Excursions

I am a coder and a writer. And it is absolutely painful to have these two personalities live within you.

When the coder wants to code, the writer is checking his choice of words or the structure of comments. Or the depth of documentation -- the writer wants the coder to write an essay. The coder wants to bloody put bullet points, command followed by command. What ends up happening is I take minutes to name one method because the writer didn't like my choice of verb. Urghh!

On the other hand, the coder makes the life miserable for the writer in me. All the writer wants to do is focus on penning words together. Get coherent, and impactful. And all the writer is whispering in his ears is, "Look at that font and the colour scheme of the editor. That doesn't look nice, right? What if there is a better editor? What if you make one?"

All the writer wants to do is read intently, and there is the coder shouting at him, "Why isn't your website this beautiful? Look how efficiently it uses JavaScript? Or doesn't use it at all." Anything and everything can get the coder excited.

Boy, given the pain this causes, I'm surprised am still a coder by profession and a writer by hobby. I, at times, feel they could very well kill each other one day.

I have a pretty common first name (or given name as it is called at some places). It’s so common that even the movie characters with my name have rarely had any significant part to play. I believed my surname was uncommon, making the combination unique. But I was wrong with my assumption – boy there are so many Amit Gawande’s out there on Facebook, the “universal phonebook”. Yo namesake morons, why are you still using that app?

The names from European countries always fascinate me ¹. Every name sounds so unique. And has such a complex tone to it – it’s new every time I hear it. And if I think I’ve already heard it, they adorn the spelling with an extra “z”. Fantastic!

Having a common first name sucks. Having it end with an equally common surname sucks more. Good luck getting high up the search results list ². I dread creating my account on any new service that is launched. I rarely get a username with just my first name – there is already a developer building that bloody service. With surname? Nah. With the first letter of surname? Nah. With a number or underscore in there? Yep, that’s what you get.

That also the reason why I respect the service where I could get that username with just my first name. Uhm!

Of course, if your aim in life is just to get lost in the crowd, be not know or just be, have a common name. But who wants that? Right? RIGHT?

It was second incident in last 2 weeks when I had to select a mobile number for myself. Now this activity may sound simple and non-important. But I always find it an extremely confusing experience.

Think about it. In front of you are the numbers “available” for you to select as your contact number. Now first thing you have to make sure is the number should be at least easy enough to remember yourself so you do not have to open your contact list every time someone asks for your number.

Now I always find one which is easy enough to remember myself. But it so happens that the way I say the number is always different from how the person who listens to it utters.

To elaborate, I speak the number this way 4 2345 85 15. (Spaces are the pauses I take.) So simple right. Now this is how the other person repeats it 423 458 515. I am like what the hell. It takes me few seconds to realise both of them are the same.

So the aim is to, if possible, select a number which is easy to remember/recognise, whatever way one utters it. And I very rarely find one.

That’s not all. Lets move back to the initial situation. As I said, in front of you are the numbers “available” for you to select. Available. For you. Only these numbers.

So basically these are the numbers which no one, who has selected his contact number earlier, found easy enough to remember. And I have to select one from them. I could, till date, never prevent this thought from entering my mind.

In the end, I always end up selecting some number which neither I, nor someone else could fathom at the same time.

PS: Just received a compliment of my number being awesomely simple. So mission accomplished the second time.

Cake was being cut. Everybody stood around the “oh-am-one-more-year-old” guy and all of them were like “cmon-cut-that-cake-now-you-moron”. I stood there hoping that the cursed words do not leave some jackass’ mouth. And they did, against my wish..

“Happy B’day to you… happy b’day to you..<blah blah.. blah blah..>”

Now 80% percent did hum along the first “Happy B’day to you”. The number, however, dropped exponentially after that. The last “Happy B’day to you” was wished just by a single dumbo. Big time embarrassment I tell you.

See I am not being cynical here. I am equally happy that this person neared his death by one more year. But the problem is no one sings that song with the feelings it was actually meant to have. Plus the guy for whom the song is being sung is equally embarrassed as those who sing that song. So question arises why sing it at all.

Moreover I always felt whoever sung that song for the first time had something anti-asian boiling in his mind. Why the hell will he compose the third line the way he did then?

Confused? Well you haven’t sung, on top of your voice, “Happy b’day dear Harmoninderpal or Au or Venkataramana” then. I have and let me tell you, it is very effort taking. Need an indication of how effort taking and difficult it is? Well try and make Nisha Kothari act.

