So why have I gone Jimi Hendrix on you? That is because a few days back I decided to jump of a plane. Ok, correction: Coupla days back, I jumped off a plane. Ok now, let me try a little more honesty here:  Coupla days back, I was strapped to a guy who jumped off a plane with a backpack. Now if you think being strapped to a guy who jumps off a plane that’s at 13,000 feet in the air is not a big deal, think again. As a wannabe comedian, I kept wondering what if a few cans and books ended up flying out of the backpack when the guy opens it. Not a pleasant thought.

Let me start at the inception (Ha! How clever am I?) of the idea. I was talking to my roommate about skydiving and he said San Diego would be a good place to do it. I looked at my intern events calendar which said we would all be there on the weekend of July 16th. A few phone calls and Outlook invitations got me nine other people who thought throwing yourself out of a plane was an awesome idea. A few more phone calls later we were all a go! We reached San Diego on Thursday night. I will not go into all the boring details of how San Diego is filled with pretty women and has tons of places to get pissed drunk and act silly. You can be rest assured that other than this suicidal jump, I spent my catching up on research papers.

Our skydiving appointment was on Sunday. We went to an airfield where Pacific Coast Skydiving was housed in a hangar. This place is run by a guy called Andy and his wife along with a bunch of licensed skydivers.  That’s where I found this little fella!

This was little Nathan, Andy’s 9 month old son. Happy little tyke!

After a while it was time to parasuit-up! (HIMYM lovers bow down to me here)

Do the walk…

I forgot to invite “Goose” to skydiving, also forgot my helmet, aviator glasses and the nice looks. Otherwise everything about this picture is “Top Gun”ny.

And off we go…

Oh did I forget to mention there is a video of this incredible feat? Scroll down if you would like to skip an extremely exaggerated version of the rest of the story and just see the video. For the ones who actually like good writing, let me continue. At the risk of stating the obvious, I am gonna go ahead and say that actually jumping out the plane is the most difficult part. Human beings are just not meant to do stuff like this. This is also the exact reason why it feels so exhilarating.

So how did I do it?  There were two factors. If you were in that rickety old WWII era plane, you would have probably felt that staying in the plane was much more dangerous than actually jumping out. It’s amazing how that thing managed to stay in the air. Secondly, if you are strapped to a guy who says to the pilot “Yo, we are out” and slides out of the open door without you knowing, trust me when I say you ain’t got much of choice.

How was it? It’s one of the most difficult things to explain. Free fall is something you cannot explain or will do a lousy job explaining. Once you hit maximum velocity, you hit a constant. It’s almost like you are stationary with a lot of wind blowing into your face. The fun is till you hit that velocity. Its like (10% of) taking a vertical plunge on a really fast rollercoaster. You might look at the video and wonder why I wasn’t screaming like a little girl. The fact is I don’t know. I was somehow completely at peace the moment I jumped (was dragged) out. Once I landed the feeling persisted. While the rest of my friends were feeling the adrenaline I mellowed down completely. Even today, couple days after the dive, I can still feel its effect. All I can say is that in some way this experience has affected me emotionally and spiritually. I am still trying to understand what it means and how it will impact my life. I am sure as hell doing it again. I am seriously considering going pro, time, place and money being the only concern.

Should you do it? I am gonna say “Hell, yeah!” to that. Just have faith in the instructor. These guys are professionals with around 4000-5000 jumps to their credit. Just so that you know, it takes only training and 24 jumps to get a license. They obsess about every little thing that is safety related. It’s almost an OCD kinda thing for them. At the end of it, it is really simple: you jump out of a plane and open a backpack.

Now, its showtime. Lights out!

