Is this the Chicken?“
Waitress: “Cheeken…Cheeken“
Me: “Umm….Do you want to cook it and bring it back? Fry it, maybe?“
Waitress: “You……eat…..nice….very nice….“
Friend #1: “I’d asked for something Vegetarian. Is my Vegetarian dish coming?“
Waitress (pointing at the cabbage that had been stuffed into the Chicken’s mouth): “Vegetable…..You eat…..Vegetable…..Very nice….Vegetarian special…..for……you“
Friend #2: “Hey guys….I think I just saw the Chicken move!“
Me: “WHAT???“

At this point, the waitress also notices that the chicken is indeed moving, and takes out a large butcher’s knife, and hands it to us. She then smiles and pushes off, saying something that amounted to “Enjoy your lunch!”

Needless to say, we went hungry that day. I also later found out that “Vegetarian” in China means “It also has vegetables”, so the correct term is “No Meat”.

From that day on, I’ve given up my chicken-and-meat eating habits. I just can’t bear to look at meat anymore. I’ve turned vegetarian since.

• 3 Comments

This year’s Diwali came with much anticipation for all of us, especially for the Wife: We were finally going to get to watch Om Shanti Om and Saawariya. The Day couldn’t come sooner. The marketers of the movie were in overdrive, advertising the movie like crazy. It was almost like they wanted everyone to go and watch the movie on the first day itself, before anyone had time to publish reviews. Now why would they do that?

Finally the Diwali day came, and we rushed through the unimportant things – like doing the pooja and bursting crackers – and drove right to the theater. And there we stood, with 300 of our fellow movie lovers (read: poor, confused souls) eagerly awaiting to see Shahrukh’s 6-pack. Three hours later, I was a changed man!

Om Shanti Om is the most confused movie of the year. It’s almost like the scriptwriters took the scripts of some 4-5 old hindi movies, stuffed them along with some crackers, burst the scripts to pieces. Then, they sent out some interns to interview buffaloes on the topic of punarjanm till they had a 2-hour long movie. And then, half-way through the movie, they lost this script, so they put a 20-minute song, which is really an attendance call of bollywood’s so-called stars, which adds absolutely nothing to the already non-existent story line. They also recorded an old woman coughing like crazy, added some bits of drums, and passed it off as the background music. But most importantly, Shahrukh Khan delivers a drunk-monkey like performance in the first half, followed by a schizophrenic-with-one-personality-angry-with-the-other performance in the second half. The only saving grace of this movie is the ending – The realization that the movie is over and you are now a free man once more is worth a lot more that the value of the ticket.

Of course, my happiness was short lived, because we went to watch Sawariya soon afterwards.

To say Saawariya is a crappy movie would not be correct. Horrendously Ridiculous comes close, but it doesn’t really capture the essence of the absurdity that this movie is. After watching this movie I felt like tying up Sanjay Leela Bansali alone in a room, forcing him to watch a cockroach chase a spider round-and-round a water fountain for 3 hours. That too in blue light. Because seriously, that’s what this entire movie is. It’s two grossly untalented kids, who probably got kicked out of college for lack of attendance and ended up on this set to spend the rest of the day. And for the love of God, I can’t figure out why the whole movie is in blue! Maybe the director was trying to get every frame half-black half-blue so that the WinZip compression would work better to save some electrons, what with all the global warming and all. That’s the best explanation I could come up with, because nothing else can explain the lack of daylight (or plain light, for that matter) in this movie.

Sawaariya is one long song with some breaks for dialog. And by dialog I mean girly giggling by the chic and some punch-me-in-the-face expressions accompanied by pig-like grunting by the hero. One wonders if all the actors are the props and the set is the real star in this movie. I came really close to concluding that the bridge-over-the-fake-river is the central star of the movie, because everyone of the other actors looks like they were made of rock. And the rocks had moss growing over them. And the rocks were painted blue.

I have only a splitting headache to show after watching these two movies. But I would recommend both movies to all of you. Sharing your suffering and pain, they say, makes the healing process faster.

[Update: Since I found out that I had paid for the movie tickets, I've started a campaign to get SLB to return my money]

• 20 Comments

My readers will remember Atif, the Finance Wizard, who I slandered a while ago. He’s taken up the challenge to respond, and come up with this comic strip:

This post is a comic strip. If you can’t see the image, please click here.

Copyright © 2007, Aditya Kulkarni. All rights reserved.

• 3 Comments

I really don’t understand this Fashion Business. My tiny brain can’t make any sense out of it. I’m what you’d call a fashion-aethist. I just don’t believe in Fashion.