So the point am trying to make is stop singing this song. The melody was picked up from some song sung by two kindergarten school teachers in some late 1800’s and it does not suit this age now. Go read details here. Stop being moronic and make all the people involved, cake cutters and cake eaters, embarrassed. Birthday celebrations would be lesser pathetic this way.

PS: This song singing always reminds of the way we used to hum the “maine pyar tumhise kiya hain..” song during antakshari sessions in front of the girls, which were the ‘things’ we used to interact with just during such sessions back then. Embarrassing, way embarrassing!

PPS: The key to the “since 1912” part in title is in that link I shared for this moronic song’s history. Go grab a bite.

Since I arrived in Sydney, this question has been discussed and fought and betted over so many times among we friends. I mean the moment a clearcut-non-firangi girl is spotted, the next question that pops out is “Is she Indian?”.

The reason is simple. Everyone wants to be on top of his face reading skills. ‘I see them and I identify them’ is what most would want to boast about. No specific take away expected, just a self-satisfaction. And anyone and everyone is ready to bet a coffee or a lunch or a dinner for proving his reign over the so-called skill.

Now gone are the days when it was assumed that if someone bets, he must be right. So no one agrees with other, rather he too bets along. Thus these bets always end up being unverified “my-word-to-his” bets.

But that no way reduces the fun in such bets. The theories each side has to defend his view are just innovative, patentable always. Every single aspect, the way she talks, walks, stands, puts on makeup or does hair, is used as basis. You see basics have to be strong every time.

However today was different. Another such case was spotted and a bet initiated. This time however both were determined to prove he is right. And decided they will go enquire and sort this out once and for all.

Now imagine a situation, when a couple of guys with a bearded attire, resembling a “just-woke-up-hungry-ready-to-pounce” looks, walk to a simple unknown girl and query “Are you Indian?”. Both have the “I-would-win” hope filled looks in their eyes.

What can a girl respond in such situation other than a straight “no”. I guess she would negate anything these guys say or ask including “Are you a girl?”. Well that didn’t solve the bet. In came the defence, “The way she said no straight away? She has to be Indian”.

So for me the bet remained unresolved though I commended their courage to carry this attire with such confidence in front of an unknown unidentified girl. The question still remained, “Is she Indian?”

PS: Girls from china, japan, taiwan, malaysia etc are out of discussion here. I don’t want to sound any way racist, but I will just say we all name them under one category and move along. They would be having there own internal discussion about their origins the moment they spot one.

PPS: Such discussions happen even in India when the skill move to a state level, i,e read a face and guess the state.

The beasts called elevators end up pissing me off every single time. I had rambled about these dumb asses earlier here. Go grab a bite.

If you have read that post, you will know that the ramblings mentioned earlier were particularly about those ill-chipped lifts of that underdeveloped guest house. But now I am convinced these shameless creatures are programmed to torture their inmates.

I mean think about it. What are the decisions these lifeless steel rooms have to make.. (Inspiration)

• Where do the people want to go?



• Where they are and where each floor is?



• What strategy they need to make so that they are cursed the least?

First decision is pretty simple. We make that decision for you, you bugger. You see those glowing numbers on the number pads we keep on pressing one after other? Yeah that is where we want to go. As quick as possible.

Second decision has a whole lot of mechanics behind it. I mean there are some shafts and then there are some holes on some vertical tapes and then there is some counting involved. I would surely like to go in details, but I don’t want to. So I won’t. Visit that inspiration link you see above.

However the part that puzzles me the most is the strategy because that’s when these supposed-to-be angels stop being ones and enter the devil’s land. Now these buggers have to strategise where to go, when to go and how to go. And I absolutely feel that they are not wired to do so. I mean how else can you explain the simplest of the things these dudes screw up.

How many times have you waited for an elevator to scroll right from 50 meters below basement up to the 14th floor when his other buddy is resting right at the 15th floor? Do they have some gentlemen’s agreement where one simply says “Can’t you see sucker I have just finished carrying 6 fat asses up and down thrice between just 2 floors. I am tired now and you can for sure handle these dumbos”.

How many times have you jailed yourself in a jam packed elevator as it drools itself down the shaft stopping and opening at each floor. If you are outside, those seemingly endless few seconds you spend when you apply all your permutation skills to see if you can possibly fit in any of the available gaps inside before giving up are just killing.

There are many other plights of these long travels between floors. But you see the point is the where, when and how part has to be strategised properly.