The whole gang:

Standing Left to Right: Vikram, Srini, Ani, Edwin, Sebastian, Serban. Sitting Left to Right: Sangy, Manasa, Jenny

I kept imagining what all might happen if I just walked out of the terminal. I would go to my friend’s place. He would be damn happy that I was back and we would reminisce all night about how this situation was so similar to when I quit my nebulous military career and had sought asylum in his house. When I would go home, my parents, who would have been expecting an overseas call, would have gotten a rude shock. They would probably wait to hear me out, smile and then paint my face black, mount me on a donkey, take me all over the village and christen me the village idiot. This disturbing thought tilted the resultant force towards the baggage counter, towards which I slowly moved. Oh well, in addition to this, I had a busted ankle, owing to my heroics the previous night. You see, a little black dog that was too curious for its own good decided to make contact with my front wheel. I was probably too preoccupied thinking about the pretty lady sitting behind me. So in the last minute I did my spare-the-dog act only to crash hard on the road almost breaking my ankle, not to mention horribly bruising the gal too.

With such an illustrious start to the first leg of my journey (get it? first leg! Ha!), I had very little to expect from the rest of the journey. What should have been an exciting experience involving pretty air hostesses, female co-passengers and a show of my incredible bravado by saving everyone’s lives aboard that plane in a Desperado style was reduced to middle aged my-aunt-Molly air-dont-hostessess, two giggly high school girls and a beer drinking grandpa. I guess cool stuff happens only in the movies.

Quite soon came the first challenge of air travel - A Mensa puzzle called ‘Seat Belt’. I am not sure whether the point is to make people feel safe or just to confuse them with the intricasies of the seat belt. I believe I am a fairly intelligent guy, especially with stuff like this. It really hurt my pride when I had to ask the giggly girls how to strap the damn thing. Once that was done, the giggly girl next to me developed an affinity to a strategic part of my anatomy – The foot that had an ankle with a big gaping hole. Her foot banged against my ankle once. I turned from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde, the nice Mr Hyde however, and told her to watch it. Happened a couple of times more after a while. She was very sweet about it but the bad Mr Hyde was already at large.

“Oh I am so sorry I keep stamping your foot!”

You know, thats the thing with women! They think they can get away with anything by being sweet!

“Do that again and you’ll wish you had a parachute”, I said.

As the horrific realization dawned upon her face, I smiled to myself, patted myself on the back for a job well done. It was not really her fault. When Lufthansa says economy, they mean that with all their (cold) heart. I was just in a rotten mood because of all the pain (between you and me, I might have also been doing an impression of Dr. House). We were all set to take off. I somehow wasn’t excited at all. I guess take off/landing is something you would enjoy as kids or as pilots. I was however very very amused. There I was in a Lufthansa 747 (oooooooh!) which rattled as badly as a KSTRC red bus. All through the take off and quite a while after too, I had the this-is-freaking-unbelievable look. The point is when you have never air-travelled in twenty-three years of your life, the people who think your life is sad because of that tell you fairy tales about it. You know the “Its so huge! Its so smooth! They give us food!” stories. So naturally I had very high expectations. All nonsense, let me tell ye!

We reached Frankfurt after ten hours in that flying dungeon. The pilot said we had gotten an apron position due to which buses will take us to the terminal. I found the whole deal with the pilot very funny. He would give an elaborate description of everything he had to do. I was reminded of a Seinfeld standup act.

Pilot: “I am gonna be heading north. Take a 45 west via Dublin, and yadda yadda yadda”.

Passengers: “Huh? Umm.. Fine. Just end up to where it says on the ticket okay? You can do that?”

We got a nice blast of cold air as we got out of the plane. Very refreshing that. The bus took us to the terminal where couple of guys I was travelling it decided to tinker around with the pay phones to make a call home. The rest of us sat around making small talk. I was having a nice time trying to identify the nationality of each person passing by in front of me. As I went Indian, American, Korean, Indian, Indian, African, Arab, Euro, I heard an airport attendant talking very slowly in English to a woman who apart from so obviously not understanding a single word, was also smiling ridiculously. I don’t know why he thought talking slower would help. This was my chance to regain my glory that the uneventful flight so unfairly deprived me of.

“Do you need some help translating?”, I said.

“You can do that? Please!”, he said.

“Please tell her that she has to walk from here till that point there till a colleague of mine comes to fetch her”, he told me as I approached.

