Update: Before/After image added at the end!

The Wife ordered me to get a haircut the other day. I usually follow orders, but with this particular order, I was hesitant. You see, I hate going to barbers. I have this (somewhat unreasonable, but highly plausible) feeling that barbers are agents of an alien army, and that they are just waiting for the right time to start their war on us humans. I don’t want to be in the barber shop when this happens. You’re laughing, but I have plenty of evidence for my theory (more on that in a later post).

Anyway, so the wife was getting increasingly frustrated with me over this, and the more I resisted, the more insistent she became. Eventually, to break the deadlock, she came up with a new idea.

Wife: “Why don’t you go see a stylist?”
Me: “Eh?”
Wife: “I’ll get you an appointment at one of these upscale cutting salons. You’ll enjoy it. They’ll give you the five star treatment!”
Me: “Ohh… I don’t know…”
Wife: “I’ll take that as a ‘YES’”.

And so, she got me an appointment at ‘Javed Habib’ the next day. I resigned to me fate, thinking “How bad can it be?”

I’d obviously never been to a “stylist studio” before.

As I walked into their “shop”, the staircase was full of life sized pictures of small heads with large amounts of hair on them. Even their lounge was stuffed with magazines like “Style Today” or “Hair Haute”. Overall, they’d managed to create a overwhelming atmosphere of intimidation that was designed to keep regular people like me outside. But I had broken through! They were not going to be happy.

The receptionist greeted us. “Welcome to Javid Habib Ma’am”. She greeted the wife. Then she looked at me, unsure of what to say. “We have valet parking outside!”. Great. She thought I was the driver.

“I know. I’ll remember to tip later.”

Shock on the face of the receptionist. Disarray on the face of the wife. Confusion on my face.

Nervous laughter everywhere.

Receptionist: “Right….Heheh… This way… err… Sir?”

She led me through the studio to meet the “stylist” who was going to work on my head. This dude was something to look at.  He had a super-fancy hair style, with lots of spikes and channels running all over his head. Quite a sight.

But the minute he saw me, all the blood drained from his face. He couldn’t believe a peasant like me could show up at his fancy studio.

Stylist Dude: “Err… Sure, OK. Why don’t you sit down” he says to me. I obidiently sit down. He runs his hands through my hair, presumably trying to come up with a plan of action for my makeover.

Stylist Dude: “Do you use badam oil?”
Me: “To drink or put on my head?”

I meant it as a serious question, but he just laughed it off, thinking I was trying to be clever.

Stylist Dude: “Do you apply any gel?”
Me: “Gel?”
Stylist Dude: “Or maybe some Conditioning Serum?”
Me: “What is Serum?”

And that was too much for him. A grave expression of shock came over his face as he exclaimed “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT SEREUM IS?!?” He stopped what he was doing, gave me a scandalized look, wondering if I were a caveman that had time travelled to the 21st century. Everyone in the studio stopped what they were doing and started staring at me.

Me: “Huh…I know what a comb is. Lets start there.”

He turned to the wife with an exasperated look. He had clearly given up on me. My wife rolled her eyes, as if saying “Look what I have to put up with everyday”, and then proceeded to talk to him directly. The two started discussing what style I should wear, whether step-cuts and swirls and asymmetrical length cuts would suit “My Look”. After several minutes of careful deliberation, they decided on a style for me. I was out of the loop for all this time, mostly looking at the ceiling trying not to make eye contact with anyone else. I didn’t understand a word of what they were saying, but it sounded like intelligent conversation to me.

After everything was decided, he got to work. For the next 45 minutes, he clipped and chopped, alternately muttering curses at my poor old barber and instructing me to “grow my side-locks another 5 mm” or “use egg yoke 5 minutes after taking a bath”. I just nodded along.

Eventually he was done. He seemed pretty happy, and the wife seemed happy too. To be fair, I was looking presentable for once. “This is good!”, I thought. That feeling, however, was short lived until he presented me with the bill, that was more than what I’d spent on shampoos and haircuts combined for the past 2 years. I reluctantly paid, and left, somewhat happy that I had got a makeover and had a swanky new hairstyle!

