My “My Generator” jokes, originally hatched in class are back.



Q) Why did the motor not allow the generator to be crowned Sarkar Raj?

A) Because power cannot be given. It has to be taken.

Having a sharp sense of hearing is a real bummer. Seriously. It has its advantages and with some Time Division Multiplexing you can eavesdrop on a number of conversations, and think at the same time. You also have the added advantage, if you can think fast enough that is, to hear things people normally say with a hope you don’t hear them.



You know, the



“what did you say?”

“oh nothing… I was talking to myself“

“very well then, I won’t return your silver plated, diamond studded, platinum tinged hunting knife”

“did YOU steal it?”

“are you accusing me?”

“how did you know I lost my silver plated, diamond studded, platinum tinged hunting knife?”

“you just said you lost your silver plated, diamond studded, platinum tinged hunting knife”

“how did you hear it?”

*sniggers and leaves banging the door on the way(if indoors)*



type of conversations.



This disadvantage of course, in my case, is something you need to live with everyday..eerrm..rather night. Night is the best time to experience stillness. If its late enough, turn off all electric devices around and just lie on the bed, soon to be drenched in sweat, but in absolute stillness. If you listen carefully you’ll hear the bed sheet crumple, the mattress very slowly bearing you wait, the plywood under letting out soft creaks of displeasure. And if your watchman’s awake, his heavy footsteps on leaves, not necessarily dry. Sometimes even on grass if its crunchy enough.



The not-so-nice part is living three storeys above the action, everything sounds a bit too..well.. misplaced. You need to listen carefully to figure where the noise is coming from.



Another grievous and often disgusting habit, when you can hear real soft noises you evidently tend to speak that softly (when the time comes to speak softly, of course). Which leads to accusations of other people being hard of hearing. I’ve thrown that term around on a couple of people so many times I’m sure they’re sick of it. I’m trying to hear less by pumping large amounts of metal into ear plugs.. doesn’t seem to be working.



Anyway, point remains that despite the bummers, listening can be great fun. And you can always tell women you’re a great listener.

An average American gets married so many times that they made a reality show out of it. And in spite of my best efforts to avoid it, I ended up watching one. Its that mystical attraction that the disgusting has. Like how a few of my friends love “Nothing In the World” just because its a Paris Hilton song and listen to it only to criticize her vocal abilities.



Anyway, the show is called “For Better or for Worse”. Quite a rhetoric, any American show about marriage has to be for worse.



Also seen recently is an advertisement about American Green Cards and how the country hands over 50,000 green cards in a drive to increase average IQ levels of the country.The approximate transcript says something like “Now, even you can Live,Work and Study in the USA and live the Great American Dream!!”



Great American Dream eh? They should call it GAD. There’s already a band called Gatsby’s American Dream that’s called GAD.



Not so surprisingly, medical fraternities would squirm at GAD. It stands for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Which of course means that you worry about absolutely everything and believe the world is snapping at your arse ready to snatch you state of peaceful existence drown you into cauldrons of misery. Not so surprisingly, one of the main sources of GAD could be WMD in Iraq.



Other versions of the Great American Dream include a startling discovery by a female American Senator, made popular by a youtube video, that claims “..we have seen societies being destroyed by homosexuality, which is more dangerous than terrorism..” . There you go. Generalized Anxiety Disorder again. Really? Can two men making out cause the fall of towers? or the absolute annihilation of countries?



I would love to change my impression about the world’s foremost superpower and believe me I’m trying. Maybe I’m not smart enough.

Yes the blog has a new name.



When I was a kid I was always afraid of learning science. I had this constant fear that one day, somebody would disprove the existence of the atom. That all we studied would just be a waste of time. I figured it would take someone really smart. But that wasn’t my biggest fear.



My biggest fear was that it would be me.



I was afraid of hammering on foundations I considered virtual. That all these castles we built in the air would all filter through as mere illusions cultivated by a string of creative storytellers. Only for me to snip their yarns and spin my own. In fact its a opinion I still harbour, however appalling it may be for a man of science and engineering.



Increasingly these days my questions divert to the intrinsic fabric that binds together all our desires. Our wish to work in jobs that pay and our pursuits for emotional reinforcement. Its not easy tossing these queries at yourself, they are questions you would avoid in a state of sanity. I have reasons to believe that all this peeking officially defines me as nihilistic. And although I have great respects for Nietzsche and his opinions, we must be aware of the fact that betrays him, he went mad.



Of course my philosophical positioning between bluntly Epicurean and the always-present but recently accepted Nihilism is quite a paradigm shift. One that required millions of pendulum laps, but evidently occurred much before my brain could absorb what nothing meant.