The lady was still smiling. It was the I-donno-shit kinda smile. She said she knows only Malayalam – the one language I had no clue about. Sweet irony. I reasoned that Mallu folks must have a reasonable understanding of Tamil so tried that. She gave me the nod that school kids give when they don’t know what’s going on but they want you out of their face.

“You can’t talk to her?, asked the guy.

“No I can’t. Its not so simple. Where I come from, we have around thirty different languages”, I said.

By this time, the guy who the attendant was waiting for had arrived. The attendant heaved a sigh of relief as the lady left and so did I. I tried to make my exit as inconspicuous as possible when I heard “Thank you!” behind me. I couldn’t help but mutter ‘for nothing’ to myself. A while after this little event, the guys were back. We decided to head to our gate where we had to rendezvouz with another dood. We met up with him and boarded our plane. The flight to Atlanta was as uneventful as its predecessor. The most interesting thing that happened was the flight not getting permission to land because of which the pilot showed us the bird’s eye view of Atlanta for a little while.

As we got out of the plane, I figured, it was going to be a long before I got out of the airport. I asked my friend to look for a wheel chair. He found an attendant with a wheel chair. After a little bit of explaining, she looked at me and said “Alright, hop on!” This nice lady got us through immigration on a priority basis. I made a mental note to feign an foot injury the next time I needed preferential treatment. In addition to this, all of us got a ride in the elevators too! We had to pick up our baggage after this.

“How many bags ya got?”, she asked.

“Three. Two suitcases and one air bag”, I said.

Everytime a bag appeared she would look at me for a sign. Once I showed her my bag, she would go and pick it up for me. She did an awesome job with that simply because each one of those weighed twenty-three kilos. Watching her pick that up put my pride on the line! The rest of the guys were running around frantically for their baggage. Meanwhile this lady went and got a trolley and loaded it up with my baggage. We were waiting for the others to follow suit. After a while, I guess the lady thought they were all bungling and decided to throw in a helping hand. Soon we were on our way to customs. This woman, she was pushing me with one hand and 70 kilos of baggage with the other. After a little while she stopped, huffing and puffing.

“Why don’t you get the baggage? I’ll work the wheel chair”, I offered.

“You do that, they fine my ass!”, she chided ferociously.

That was enough for me. She would have made my mother jealous. There I sat with my arms folded across my chest. Our group split at customs. I was carrying nothing but a few of the guys had stuff to declare.

“Yo friends are gonna take a while here”, she said as the customs people made them open their baggage.

“Lets move along. I’ll wait for them in the lobby”, I said

As we went along, I decided to make small talk you to cut the tension.

“So you been in Atlanta long?”

“Too long”, she said. This was also probably an indication for me to shut it.

From the lobby, we had to take an underground train to reach the main terminal. You see, Atlanta airport has this concept of ‘Concourses’ and there are six of them. My flight landed in Concourse ‘E’ (the last one) and I had to go to Concourse ‘T’ (the first one) to get out of there. Ergo underground train. The lady loaded up my luggage on another belt that would take it to Concourse T.

“I can take it from here”, I said, once we reached the lobby.

“Are you sure?”, she asked.

“Yeah. I’ll just wait for them to catch up with me and then we’ll take the train. Thank you for your help”.

“Sir, are you aware that I accept tips?”, she said.

At first I thought I did not hear it right.

“What??”, I exclaimed, almost daring her to say what I thought I heard her say.

“ARE-YOU-AWARE-THAT-I-ACCEPT-TIPS?”, she said slower, louder, pronouning each and every syllable.

“Er.. No.. Umm.. Let me go get some change”, I blurted out.

As I went to the exchange to get some change, the realization of what had just happened dawned upon me. By the time I got change, the whole episode started to seem funny. I realized that I had gotten totally conned by those words. My don’t-be-a-cheapskate instincts had kicked in before I knew what was happening. All in all, I felt she deserved it for everything she had done and that she probably had to poke and prod us types to be sensitive to her requirements, in which, I am sure, she found no pleasure doing.

“How does that work for you?”, I asked as I handed her five dollars.