I must point out, however, that the style disappeared the next day, and however much I tried, I couldn’t comb my hair the way he had, and I just can’t make it look like the day before. My hairstyle is back to the state it was – uncombed and haphazard.

Update: Here’s my before and after picture!

Hairstyle BeforeAfter

• 17 Comments

With so much fear mongering and news coverage about the global financial crisis, I thought I should step in and make it clear to my readers what is really happening. When things go wrong on an epic, never-seen-before scale, you can always rely on the Pointless Wanderings blog to bring some clarity, continuity and calm into your lives. So, without wasting any of your time like all the news channels are doing, here is a quick FAQ.

Q: What’s happening, like, really?
A: Nothing much, I’m doing good. I saw the movie Rock On the other day and it was the….

Q:No, about this Global Financial Crisis thing. What’s happening there?
A: Oh, like that. Hehe… So what has happened is that the global financial system has ground to a halt. The LIBOR has shot up, the CDOs are frozen, and the Fed is promising to buy Commercial Paper now, to let businesses roll over their short term debt.

Q: Huh?
A: OK, here’s a simpler analogy. Imagine a giant airplane mid air. Now imagine that its run out of fuel. And imagine that the plane’s landing gear is damaged. And half of the wing is broken off. And the pilot is drunk. And you’re over the Indian Ocean, 500 kms from land. And the water is infested with sharks.
That’s the state of the global economy right now.

Q: But aren’t the governments going to “bail out” all the banks?
A: Not really. The word “bail-out” is actually a cricket metaphor, as in “taking the bails out to dismiss the batsman”. What the government is calling a bailout is actually a massive nationalization of all the banks. Earlier, only evil dictators and socialist governments used to do it, but now nationalizing banks is suddenly in fashion, because everyone else is doing it.

Q: But that’s not what all the analysis on TV says. They’re saying that the governments are “rescuing” the banks.
A: Before I can answer that question, lets first understand what “analysis” means. Its actually an ancient Greek word, meaning “The process of pulling things from one’s ass : anal-lysis”. All the talking heads on TV are pulling stuff from their behind and filling up the time because the producers of their news programs have to show something to fill time between the ads.

Q: So, how did all this start?
A: This all started with the sub-prime crisis. The sub-prime crisis happened when the traders on wall street could not come up with prime numbers (you know, like 7, 13, 39 etc…), so that they had to settle for a number that was lesser than a prime number. Hence the word sub-prime. What happens when you use numbers that are less than prime numbers is that your mathematical models break down, to the point where you have to divide by zero. And the division by 0 causes all hell to break lose.
You can try it on your calculator. Try dividing any number by 0. The calculator will show an error. That’s what has basically happened in the financial markets.

Q: So what is going to happen now?
A: Well, nothing much. A few more European banks are going to collapse, followed by a huge set of layoffs in the financial sector, which is going to hurt the IT outsourcing companies very hard, and that’s going to trigger a recession everywhere. Entire countries like Iceland and Argentina are going to go bankrupt.
Other than that, everything is going to be OK.

Q: Oh My God! What are we going to do now? What can I do to survive this crisis?
A: You probably should start learning some skills that will be useful when the world goes back to the pre-industrial era. Use the checklist below to determine how likely you are to survive this financial crisis. Answer each question with a YES or a NO

1. I know how to grow my own vegetables and rice
YES ____    NO ______
2. I have some carpentry or blacksmith skills
YES ____    NO ______
3. I have the capacity to do physical labor, and don't just sit in front of a computer all day, a skill that is entirely useless when the world runs out of electricity
YES _____   NO ____

If you answered YES to at least one question, you should survive fine. If you answered NO to all of the questions, now would be a good time to read the wikipedia article on farming.

• 8 Comments

[This is part 2 of a series. Part 1 is here]

We eagerly popped in the Basic Instinct Video CD into the computer driver, and eagerly started up the computer to watch what was rumored to be the greatest movie of all time. But the computer just frustrated us. It was too slow to play the cutting-edge-at-the-time MPEG video that was on the disk. The computer constantly stuttered and jerked, and couldn’t  manage to play the movie smoothly. Getting your hopes up and meeting with disappointment like that is very frustrating, and encourages people to do stupid things. We knew that we had to make the computer faster, and that there was a setting on the motherboard that would boost the speed of the CPU all the way to 66 MHz. I suggested we should enable that setting, so that the computer would become faster, and we could watch the movie. But my friend was skeptical that would work.

