this is my newfound hobby. to hunt down blogspot posers from user profiles and puke on them. here's the first one..

"You're trapped in a well with a goat and a slinky. Describe how you will escape."

i'll wring the goat's neck, probably use the slinky as an aid coz it doesn't figure otherwise in my scheme of things. Once the goat is dead, i'll tear it open and bring out its 'stuff'. Next, i'll throw each part out of the well in a different direction. aah..the slinky might be of some help here...see! its all part of a bigger plan. on foresight, i'd do good to keep the eyeballs and some liver. tht done, i'll jus wait for the stench to draw people. In the meantime i'll rehearse a nice opening line when the first head peeps into the well. something like, "got a smoke?"

pot pourri

"tad ada dan" - got yet another dose of the movie 'Masti' while travelling on a bus from Cochin to B'lore. Whats with the travel operators-Masti distributors nexus? Interestingly i've started watching this movie 3 times before, all while on a bus, but never watched till the end.

"tad ada dan" - this time around it was a KSRTC(Karnataka) Volvo. Lots of interesting features on this one. They have seat belts for every seat. They give you small water bottles. They also give a white polythene to every passenger to cope with motion sickness. Now thats Tender loving care!!!

"tad ada dan" - got introduced to muveemix; an interesting site where u can mix videos and pictures to create interesting outputs. Its still in the development stage, but looks promising. the interface is pretty neat. I created a muvee-mix myself. check it out

caveat: absolutely random selection of videos.



till next time, take care and make sure u don't have to pull out u'r hair :)

A Volvo's martyrdom

this is an outburst on my part. a few hours back, a bad accident happened on airport road, bangalore, involving a volvo bus. Current reports suggest that 6 people died in the mishap. It also mentions that an irate mob that gathered at the spot, burnt the bus. This is extremely disgustful. With all due respect to the departed souls, why the hell does the bus have to be burnt? Goddammit, kill the erring driver if u have the guts, you illiterate, uncivilized bastards!! If the people died, its because of him, not the bus. If he too hasn't died in the accident, make sure he is incapable of ever controlling a steering wheel again, provided he is guilty.

Its frustration. thats what it is. Not one in the mob cares for the people who died. They in all probability are the losers who have nothing going right in their life and honestly think that the govt is fully to blame. They're just looking for avenues to vent out their angst. What better way than this?

The bus has no value when compared to the lives that were lost today ofcos, but does burning it justify anything or mean anything? These have been procurred at great cost for the convenience of the people, especially to encourage them to use public transport and thereby reduce traffic woes. Each of these volvo buses that you see on the roads easily costs above Rs 70 lakh. The money that went up in flames today would have been enuf to support the families of the dead for a long long time.

There's this other angle too to this. That of bangloreans being outnumbered by the influx of people from other states and the feeling that these 'outsiders' are usurping their homeland. IT being the biggest attraction in the city, software engineers are venomously branded 'outsider'. Thus anything that has to do with a higher standard of living gets associated with them and thereby a source of discontentment. The volvo buses are seen in the same light.

It doesn't stop here. It never will. One day there will be an implosion. God forbid that, amen.

Spit-o-mania

Geoff boycott said it right when he commented on Flintoff spitting on the grass. The match between India and England was a foregone conclusion soon itself; after the first few overs of india's batting. So it seemed to be a good time to delve into social issues..er..well spitting IS pollution!!

Its a common perception in india that the world is my spittoon and spitting indiscriminately is my birthright. Now combine that with another popular habit, namely chewing 'paan' (chewing the betel leaf along with tobacco)and you have a population, which to an outsider, seems to be suffering from a tuberculosis epidemic!!

Its a risky thing to walk/drive alongside a bus coz u never know when and from where that mass of spit will land on you. Its as if humans are competing with the birds at air bombing the earthlings.

Then you have this heroic connotation to spitting. Yes, if u see the hero of the film spit sideways, while looking at the villian from the corner of his eye, you can be rest assured that the bad guy is a goner.

And don't forget, Jack wooed Rose in Titanic by demonstrating his ability to spit to great distances.

All said and done, it is one of the most disgusting habits to be associated with a civilized population. ah did i say civilized? guess then we can be forgiven outright.