“That would be fine. Thank you very much sir”.

As we reached the main lobby of concourse T, I found my friend, Nags, waiting for us. A relative of my roommate, Ravi, had also come. They had all been waiting for almost two hours at the terminal. Ravi gave us the good news that we had our apartment ready. About the apartment – This was something we all had worked really hard on. Getting a apartment booking while sitting back home in India is no joke. After looking through countless websites and reviews we finalized on an apartment and got our people to check it out. Once they were happy with it they made a booking. However till the very end we were not sure whether we will get to move in as soon as we arrived. There seemed to be last minute hiccups creeping in everytime we thought it was on track. So this was really awesome news indeed.

I stared in awe as I entered the apartment. Fully carpeted, air-conditioned, kitchen with a microwave, oven, dishwasher and a cooking range, all through the day hot water.. Wow! Lap of luxury it was really! Beyond this, I decided that I will explore further later. My foot was in pretty bad shape after almost 24 hours of continuous stress. I fell asleep as the guys went out for some desi food. The pain I was in kind of freaked the guys out. I decided to sleep it off again. Had a very important day coming up.

The Georgia Tech day.

Stay tuned…

It was late in the night as usual. This time I was returning from from my Ninjutsu class. I had to take a different route to drop off a friend. We were generally talking when cops stopped us on the other side of a sharp turn. This time these were actual ‘Maamas’ or ‘Pandus’ (if you are from Mumbai), not traffic cops.

What followed was in Kannada. I will translate it to English to the best of my abilities.

Scene:

Two cops in khaki uniforms. One middle aged and one in his mid 20′s. Barricades on the road.

Younger cop: Show me your Licence and Registration

I have this habit of switching between several bags, based on the mood of the day and the purpose of the bag itself. More often than not I forget to transfer my bikes papers while changing bags. It was one such day. I rummaged for a good ten minutes before I declared I didn’t have them.

Me: I don’t have my papers.

Younger cop: Oh!

I thought I heard Muttley laughing.

Younger cop: Where are you guys going?

Me: I am dropping him at Mahalaxmi Layout and then going to Banashankari

Younger cop: Ooooh! Ok.. Banashankari! My my thats quite far away.

Me: Yes it is!

Younger cop: So what do you guys do?

Me: We are students.

Younger cop: Where?

Me: PES Institute of Technology. Engineeirng

Younger cop: Oh! So you guys are students?

Me.. Er..

After  a few more rounds of pointless questions and answers we came to the crux of the matter

Younger cop: So what do you want to do?

Me: What can I do?

Younger cop: We are expected to report anyone not carrying papers, not to mention confiscating the vehicle and taking it to the police station. But then, you have to go a loooong way! So what do you want to do?

Me: WHAT CAN I DO!

Younger cop: Your choice saar!

Me: What choice? For choice there has to be a ‘this’ or a ‘that’. Where is the ‘that’?

Younger cop: Saar, you see, as per procedure you have to surrender your vehicle and take it from the station next day.

Me: I obviously don’t want that. So what do you want me to do?

Younger cop: Your choice saar!

Me: Do you want money?

Younger cop: Did I ask you for money?

Me: No, I am not really sure wbat you are asking for!

Younger cop: Saar, we have to report incidents like this.

Me: You are not giving me an option. Confiscate the bike or what? If you give me a receipt, I am ready to pay the fine.

Younger cop: No saar!

Me: In that case, let me go!

For the first time, the older cop spoke. There was a moment of silence where we realised that the ‘Godfather’ had made his decision. Would it be ‘take care of them’?

We waited in anticipation…

“This is a bloody waste of time. We can’t go around confiscating bikes of all buggers who drive around without their papers! We have to take the damn bike, go the to station, file a complaint! Who the hell will do all that! Just let them go!”

Yep, truely an offer we couldn’t refuse…

People walking…

People running…

People yelling…

Horns blowing loudly…

People in Khakis yelling…

Durga! Durga! Durga!

Mungloor! Mungloor! Mungloor!

Sringeri, Sringeri! Koppa, Koppa!