Friend: “If the computer could run faster, why would Intel make it run slower on purpose?”
Me: “Because Intel is stupid. They probably don’t know it can run faster.”
Friend: “What? But they made the CPU! How can they not know?”
Me: “Look… Do you know how your Kidney works? The kidney is inside you, but that doesn’t mean you know how it works.”
Friend: “Hmmm….Good point!”
Me: “Of course! The CPU is just like a Kidney. We’re just making the kidney do whatever it does, only faster. Its that simple!”

And so, we shut down the computer and flipped the switch on the motherboard, and started up the computer. The computer booted up fine, and when windows started, we started the movie. This time it played brilliantly! SUCCESS! HAHahahaha!”

We settled in to watch the famous “Basic Instinct” movie. I ran to the kitchen and quickly made some popcorn, you know, to make the movie experience more authentic.

The movie started. Just 2 minutes into the movie, my friend started sniffing around, trying to smell something.
Friend: “Do you smell something burning?”
Me: “Its just the popcorn.”
Friend: “No… I think something is really burning.”
Me (lost in the movie): “Shhh… This is the good part… Look…”

Sharon Stone, the heroine of the movie, sits down on the chair in the police station and lights up a cigarette. The policeman asks her a question and… FLASH… BLUE SCREEN!

The computer crashed! The screen reads “Windows has encountered a fatal error and has shut down to limit damage to your Computer!”. What the hell? Limit Damage to the computer? What damage?

Just then, from the corner of my eye, I see a white smokey thing coming out from the back of the computer cabinet. Uh Oh. This is not looking good. I open up the case of the computer to see what’s smoking inside the computer. The case is very hot to touch. And just as I take out the side cover of the computer… BOOOOM… a fog of white smoke comes out of the computer!

Me (Coughing) : “EEiiikkees!!! WHAT IS THIS!!!!”
Friend: “Cough.Cough… I think someone is coming… COUGH COUGH!”

The timing couldn’t be worse. My parents have just returned back home. I can hear them as they walk in.

Dad: “Something smells weird… Something is burning!”

He walks straight into my room. By this time, I’ve had the presence of mind to pull the power cable off, but its too late. The room is filled with smoke!

Dad: “WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!”
Me: “Hi Dad. What’s up? How is Murthy uncle?”
Dad: “Is the… Oh No! Is the computer burning?!”
Me: “NO NO! Technically, its only smoking…”
Dad: “THE COMPUTER IS SMOKING!?!?!”
Me: “Well, look at the bright side. At least I’m not smoking! He heh.”

My Dad never finds these kinds of jokes funny.

Dad: “How did this happen?!?”
Friend: “I… I think my mom is calling me. Bye then!” and he ran off
Me: “Ummm… Actually… I… I set windows screensaver to “Fire”, and the fire…JUMPED OUT… and hmm…. I mean…The virus must have given the computer a fever and… maybe… eerrr…”

In retrospect, I should have blamed it on a short-circuit or something, but if I had that kind of presence of mind, I’d be a different person altogether. Anyway, after that, my Dad put me to computer classes, because he thought I should wreck other people’s computers before trying it at home.

You know how they say that there are lessons in failure? I learnt my lesson that day too. “Always have a believable excuse ready before starting off on any project”. This mantra has served me well over the years!

• 11 Comments

Back when I was a kid, I used to get a lot of toys as gifts, but they never used to last. I loved opening up my toys to see what’s inside them. My dad used to get me toys, and I used to pretend to play with them for a while until my dad was watching. As soon as he went inside, I used to take a screw driver and open them up, and fascinatingly dissect all the parts inside them. Of Course, I could never put them back, so when my dad used to ask what happened to the new toy he bought me, I used to say that our kid next door stole them from me. The poor kid got a bad reputation, and I got new toys.