I don't see anyway to stop this. When peeing and pooping in public remain rampant, spitting hardly warrants a second thought. But!...thats something the human body has to do. What i fail to understand is the need for people to spit every now and then.

"Hey Geoff, join the club"

Hero Honda CBZ Extreme

I decided to check out this bike's specs seeing the huge amount of interest it has generated with 'pricey' ad campaigns ( pretty neat i'd say). Also, CBZ being among the avant garde of powerful street bikes, CBZ Extreme definitely warrants a look up. so here we go



Firstly the looks. A disappointment, i'd say, as it looks more or less like the Apache or as a good friend pointed out, Karizma, with its front bracket cover removed. It looks good just like its competitors do, not refreshingly good!!

Specs reveal the bike to be heavier than the pulsar(137Kgs) by 6Kgs at 143 Kgs (kerb weight) The CBZ as such was bigger than the pulsar, but was lighter, at 130 Kgs. With the CBZ Extreme, we're talking an increase of over 10 Kgs!! Handling woes, I predict.

Of course its more powerful than the pulsar 150, but less than the 180(14.4, 13.5 & 16.5 BHp in that order) and significantly more than the 12.6 BHp of the CBZ, which is expected, with the increased weight.

How its AMI (Advanced Microprocess Ignition) compares with the DTSI, time will tell. An Advantage with respect to looks is the stock alloy wheels for both the tyres(absent in the CBZ and the unicorn). the rear tyre comes with a stock tuff up tube as well. The petrol tank capacity is slightly lesser than that of the pulsar, but that hardly matters.

The CBZ was never known for its mileage. With no snazzy looks and a significantly heavier frame, mileage will be the clincher for this bike. It looks like it'll position itself between the 150 and 180 pulsar.

train of thought

today morning i went to book some railway tickets. I had quite a few to book, 6 to be precise (which i like to be :P) I entered the reservation centre within Koramangala BDA complex, went straight to the counter, got hold of a small stack of reservation forms and took my place in the queue. The sitting queues here are a welcome respite from those in allahabad (where i did my engg.), where one has to gamble on a particular queue and stand till his/her turn in blistering heat or numbing cold, the only options in allahabad. Lets not get into the more sordid details. Here in B'lore, however,u can sit down comfortably in a row of chairs and drag u'r arse (literally) to the next seat as the queue progresses. So that automatcally takes care of the cleaning. (:P) I reckon there were about 15 people ahead of me, which, i calculated, would give me enough time to fill up all the forms by the time it was my turn. Unfortunately ( Ironically), the guys behind the counter were pretty fast today and i stood facing a reservation clerk with one form fully filled, one almost filled and the remaining untouched. I gave him the finsished one and completed the other in the nick of time. I noticed some irritation but didn't think much of it and thought he wouldn't think much of the fact that i din't think much of it( he he...i know!!). Alas, he did and started blasting me for not having my forms filled up before pressing my sorry face against the perspex separating us. ahem! i still didn't think as much, nevertheless, said sorry and attempted to give him a barely completed third form. Nothin doing, he makes clear and i trudge back to the end of the queue ( very small luckily). I fill it up quickly and replay the incident in my mind while periodically sweeping the seat with thee arse towards the front of the queue. I could have been angry/rude to him then, which is what most people do. I didn't and opted to placate him. Obviously it didn't work. Now i can be rude when i face him again, coz technically he's got nothing to complain this time round. That was what my instinct had decided for me. I proposed to my mind to think more spiritually.

Ultimately my turn came and i went up to him, stuck my nose on the perspex, slipped in the remaining forms and said,

"sorry Sir, twas my mistake"

I looked upwards from the corner of my eye after saying so, at an imaginary thought bubble in which i could see ice breaking and his smiling face emerging into the foreground. It remained a virtuality. (mean bastard!!) He just took the forms and booked the tickets, maybe with a teeny (bordering on my imagination's tricks and reality) weeny bit of gentleness. Oh well! i thought, paid him and left the scene. while walking towards the parking lot, i chuckled at my new train of thought. My imagination had cooked up another possibility. While he was going about booking my tickets the second time, seeing that he's not pleased even by my submissive apology,i'd subtly ask him, "having a bad day at work?" he'd stop typing on the keyboard, stare at me for a second and burst out crying, "my wife left me y'day night for my neighbour"

:P