Banni Banni Banni…! Bhadravati, Shimoga, Shimoga…!

I see an old face…

She catches my eye…

She is puzzled…

“I know this guy… Oh yeah!”

She has an awkward expression…

Makes me smile…

She smiles back…

“Should I talk to him…?”

She is not sure…

Finally…

She raises her hand and mimes ‘Goodbye’…

So do I…

Amused, I wonder…

Why did she run away…?

“But that is what happens to you!”

Says the voice within my head…

Why didn’t I talk…?

Why did I ‘bulb’ out…?

“Sir, this is the wrong ticket”, said the bus conductor…

At this point, I snapped out of this sing-song mood and looked at my ticket.

Bhadravati – Bangalore on 8th May, 2009.

“Give me the Bangalore – Bhadravati ticket”, he says, under the assumption that I was not a total moron and hence should have just mixed up the ‘return’ ticket with the ‘onward’ ticket. The truth dawned upon me and shone on the conductor’s big bald head.

Suddenly…

WAIT A MINUTE..! YOU ARE A MORON…!

Background with drum roll and trumpets…

WE HAVE A WINNER…!

Fanfare…

ALL HAIL THE BULB KING…!

With this new found honour came a dreaded realization. I had to now board a rickety Karnataka Saarige bus, more commonly known as Red Bus. Curses to the dyslexic guy at the KSRTC booking desk, who I am sure heard me say ‘Bangalore to Bhadravati’ but ended up booking ‘Bhadravati to Bangalore’.

What followed in the journey that followed.. Er.. never mind… was a strategic how-much-of-the-window-should-be-open battle with the guy on the aisle seat. I proposed (no gay jokes here please) and he disposed. Vice versa applied too. I felt I should have the final say because- COMMON! I HAVE THE FREAKING WINDOW SEAT! After a couple of darkness piercing dirty glances at him, he gave up but resorted to plan B. I suddenly woke up to find all windows sealed shut. I opened it and kept a watchful eye on the perpetrator. The moment I closed my eyes, the windows magically shut themselves again. I could NEVER catch him in the act. The rest of the night went in plotting his downfall.

After six hours of mind numbing strategies, counter strategies and retreats, we stuck upon a win-win solution.

I had reached my stop. I got off the bus…

]]> http://rumpelstilkskin.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/the-bulb-king/feed/ 2 antitalented http://rumpelstilkskin.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/ivoted/ http://rumpelstilkskin.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/ivoted/#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:03:35 +0000 antitalented http://rumpelstilkskin.wordpress.com/?p=141 ]]> Pardon the title for sounding like an Apple product. A huge part of the time I devote on blogs is spent on thinking about a cool name for the post. You might be very well aware, longer times spent hardly ever assure you a good name. If not, read through the title names and tags of all my posts.

I digress.. sigh.. The point of this blog is to prove to all you suckers who did not vote that I, Anirudh Venkataramanan, am a ‘responsible’ citizen.

That sounded a little too much even by my standards. You seriously cannot expect a person to struggles to keep simpler elements of his life together, to play a responsible role in deciding who will run the country. That being the idea, I skipped through my days in bliss, throwing a smug expression at people who ran around in uncontrollable hysteria, trying to get their voter ID done. Just yesterday a colleague of mine happily told me that his name was in the final voters’ list. “Good for you!”, I said.

He came back to me later and asked me to check if my name was there. I said “No dude, bullshit, bullshit, more bullshit“. At his insistence. I opened http://ceokarnataka.kar.nic.in and searched for my name.

“Ha! What did I tell you!”, I exclaimed in mild triumph as my friend looked on.

He looked at the screen and said “Hey, they make all kinds of gruesome spelling mistakes with your name. Try all combinations of letters in your name. Put it backwards if necessary!” I was  looking for a second victory lap when I saw the screen show ‘Aniruda Venkataramanan, House #73′. My first reaction was surprise, for obvious reasons. Second was outrage. How the hell could they see a ‘h’ as an ‘a’?? IDIOTS!