How can a Red Shirt not “go” with a Pink Pant? It smells of racism to me. Our forefathers fought hard for our independence and I will stand for the rights of the Red Shirt to go with whatever Pants it pleases. Give me freedom from the tyranny of “color combinations” or give me death, I always say. “Freedom to all the colors”, that should be our motto.

But my campaign for the right of various colored Shirts and Pants to co-exist has not gone down so well with the Wife. The other day, I was wearing a crumpled up shirt, and supposedly that’s not right. Apparently, it needs to be ironed before it can be worn. So let me get this straight: You’d torture the shirt with a burning red-hot iron, douse it with steam and remove all the lines and creases that define the personality of a shirt, all in the name of fashion? And not to talk about all the electricity that uses and global warming!

My theory is that fashion is just a mass delusion perpetuated by the big corporations. You just have to read one of these fashion magazines for proof. For the purposes of this blog post, I bravely opened up the “Vogue” magazine yesterday. All in the name of honorable scientific research, of course. What I found shocked me!

The Vogue magazine has 35 pages of ads before the table of contents. And I can’t figure out the ads at all. Your typical ad in the vogue magazine has a skinny, malnutritioned female with messed up hair, wearing what can be described best as “torn and worn out clothes” looking desperately into the camera. The only problem is that I can’t figure out if the model is saying “Buy this $10,000 Christian Dior perfume” or “Please feed me, I haven’t eaten for 3 days!”

Think about it for a while: The fashion industry is the only one where the companies tell you what you’re supposed to be wearing (i.e., what’s IN this season), and also sell it to you. They control both demand and supply.

I rest my case.

• 3 Comments

Today’s blog post is by a Guest Blogger. My dear friend, Drinivas, upset over some things I wrote about his academic achievements on this blog, demanded that he be allowed to tell the other side of the story, to expose the real PK. And I’ve obliged.

———————————-
– By Srinivasa S:

Getting through to PK is a nightmare even when talking face to face, but here’s what you can expect when you desperately want to talk to him over phone:

Instance 1:
[Poor me] : <Dialing 2573xxxx> –> Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring…<no answer>

Instance 2:
[Poor me] : <Dialing 2573xxxx> –> Ring…Ring…
[PK's Sister] : Hello?
[Poor me] : Can I speak to Aditya please?
[PK's sister] : Is it Srinivas, by any chance?
[Poor me] : Yeah….
[PK's sister] : heohoehohahahaahah!!!!
(She’s so used to PK not being home whenever I call, that she bursts out laughing!)

Instance 3:
[Poor me] : <Dialing 2573xxxx> –> Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring…<no answer>
[Poor me] : <Dialing cellphone 98456xxxx> Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring…
[Electronically recorded voice of a chic] : Hello…you have reached the subscriber’s voice mail box….Please leave your message after the beep
[Poor me] : PK, you @#%$#@^$#!

Instance 4:
[Poor me] : <Dialing 2573xxxx> –> Ring…Ring
[PK] : Yello?
[Poor me] : Thank god I found you…..I wanted to…
[PK] : Listen dude, I’m talking to someone else. Can I call you back in 5 minutes?
[Poor me] : Sure…Bye!

5 mins….. 15 mins…. 30 mins…. 1 hr…. 2 hrs…. 12 hours…no callback

4 days later, at a restaurant over lunch:

[Poor me] : Hey PK, You forgot to call me last week!
[PK] : What’s the date today? When had you called? My phone’s been dead for 4 days daaa!!!

Instance 5:
[Poor me] : <Dialing 2573xxxx> -> (picks up before it starts ringing!)
[PK] : Heeellllooo….?
[Poor me] : You busy?
PK] : No daaaa
Poor me] : You talking to someone else?
[PK] : Noooo maggaaa…
[Poor me] : I wanted to talk to you!
[PK] : I was (yyyaaawwwwnnnnn) sleeeeeeeepin daaaaaaaa….
[Poor me] : Bloody, you’re always sleeping, or busy or something. When are YOU EVER FREE?
[PK] : Let me do one thing…I’ll call back later…<click>

(same saga repeats!)

One day, I considered the alternative of going to his place instead of calling him. There are costs attached to that as well. Distance – 12 Kms, which takes 0.18146153843 liters of petrol, amounting to Rs. 6.6221538463. But wait…this is only the face cost…there’s more:

a) after each trip to his house on those Mud-rally tracks, I need to get my bike’s wheels balanced…cost: Rs. 30 per wheel.
b) after the suffocating drive, I’ll need to purchase a strip of lozenges to soothe my throat and respiratory tract. Ignoring this might demand 100ml of cough syrup too!

He once offered to come pick me on his bike, but I can’t even accept PK’s offer: ‘cuz, his bike is sooooo dirty that after taking a ride on it, looking at my garments, I can’t even say ” Surf Excel hai naa!”. Now I understand why the dude doesn’t park his bike under a shelter: The rain gods occasionally cleanse his bike out of sheer pity!

