Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Bad, bad server. No donut for you.



was on orkut after a long time, and encountered this, 'n couldn't stop chuckling to myself...whatever may change but somethings will never change... :)

Friday, February 22, 2008

girl + linux/tech + floyd/rock/metal... + football/F1... = Anomaly

this post has genesis in the last.fm shout i received yesterday -
"u r full of anomalies.....first of all Pink Floyd is ur fav band and second u use amarok"

hmm...well this is not the first time 'm receiving such a comment, have received a fair amount of them in recent years...'n my reactions to them also have evolved over time, from initial outright denial to slow acceptance of the fact...

I would like to think there are more of my species 'n that the lesser numbers is 'coz the general male:female ratio is already so high... :) yeah i know guys out there are already saying wishful thinking...eh? :)
Well recently became a member of linuxchix, which is involved in increasing the number of girls using linux...so as an answer to one of the following shouts -
"well god should make more girls like you", i can say atleast one issue is getting addressed... :)

But as far as music is concerned 'm really not sure... :( Ofcourse i can go on 'n on abt the beauty of floydian music, but if the person doesn't like it, you can't do much about it can you...? 'coz myself have come across many guys who still listen to insipid boy/girl bands, overly commercialized, fed to masses hip-hop artists...so i don't think this can be generalized into a girls/guys thing....in a different vein, i think only a real connoisseur can appreciate the great stuff, so for other normal ppl, pink floyd will be just 'We don't need no education'....

'n sports...hmm...well honestly haven't come across many guys who follow football/tennis/F1, i think it would be fair to say cricket is pretty universally folllowed in India (i know, world famous in india types :D) regardless of asl...while trying to think of how to get women into sports, i was reminded of this sexist fark comment i had come across long time back..."Women learn to talk football so they can develop relationships with the dreamboats that populate sports bars"... :D he he...maybe thts ur solution...your propoganda may go something like imagine all da shy,good-looking,nerdy guys you can meet...darn tht previous sentence didn't come off well...infact it sounds down right crappy... :P Neways again remembered this brilliant write up i had read sometime back - The Nerd Handbook... i think you can pretty much base your stuff on that... :)

'n yea forgot 'Gaming'...that is the last frontier....as one of my friend remarked the other day - 'If only you gamed, you would be one of us!" But sadly i don't think i will ever cross it, somehow can't imagine myself sitting in front of comp and twiddling at buttons...infact when wii first came out, i thought now here's something i can start gaming with....well 'm still waiting to lay my hands on one... :(

Well on a serious note, don't think these can be generalized as a guy/girl thing...'coz among many of my male colleagues 'm the biggest tech/sports/music freak...
I feel generalizations most often give an exaggerated picture of how the things are...TOI is a classic example for this... take a topic , generalize on the extreme end to sensationalize ofcourse, there's no fun in medians is thr? and go on debating on it. Sometimes i wonder are they dumbing(i know thrz no such word) us down...or are we already so dumb?

Off topic - today just came across the new google talk gadget, you can emebed in your sites/blogs, allowing the visitors to directly chat with you, similar to meebo...but thn yea this is Google! :D :P Already embedded it in this blog but sadly it seems therez no chat log, i.e the chat session doesn't come in the gmail chat section...atleast not as yet... :)

Monday, February 11, 2008

Fat Free

This post is about an amusing incident that happened couple of hours ago. On my way back from work, i stopped over at foodworld to buy some essentials viz. Maggi 'n some chocs ( yep! they r quintessential for me :) )
Well so, I was at the billing counter when i saw this man in front of me with a big pack of Kellogs Chocos. Usually one can reasonably identify the crowd which buys such stuff, but this person nowhere looked like he belonged to one of them. It was the typical 'Blink' moment. For people who haven't read the book 'Blink', well it essentially means that your subconscious processes and arrives at conclusions much before your conscious mind kicks in. Well so in my case, my subconscious mind had already arrived at the conclusion that somehow the person and kellogs didn't fit. So one thought went like "Not bad, If people like them are buying Kellogs!" before it was rudely interrupted by another "Shame on you puthali, Don't prejudice based on appearances, appearances don't maketh the man". And so I silently stood, awaiting my turn. When the person suddenly asks the billing lady for 'Fat Free' which was written on the carton. I was about to laugh when the billing lady, whom i thought would clear the poor chap's misconception, called out to another girl in telugu: "This guy wants some fat free, check it out". Somehow tht laughter vanished and i just stood thr speechless...

Now while writing this, i was wondering how wonderful weird this place has become due to globalization 'n everything. Some english words, have just become an inseparable part of people's lives, even of those who don't know english. So, here was this billing girl, who knew only telugu and then there was the kannadiga, both of knew what 'Free'(an english word) meant in the sense of 'free soap, free battery...' but not 'Fat free' :) Well one can't blame them also, 'm here reminded of the famous Big B's dialogue from Namak Halaal, 'n 'm gonna promptly end this post with that :)

"You see sir, I can talk English, I can walk English, I can laugh English,
because English is a very funny language."