After this, it felt like my friend had made the decision for me. He said, “Good! Make a note of your part number, serial in part number, details, details, more details“. I thought about it for a long time. Thought I shouldn’t let me laziness dictate me, procrastination should be procrastinated, (fill this space with  more impossibilities), etc etc. However I decided to fall asleep in the middle of that thought. Got up the next day and went to work as usual.

My friend had gotten up at the crack of dawn to finish his duties. This is what he showed me so proudly. In this pic however, he looks more like someone who is proud of the finger that does all the nose digging very efficiently.

I told him that I hadn’t voted. If he was disappointed, he did not show it. After a while, he came back to me and said. “Today is a day off anyway. Why don’t you go and vote?”

Subtly persistent this fella, I tell you! At that point, it somehow seemed like a good idea. Off lately I have been jumping at every opportunity to skip office. So I took off, came to my place and finished the voting by simply displaying my PAN card (and pressing the button of course). The whole process was horrifyingly simple. I have my own little finger to show people now.

Too bad its not the finger I usually show. Would have been a perfect excuse.

P.S.

My sincerest apologies to Prasanna for the atrocious ‘finger pointing’ above. He gets all the credit for making me get off my behind..

I would like to take a moment here and say how thrilled I am to have been rejected by all crap colleges only to be admitted by one of the finest. I call this phenomenon ‘Freak Luck’, best accompanied by arrogant confidence that you can display by applying to a college like Tech. Of course, I also have a sneaky feeling that I have been selected to pull down the class average and make the other students look good. If you are thinking that you should contact me and find out what my profile was, think again.

Lessons learnt in the past year:

1. If you want a good score in GRE, pay attention to English from Kindergarten. Math is in your blood anyway. Mugging won’t help. Don’t argue. Go read my older post.

2. Admission is a black box. You can at the most make a reasonable estimate on your chances. There is not hard and fast rule. The logic for selection or rejection is never obvious. You will probably cook up some reason to ease your conscience.

3. Its probably a good idea to send ‘Certificate of financial resources’ along with the main application for colleges ranked 20 and above. This somehow increases your probability of admission even though most colleges will deny this.

4. Issues and options regaring financing your education are more intricate than income tax returns.

5. Its not a good idea to panic about admissions and bug everyone on your IM list or the person in the next cubicle at work for that matter.

6. I shouldn’t be writing this until I am sure I will be going. Would be mighty embarrassing otherwise.

Guess I haven’t learnt some lessons fully yet…

I don’t know how every nationalized bank has a at least one ‘healthy looking’  lady. Its very likely that this is the same lady who will tell you that your hair is too long or that you are wearing inappropriate clothes (if you are a girl). I often wonder how they come to the conclusion that they have a say in a random stranger’s life who after all just wants the money which employs these bank folk in the first place! Sometimes I feel that they diss customers on purpose so that they never come back to withdraw their cash. Far-fetched, but not impossible.

I inherit my ‘Panga’ capabilities from my mum. If someone tries to push her around, she switches from her ‘nice lady’ mode to the ‘fire breathing dragon from the fiery depths of Mount Doom’ mode. When that happens no mortal can survive it (except my dad. Strange how he does it. That is what marriage must be all about. I guess my abilities are also a bit toned down because of this). My first real experience with a bank was when I was out on my own in college. Had to bank. Can’t keep your money in a sock forever. In the case that you don’t know me, I am sure one the readers can vouch of my PR skills. I have this scintillating charm that makes the person in front of me dislike me, almost instantaneously.  It does help when people you are dealing with are nitwits, but then when all these nitwits group up or hold important positions in key commercial and financial establishments, it becomes slightly problematic.

Scene 1:

Normal day, normal weather, normal everything, abnormal healthy lady at bank counter. Long queue of students waiting to withdraw money. Enter me, join the queue. Healthy lady is walloping all the terrified little kids for trivialities like asking too many questions, wrong date, wrong amount, etc. etc.. I somehow felt I would be pulled into the black hole too (the usage of black hole here has got nothing to do with her size… or race for that matter!). Surprisingly, everything went smooth. She did not say a single thing. I assumed this must have been because I made no mistake. While I was busy mocking the rest of the crowd for their low IQ, she handed me my cash.