Anyway, this fiddling was not limited to just toy cars. My Dad had just bought me a brand new computer. This was way back in the late 90s when computers cost more than a years’ supply of household groceries. My dad thought of it as an investment though, since he figured that introducing me to new technology would pique my curiosity and help me learn lots of new things. He was right, I did learn a lot of new things. Mostly cheat codes to games like “Prince of Persia” and how to find secret levels in “Dangerous Dave”.

After the computer was around for several weeks, I started to wonder how it works. During this time, they used to teach us “Computer Science” in school, so I figured that the teacher would know. So I went and asked her if we students could open up one of the school computers to study what’s inside it.

Me: “Teacher, can you open up the computer and show what’s inside?”
Teacher: “Why do you want to see what’s inside? I already drew the block diagram on the board yesterday. What were you doing then?”
Me: “No, I mean, can we see what’s REALLY inside. There can’t just be 3 boxes called “ALU” “CPU” and Memory… there has to be cooler stuff inside…”
Teacher: “You’re not supposed to open up computers!”
Me: “Why?”
Teacher: “Because there are viruses inside!”
Me: “You mean computer viruses? But…”
Teacher: “Yes, computers have viruses inside them just like dogs have rabies inside them. If you get one of those computer viruses, you could fall sick and DIE!”
Me: “Oh?”
Teacher: “That’s right. These are the real things that they don’t teach in your text books. Listen to me!”

I took what the teacher said to heart, and got really freaked out. I mean, rabies was bad enough, but what would happen if I really got a computer virus? Scary stuff! I decided never to open up my other toys, God knows what other viruses are inside them.

That feeling lasted about 2 weeks, before I was itching to open up the computer again.

I had a friend in my class who was also interested in these kinds of things. The two of us gathered the courage one day and decided to really open up the computer to see what’s inside. The opportunity came when my parents went out one day, and my friend and I were left alone at home. We decided to take the big step.

I got a big can of cockroach killer spray (in case any viruses jumped out), and then proceeded towards the computer. I had the screwdriver in my hand and my heart was thumping. As I screwed apart the back of the computer, my friend was starting to panic.

Friend: “What if we die?”
Me: “At least we’ll die bravely!”
Friend: “Should we get a flashlight? I’ve heard that the dark monsters are afraid of light. The viruses may be too…”
Me: “Keep quiet… Just be ready with the cockroach spray of something happens…”

I unscrewed the cabinet from the back, one screw at a time. When all the 4 screws came out, both of us looked at each other, prepared to face whatever monsters would jump out of the computer. I slowly removed the side cover plate out and……..

It was absolutely brilliant. There were no monsters inside! Just a beautiful collection of multi-colored fans, wires and cables. At the bottom was a big circuit board, with literally thousands of shiny metallic wires soldered. It was like a giant city for little electronic chips. Our experiment was a success!

Before my parents returned, I had screwed the side panel back on to the computer. We decided never to mention that we had opened up a super expensive, delicate piece of sensitive machinery to my Dad. He would have flipped out.

But since we had opened it up once, we couldn’t just stop then! We kept up with our guilty pleasure of waiting till there was no one in the house, then secretly opening up the case and going through the insides of the computer. One of us would constantly be on the watch near the door to warn if someone unexpectedly came back. Once we had our fill, we’d careful hide away all evidence of our actions, and hide away all the screwdrivers and other jumpers we’d removed from the computer below the bed. I guess this is what the other kids did with their Playboy magazines.

After a few weeks of this, we’d learnt enough about the workings of the computer to know about motherboard jumpers and clock speeds. I remember thinking at the time that the motherboard looked ABSOLUTELY nothing like what the teacher was telling us was inside a computer. It was like telling kids that there is a giant chariot pulling the sun across the sky everyday, and the kids believed that, never asking any questions, just believing. I became convinced since then that my school was a big fraud.

Anyway, so this was the time that the Video CD arrived on the scene. One small shiny silver disk contained a whole movie! Someone told us that we could watch the movie on a computer, provided that we had a fast enough computer. My friend, the same guy that helped me open up the computer, got hold of one of these disks containing the movie “Basic Instinct”. We’d heard a lot about this movie, and wanted to check it out ourselves. So, as usual, when there was no one in the house, we popped the CD inside the computer, and waited for the good times to start.

Update: Part 2 is here

• 9 Comments