I will pen down the requirements for you. An elevator, for minimum, has to

• follow quickest path to you and quickest path to where you desire to go.



• open only if it can intake any of the fat asses, close and start the journey as soon as everyone hops on.



• understand when some mischievous fatty calls it, but does not want to hop on.



• not kill my mobile signal.



• close the doors faster so people get less chance to stop the elevator and say the meaningless “S” word again.

These are just a few suggestions that can make this floor travel not a sucking experience after all.

PS: On an unrelated note, why the hell does every single elevator has to have mirrors? Who wrote this unwritten law first? It just gives me one more chance for not letting the elevator know where I want to go and follow a journey to a floor undesired with this lifeless but life sucking beast.

Tomorrow I am going to travel through the time to the future me. It’s been long that I was planning for one such tour. However just for the need of the future currency, I had to postpone my travel to tomorrow.

In a moment, my friend will return from his visit. I have asked him to smuggle some future currency back to the past. To maintain the time conundrum, I will believe that, as of today, I do not know if he does bring it in. (However the fact remains that I have made the travel tomorrow. So this should clarify the doubts over whether he did. He did. Successfully. Believe me!)

Anyway there was some small calculation mistake while carrying the digit forward, which I normally do, that made me end up a day behind where I was supposed to end at, i.e. tomorrow. Now I do not want to disturb the normalities in here, the past world that is. So I will prefer hiding in this panic room and simply pen down my experiences of this drive.

The first and foremost observation, technology has spoiled the human race in there man. People only speak in command prompt queries. A sentence is no longer than 3 words, the longest (and oldest) being “I am sorry”. (And even there, people hardly mean it!)

Every single software is run by Google and hardware designed by Apple. There is an antique building called “Microsoft Live Centre”. I heard it has hanged in the messy green screen of death that displays a Matrixsque live feed of random numbers. Some say it has gone offline from the day it’s services were tagged “Live”. (By the way, don’t tell anyone. but there were still rumours about the apple tablet and google phone.)

However fun was when I met my future me. The way he was behaving I still feel, as Zaphod Beeblebrox would say, “if I ever met myself again, I will hit myself so hard I won’t know what’s hit me.”

By the way I wanted to tweet this there and then itself. But that future me just laughed at me when I said it takes 140 characters for us to share what we are doing. He mentioned even the novels are 20-30 characters long in there. The crypto-tex-pander fitted in each person’s eyes just completes the novel. Idiots I tell you.

Sat for lunch and there there was another surprise. Those idiots there hardly eat any food. They just gobble down the pills for all the necessary vitamins, minerals and whatever necessary for the body. Floored I was to see they even have the pills for the junk food. These future mens are idiots. Extreme idiots.

Oops!! Need to hide. Someone is crawling towards this dark damp corner. Will blab out the remaining idiocracies of the future. Trust me. There are many. Did I tell you what they have a UCC, a Universe Conservation Committee, a group fighting the Universal Enpansion? Well they do. Blab you later. Ciao!

Image Credit: Picturepost (Interesting writeup. Do read!)

You know that time when you just back out of a thing which might have saved you some bucks? It happens to me a lot, but this particular week gave me a double blow.

First incident was when i did not back out when i should, though debatable, have. I trolled along the darling harbor idling my time out just because i did not have any other place to go. Out of no dire need, i felt this itch to go to the public telephone booth and, well, do nothing.

I picked up the handset and there began my efforts to place a call. I don’t know why but this bud was heavily reluctant to let me do so. I gave up, placed the dial back and put my hand to get the coin back. In the open mouthed telephone lied another $2 coin with my $1 coin.

Fuzzy that my mind always is, there began a mahabharat between my ethical and non-ethical brain cells. Should i or should not pick this $2 up which does not belong to me? I don’t remember for how long i stayed near the booth but last thing i remember i had extra $2 in my pocket. Debatable if i should have picked the coin, but i did.

Fast forwarding 2 hours later. My idling location shifted to a mall where after about an hour i decided i have crossed my idling quota for the week.

I came out with my iPod plugged in and whistled along the road towards train station and somehow felt everything was pretty bright around me. I knew i had a train in another 15 mins which i should not miss as there was no other train for another 90minutes. My eyes burnt and my subconscious mind was aching for something. And there it dawn on me why everything was indeed bright.