There was one 500 buck note that had scotch tape running across its midsection.

If you have lived in India for more than a month (living in 5 stars hotels does not apply) you would know what I am talking about. My dad used to say that a note like that should be returned to the bank in exchange for a new note.  I guess he missed the part where the bank gave one to me.  However, common sense prevailed. I decided to give it back.

Me: Err, Ma’am could you please give me another note?

Healthy lady: Why?

Me: (Displaying the note)

Healthy lady: Bah! Boys these days… No respect for elders, no concern, no this, no that…

Me: ????

Scene 2:

That was a point in my life when ‘Eye for an eye’ was my everyday principle.  Hence, a couple of more petty incidents after this helped me develop a notorious reputation at that bank. I was waiting to get my ATM card so that I did not have to see her face ever again. Buzz around the campus was that a new stack of ATM cards had come in. I naturally went in to enquire.

Me: Has my ATM card arrived?

Healthy Lady: No.

Me: Oh.. You could tell just like that?

Healthy lady: (dirty look) What is your account number?

Me: 100825

Healthy lady: (looks up a list and is visibly cheerful now). Your ATM card was amongst a bunch of cards that was lost by the courier services. Write a letter to the bank manager requesting a new card.

Muaahaahaaahaaahaaaaahaa!!!

Sss.. you ssshall nevvverr gett yourrr carrrrd.. sss…

Scene 3:

One day I decided that I had had enough. I walked into the bank to close the account.

Me: I would like to close my account

Healthy lady: Hallelujah! Write a letter to the branch manager!

I sat and wrote that letter, barged into the managers office and in a business like tone said ‘I would like to close my account’ and pushed the letter to him.

Manager: Are you graduating?

Me: What do you mean?

Manager: Are you closing you account because you are graduating?

Me: No.

He looked up for the first time. He was a bit astonished.

Manager: Why are you closing your account then?

Me: Because I don’t like your bank.

We dog-eyed for a while. Eventually he called it quits, probably because he realised that being branch manager meant he had to eventually stop eye balling me and return to real work. I, on the other hand, had no such commitments.

-Epilogue-

I called my mum.

Me: Ma, I closed my bank account.

Mum: Oh ok. What are you going to do for money?

Me: Send me a cheque ma…

Mum: How will you encash the cheque?

Me: Er.. Bank?

This realisation made me take pictures of mt keyboard before I started pulling it apart. Lacking a high-res camera, I had to take three pictures of three different parts of the keyboard.

part 1

part 2

part3

Now if your keyboard looks anything like this, read on.

Here’s how you dismantle the keyboard.

1. Flip your keyboard upside down and unscrew the back panel.

2. Pull out all the keys from the front panel with a screw driver or a kitchen knife.

If you are a normal person, it should now look like this.

A close up...

3. Now as you see in the picture, there are small black  screws holding the front panel down. Unscrew to dismantle. Dust off whatever you can. Use an old toothbrush to clean. After this, it should look something like this.

4. Give the front panel and the keys a nice scrubbing with detergent. Its easier to put all the keys in a tumbler (Washing machine) and wash. Plug the front panel back in.

Cleaned up and front panel plugged in

5. Put in all the keys one by one… and voila! Whiter than snow while herself…!

As good as new...

I am not really sure how but the keyboard started working! Did have some side effects though. The space bar being a big ass key is different from the other keys. It comes with two supports on either extremities. Ended up breaking those when I tried removing it (I told you so…!)

Things to note:

1. Don’t screw it up and blame me. Do this at your own risk. Also, it helps if you are not scared of lizards and spiders and aren’t disgusted by cobwebs.

2. Do not put the whole keyboard in the tumbler.

3. Do not wash the printed circuit board of the keyboard. Just the keys and the front panel will do.

4. And no, I DO NOT take contracts to clean up keyboards. Any attempts to entice me into it will be considered totally uncool.