Another issue that has caught my fancy very recently is a challenge: to view life without time. To actually refute the existence of a past or a future. It sounds absurd and elongated contemplations may lead to the absolute disposal of the theory, it is exactly that issue that fascinates me. In fact, the entire concept is so absurd, I’m ready to think about it.



We are all puppets. And we all have strings, whose strings? Nobody knows. One of them could be yours itself. Only if we had the room to step back and look at everyone at the same time, we could deduce an approximate picture. Only if we had the room.

I’m like everyone. Just that I can see the strings. And I hope you see them too.

Don’t you hate it when people say “don’t you hate it?’ and you actually don’t hate it?

No I haven’t been learning Italian and yes those are the only 3 words I know. 2 if you discount Italiano.



Being a Punjabi is always satisfying. That’s because even if you believe in celibacy, you always have the food, to err.. please. And when I say that last night’s dinner was in Little Italy, I hope readers don’t relate the foreign fixture to the equivalence explained above.



After pulling down a place called MyLungi (or as the fancy folk call it, Melange), the Mumbai chain, Little Italy, opened up here. And all that Garfield really made me want lasagna.



Initial impressions were sadly not so great. The place still looks a lot like Melange, although to be fair, I don’t think a total makeover should’ve been on their list anyway. The decor was confused. It was not exactly Italian, and it certainly did not make me feel Italian. I must admit the Gujju birthday bash on the table next to us did not help.



My least favourite part comes now though. An employee came over, poured us water and lit a candle on the table, with a sadak-chap plastic lighter. The one that poor autowallas use. The cutlery was classy and everything on the table looked rich. And then the plastic lighter. These guys really know how to ruin stuff. The ambience was decent and quite likeable. And then I heard Bryan Adams. Italian retaurant, Italian food, difficult to comprehend menu and really nice Ohm speakers. Everything was right. Then they play Alanis Morisette. Then Celine Dion.

AAARGHH!!! Someone tell them all these are mainstream Canadian artists. That means they’re from Canada. Which is about 67million handspans from Italy. Some Italiano music would really add to the ambience. I’m not talking Opera and Pavarotti, but atleast some O sole mio.



The staff was well dressed, not Milan Fashionweek stuff, but good enough. The funny part was the when I asked a bloke what he’d recommend, the answers were B.13 and C.29. Quite convenient, would rather have them do their homework and learn names along with the numbers. And show people that you know names.



The food was brilliant. I absolutely loved it. And although all the pizzas being ordered tempted us, we stuck to pasta, lasagna and some farmer bread thing. Considering the prices I’d want everything to be perfect, no slip-ups. Not the case evidently. But the food was great, and the cooks deserve a pat on their backs.

You know what better than mindless first-person-shooter gore?

Mindless first-person-shooter gore with Thrash Metal in the background.

Welcome to the world of Machinehead+Quake. A world of double bass pounding rockets with plasma gun riffs.



A world I effing live in.



P.S: Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone, I’m supposed to be writing CAT tests on the comp.

You may find this hard to believe, but I actually like Vista.

lightning

And the new Windows Media Player!

God kills a kitten

In flight Bhel puri.

Himesh Reshammiya ringtones.

Reliance phones.

A Ba on my side.

More reliance phones.

Business talk.

Pilot bashing.

Tea enquiries.

More Himesh Reshammiya ringtones.

One million Bhai/Ben per second.

More Tea enquiries.

70 year-old men in flaming red shirts.

70 year old women in shorts.

Still more Himesh Reshammiya.

Bharuch Peanuts.

Wannabe vegetarians.

Alcoholic fantasies.

Lots more Himesh Reshammiya.

Reliance petrol.

Reliance cornershops.

Reliance contraceptives.

Reliance lingerie.

Fat people.

Very fat people.

Fat people walking to the park.

Rich fat people driving to Talwalkars.

Parrots.

Torrents.

My window.

My bathroom.

My friggin TV.

Guess who’s home, baby. Guess who’s home.

For once I will let something remotely related to Paris Hilton enter my blog. But it stops at remotely of course.



A few weeks back I chanced upon an offer to eat a butter biscuit. I’m not really saying that its a big thing, but a lot like the butteryfly (no pun intended) effect, it caused extreme chaos.

Now circumstances were such that my wish to take another biscuit from the kind offer-er would be cruel. So I set up on a Frodo-like quest to find the original butter biscuits.



As soon as I got back from work on that fateful day I walked into the closest bakery I found. Adyar it was. About 7 PM. This place had a decently young and seemingly active crowd (blame it on the IT). And as soon as I entered this place a whiff of virgin, just born biscuits absolutely permeated my senses. Its like the smell of someone you love, and how you’d identify it. I really never thought I love butter biscuits, till that day of course.