Next thing i remember i was running towards the mall to find my goggles worth way more than $2 i had picked up earlier. Whole time during my run to the mall i was thinking was that $2 really worth all this pain of losing costly goggles and missing train.

Final blow, however, was about to come. I reached the mall, found a sensible looking pretty lady and asked if they have found any goggles. She looked more optimistic than what I was. She ambled inside putting me on hold. After some time, she came out and said something which ignited my fuzzy brain cells again.

She said they have found one goggles, but they were ladies and if I think mine were, well, ladies goggles, she will get them from the security. Now I did not want to make complete fool of myself in front to pretty looking and sounding girl by saying I wear ladies goggles. But i did not want to not make any try too.

I thought for sometime what to do and then putting my manly pride ahead, I remember I mumbled something and came out. Whole time afterwards, i was soothing myself by thinking this.

A visit to a supermarket is not something uncommon for me. Rather it is one thing which i like doing the most. Crawling between those numerous branches full of variety of products, i just lose myself glancing at each one’s properties… beep .. engineer’s blooper .. i should have said “each one’s labels”.

However, the visits are always satisfying and refreshing for me. And this is the first reason i find myself roaming in these lanes quite often.

Another reason for these frequent ferries is my lack of interest in creating the grocery lists. I have tried jotting them few times, but i so get lost within the products catalog that the chit doozes in my pockets.

At times i spend hours just ambling around the nooks and corners of a supermarket. A sensible mind might think what would one do for so long in a place so crowded, so noisy, so meaningless and so mean. But thats what i like about this place. I get my space in here with no one remotely worried about what i want. And that’s when i start getting choosy about each and everything i would buy out of this space.

First thing i need to do is put a limit on time i would spend in there. Once that is sorted out, it is all about marking my spots to ski along. Vegetables and fruits fall out of my interest and a hustling visit settles down the formality.

What follows is a child-like admiration for the variety of products manufactured, packaged, transported, marketed and sold at such colorful a place. A cheerful mouthfreshner sits in front of the saddened and ashamed toilet cleaner. Colorful chocolates sit next to the colorless eggs. And there i know its time to get lost. Get choosy.

And choosy i get. Tens of minutes are spent in front of each product looking for what fits better for my needs. I know sometimes i have spent too much time and worried i get thinking the cameras might caught me goofing around at the same position and i might be busted as potential terrorist. But what the hell  .. risk is worth it.

And then there are those times when i don’t get choosy thinking i know what i want and i have got what i want. And this is what i buy.

And this is what the description read (which i happen to read when i rinsed my mouth with this dude)

For healthier mouth, remind kids to brush their teeth and use Listerine Smart Rinse twice a day.

Listerine Smart Rinse for Kids 6+

Now that’s not just a random title that i chalked out. Actually it is a fact. I read today that a person’s brain is the most fatty organ in his body!

Surprised? Even i was. I mean common. How can a tummy, that can expand to store 4 liters of food i.e. 50 times its empty size, be less fatty than a brain? Even if it is fat, should i even care. I think no one is faintly concerned about some fat crawling over a body part which one does not ,or rather cannot, flaunt.

But as i snaked through the article further, i found one interesting fact. Thanks to that, i can now sleep as long as i want. It seems when a person sleeps, his brain gets busy to file away all the memories of the day. I can now disportingly say that “I am gyming my brain dude. Fats are crawling even in the blood vessels now and my brain does not want to die devoid of oxygen”. Put on a board saying “Fat brain at work” and rumble along the snoring dreams.

Oh yeah. Even regarding dreams there are few interesting facts that the brain spins. Have you ever questioned yourself why you don’t actually act what you are dreaming? Or even simplest form saying what in fact are dreams? I do have. Though one thing i missed is a fact that 12% of the people dream in black and white. I just have one doubt here. What is the criteria that decides whether you will dream in 35mm technicolor or age old BnW? Whatever, its just another example of pointless statistics.

Moreover it seems your brain cheats you when you sleep by releasing some kind of hormone which actually paralyzes you. The sole intention is to make sure you don’t wake up next morning bawling about your aching bum which you hurt when you were horse riding in the dream. In short, it makes sure you don’t act your dreams. How i wish the brain was not so cruel on mankind. I mean, won’t it be good to actually go ahead and gym out your body too as the brain is getting fat burned. C’mon, it does afterall know the burden of carrying along the extra fat

Anyways, few more interesting facts are canned at the below link. Just go ahead and tickle your fatty brain

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/sciencetech/facts-about-your-brain/7038