English professor from the University of Phoenix told his class one day: “Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read that has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.”

The following was actually turned in by two of his English students, Rebecca and Gary.

Rebecca:
At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating. If she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

Gary:
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. ” A.S. Harris to Geostation 17″, he said into his transgalactic communicator. “Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so fa-” But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

Rebecca:
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon. “Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,” Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. “Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?” she pondered wistfully.

Gary:
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mother ship launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenceless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty, the Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.

Rebecca:
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

Gary:
Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered, tedious, neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. “Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F–KING TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I’m such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!”

Rebecca:
Asshole.

Gary:
Bitch.

Rebecca:

F__K YOU – YOU NEANDERTHAL!

Gary:
Go drink some tea, whore.

Professor:
A+ – I really liked this one.

]]> http://rumpelstilkskin.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/104/feed/ 2 antitalented http://rumpelstilkskin.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/vidyarthi-bhavan/ http://rumpelstilkskin.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/vidyarthi-bhavan/#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:26:22 +0000 antitalented http://rumpelstilkskin.wordpress.com/?p=79 ]]>

You are most likely to be familiar with the topic of this post if you are a Bangalorean living in the Basavangudi/Banashankari vicinity. For those who aren’t, a quick introduction. Vidyarthi Bhavan is a hotel in Bangalore that many people swear by. It is second only to MTR (or any famous restaurant that is always crowded in your city) on its prices and the kinda crowd (the picture makes this obvious don’t it??) it attracts. The most sought after dish here is the ‘Masala Dosa’.

I have been in Bangalore for about five years now and during this period I have heard several conversations on just how ‘divine’ the masala dosa in Vidyarthi Bhavan is. The absolute unconditional foodie that I am, I always look out for places like these. In fact my friends and I go looking for crowded restaurants whenever we go out, the idea being the more crowded the place is, the better the food is if not cheaper!

Somehow with Vidyarthi Bhavan, my luck seemed bad. Whenever I went, they were closed. They close one day a week and the lazy ass that I am, I never bothered to make a note of it. However it is still strange how I landed up there every single time when they were closed for the week. Tried again a few months back, they had a banner up that said that they were closed for renovation.

Finally, I got my chance last week.

As I entered, I couldn’t but help thinking that I might have entered a hospital or a municipal office but not a restaurant. ‘Crowded’ would have been a gross understatement. It was almost as if this was only place within miles that had any kind of food in a famine ridden country. Normally in any restaurant, you would see people sitting and eating and maybe one bunch waiting in the lobby. Here people used the government bus funda: Stand next to a person who is sitting and is most likely to get off at the next stop and stare menacingly at anyone else who might try to beat you to it. Every table had four people eating and four more standing next to them, breathing down their necks. I don’t like crowds and totally hate it when I am alone in the midst of one. But I decided to join the group exercise just to see what the hullaballoo was all about.

It was pretty comical a scene out there. Father and son playing rock-paper-scissors, an anxious middle aged woman trying her best to see her entire family was accomodated, a bunch who had split and landed up in different tables, trying to sustain their previously interrupted conversation by yelling out to their counterparts across the hall, the waiters yelling ‘jaaga jaaga jaaga!’, random yells of ‘chutney!’ ‘sambar!’ ‘coffee!’ ‘tea!’, one bunch telling of another how they had waited for hours to find seats, the other responding with like-I-care expression, a mother and daughter who seemed overwhelmed with the crowd, just standing there, frozen, not knowing what to do, hoping that a knight in shining armour will come to their rescue…

I finally managed to find a seat. I ordered one vada, one masala dosa and one tea. The vada was expensive and it sucked. The masala dosa was expensive and tiny (if you want the exact dimensions, 5 inch diameter), but pretty decent taste wise. The tea was expensive and it sucked. I guess whoever made it did not notice the big gaping hole in the sieve he used. One gulp and my mouth was full of unfiltered tea powder.

All in all, a not so pleasent experience. Definitly not worth waiting an hour for. There are tonnes of better cheaper places the serve much better food and adequately filtered tea!