Now, even after all I’ve said, you’d expect a normal guy to learn from the humiliation. But of course, that doesn’t apply to PK. This is what he said when I wanted to borrow a novel from him, and asked him to get the next day:

“Call me and remind me later today.”

• 4 Comments

Back when I was in College, I was always short on money. My parents only gave me so much pocket money, and the Snooker place charged by the hour, so I constantly needed more money. Being in College is a little bit like being a compulsive gambler – You always need more money. And so, I hatched several Get-Rick-Quick schemes while in College to get around my chronic poverty.

My first major scheme to have any success was re-selling books. I found this shop in Avenue Road that would buy back used Engineering Text books from students, and sell them to the new students for a cheaper price. They would pay only 60 paise to the rupee when buying the book back. But if the Rupee is coming from someone else, the whole 60 paise is profit!

I went and told my dad that I was very interested in learning new things, and wanted money to buy books to expand my ‘horizons of knowledge’. He was suspicious at first, but thought that I’ve turned over a new leaf, and gave me the money. I took the money and bought the books, came home and showed them to my dad. He was impressed that I was finally starting to take this whole education thing seriously. The next day, I went to this shop and sold the books. Profit!!!! Muhahahahahahaaa….

But this scheme didn’t last long. My Dad started getting suspicious when he noticed that he saw the books only once, and never with me studying them.

My second get rich quick scheme involved ‘Student Assistantships’. Basically the College would pay senior students to help out the Juniors in the Programming Labs. This meant I’d have to actually work, but the money was good. How hard could it be?

Giving out free help, especially to junior college students, is like giving them ‘unlimited popcorn’ coupons at the College Fest – They’ll hang around all day just to get the free popcorn. These juniors asked me so many questions that it drove me crazy!

Junior #1: “…Should I call my variable ‘i’ or ‘j’ ?“
Me (patiently): “Anything, it doesn’t matter!“
Junior #1: “But which one is better?“
Me: “Look. I said whatever you want! Pick ‘j’“
Junior #1: “But I like ‘i’ better“
Junior #2: “..Excuse me, but the Computer says ‘Printer Not Found‘. What should I do?“
Me: “THEN SAY SORRY TO THE COMPUTER AND SHOW IT WHERE THE PRINTER IS!“
Junior #2 (talking to the comp): “Hey Mr. Computer, the printer is to the left. My left, that is.” (turns towards me): “…which is the computer’s left hand? Is it like a mirror where it’s inverted or is it like a real person where it’s correct?“

I had to give up this thing because I was scared my Blood Pressure would increase.

My third scheme was by far the most successful – “Programming Contests”. Most Colleges in Bangalore had annual “College Fests” where they’d inevitably also have “Programming Contests”. These things had plenty of scope for lateral thinking – i.e., cheating. My partner in crime for this was this guy, lets call him ‘Udwal’. He was this fast-talking, supremely-confident dude who was an accomplish black-belt in Jargoneese. When our programs were up for evaluation during these contests, Udwal and I would shoot out jargon-filled analysis that would convince the judges that we had used cutting edge technologies like ‘Data Mining’ and ‘Machine Learning’ to come up with our programs. This was a good idea, because no one really knows what ‘Data Mining’ and ‘Machine Learning’ is, but are convinced that they exist. This was, by far, the most profitable scheme in my college years.

My latest get-rick-quick scheme involves this blog, but I can’t disclose it right now. I’ll let you know how it goes In the meanwhile, have you cooked up some get-rich-quick schemes that have worked?

See Also:
How to speak Jargoneese
My Reading Hobby – Comic Books

• 5 Comments

Holy Crap! I’ve managed to write my 100th post on this blog. I started writing here because the wife threatened to kill me if I told her any more of my silly jokes, and I thought, “What better way to dump dis-knowledge on unsuspecting people than to write a blog!” It’s been a fun ride, and I hope to keep doing it.

What has shocked me, though, is the amount of time people spend on this blog! Since it started, this blog has received nearly 14,000 hits and people have cumulatively spent some 42,000 minutes on the blog! If all you readers were one person, that’s almost one full month.

Think about the implications. I’ve managed to waste 42,000 minutes of productivity! And according to this and this, it translates into a $6000 or about Rupees 2.35 Lacs in lost productivity! That makes me very happy. I’ve managed to waste *significant* amounts of useful time and have done my little part to damage the global economy. Woohooo!

I’d like to thank all of you for coming here and spending (wasting) your time. Keep coming back, and do your part to wreck worker productivity. Send this blog to all your friends, and I’m sure we can get to 1 crore rupees of lost productivity real soon!

• 12 Comments