Realm of Randomness ..

Decoding the plight called elevators..

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.

Switching Lives (Repost)

Prologue: I have been working on quite a lot of posts recently but could not finish them and bring them to any bloggable format. So finally decided I should repost some old post. Here goes one such post.

Yesterday i had quite a random dream. Random indeed it was. For the most part of it i was pretty happy about what i was experiencing. And suddenly i went blank. I would say the dream went blank. Making me befuddled. Completely perplexed. Full of queries, queries for myself to answer. But before i get into the dream itself, let me blabber my views on dreams in general.

Dreams are angels. Yes, they have the power to make you experience the bests and worsts of your life at the same time. Indeed we experience the dreams, not just see them. How else can you explain your turning, jumping, twisting, crawling, grawling in the sleep. We are experiencing the event, the dream. I myself have woken up thanking god for turning whatever i experienced into a dream. And then there are those times when i just put myself to sleep again, just to experience what remained incomplete, unexperienced.

Further, the dreams are mutable portkeys. I feel i change lives in dreams. Butterfly effect you can say. But there one can decide if he wants to change his life. Here i don’t. It all depends on my other self, the dreaming threaded me. If he wants me there, i go. Otherwise i just lay here, wake up and continue.

Details. Two threads, if dreaming together, show how the life each is experiencing. We exchange both the positives and negatives. Yes, if you notice, each dream comprises of both goods and bads. We experience some scenes of that life, both happened and yet to happen. Yucks and Wows. If both agree to switch, we switch.

Now you see this concept explains a lot of usualities. Take Deja Vu. Yes indeed it is that ‘yet-to-happen’ scene of the life. We experienced it in the dream before we made the shift. Those jerky wake ups. May be the other self just slapped me for spending such sucking life. Or may be i did it to him for his sucking life. Roaming with unknowns. Yes, you don’t afterall expect two me’s having the same set of friends. Those long nights can be the result of just a mismatch between timings of two threads. Same goes for the short nights.

I will stop. Remove your thinking caps and plunge into the dreamland with the view. You might find quite a few interesting answers.

Anyways back to my dream i dreamed yesterday. I dreamed i was a singer, i was singing well. (Ok, i never said the other me has to be “me”ish. He can indeed me quite contradictory to who i am right?) Audience were happy. I saw my struggle. I saw my first assignment. I was watching myself happy. I watched all the happy me’s. Nothing bad. No yucks. And suddenly it was blank. I don’t remember something like this happening earlier. The dreams changed. The places changed. I woke up suddenly. But it never happened that the dream turned blank, with me facing eternity full of whiteness.

Puzzled, I lay there, closed eyed and open minded, waiting for something to happen. But all in vain. Blank. Whiteness everywhere. Finally i woke up and tottered my way along … With mind full of questions. Unanswered question.

My time travel to the future me..

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!)

Thoughts on movie making (and reviewing)

Just finished watching “The Negotiator”. A tense drama between two negotiators that was . Well at least for three-fourth of the movie. After which I think the director fell prey for the behaviour which I am seeing a lot recently. However I have no intention here to post a review about the movie.

Actually these days I have lost belief that reviews actually hold any credibility. Not just do I find them monetarily inspired, but they are also dependent on many external factors. This makes it practically impossible for two viewers to watch a movie with same frame of mind and same expectations.

Well not to forget the reviews themselves rig their own viewpoint on the moviegoers. So a Taran Adarsh might make each Yash Raj Film an extreme must watch while Masand makes the same one the extreme bore of all time. Two thumps down he would scream. However what the movie ends up being is not any of those.

Not just is this case true for the actual critics whose bread and butter is film reviewing. Even friends that unwelcomely review a movie for me, make it difficult for me to watch any. One likes any movie he watches, another says “ah Bollywood sucks”.

So hardly is it possible for me to decide which movie to watch based on anyone’s comments. Ironically the most of the movies that I have loved recently are the ones where I had no clue about their plot or performances. So no reviews for me I say.

Anyway back to the pit that most of the directors fall in. I call it the “lets-make-it-goody-goody” pit. See when you have made a strong impression on audience by throwing at them what they least expected, you don’t take an unwanted faltu turn saying “Hehe buddy, there I fooled you.”

One most cliche scene I would like to mention. In a movie with 2 heroes, one kills other at the most unthinkable stage. Only is it revealed momentarily after that both were together in this and no one’s killed. That was part of the bigger plan. Villain is caught and yippie, everything is goody-goody.

Well, screw you Mr. Goody G. Goody. You could have made the movie hell lot better by killing that god damn hero, and making this gaddar friend fly away with villain and all the money. Why is there a mental block to show “achhe ki jeet aur bure ki haar” (good wins bad leans)? Well not that this is how the real world behaves, is it?

Anyway even extreme wonderful movies like The Departed could not dodge this pit. Only thing I can say is it takes guts to end movie with not so “goody-goody” a situation. I remember one movie which managed to do that. The Mist. I still fell saddened when I remember the ending there. Hats off to you Mr. Frank Darabont the director. You had managed to give a most unthinkable horror an horror movie can give its audience. Extreme unthinkable.

Image Credit: darpantheatregroup

Is ignoring climate change a risk worth taking?

He gets up in the morning and sees sun rising at him through the small slit, left open at the window by curtains. It is that soothing early morning which he has always savored. He crawls out of his bed and takes a warm shower. He gets all tidied up with a desire to embrace the pleasing spring morning. He puts his foot outside and starts his walk towards the office.

Hardly does he walk hundred meters, dark clouds start gathering the sky. He looks at the sun and loses him among the clouds.  The spring morning is ruined by the darkness of the clouds hovering above. They roar and kill the sweet chirping noise of the birds and burst into a heavy uncalled and untimely rain suddenly.

Now the situation above is not just a one off incident.  It is not the roaring clouds or the rain that bothers me. It is the untimely fashion one faces them. Any living person can personify the “he” described above.

Have many times will I lure days in and out just for a moist rainy morning only to end up to be greeted by scorching heat?

How many times will I leave the house to spend a pleasant summer weekend at the beach with family or friends only to end up sipping sodas in a closed car peeking at the pouring rain?

Why should I always carry the sunscreen lotion and the umbrella with me irrespective of which season it is?

As an Indian, I was blessed with distinguished 3 seasons. But these days everything has changed. Winters aren’t chilly. Summers have intermittent burst of clouds. Rainy seasons have hardly 30 days of rain. I won’t be exaggerating if I say that summers have more rains now than actual rainy seasons.

I don’t know if this is actually a result of Global Warming phenomenon. I don’t know if this is really a effect of greenhouse gases. There are facts and figures which say they are. Then there are those who say this is just a cyclic effect. This does happen in centuries where climate behavior repeats itself.

For me what matters is what I see and I can guarantee something is for sure not normal. I am tired of watching farmers committing suicides because the climate does not behave as it should. I am tired of watching crops getting ruined by the lack or or sudden pouring of rains. I am tired of watching people die because of all the floods and droughts, storms and tsunami. I am really tired.

The effects of, if it exists, global warming are pretty saddening.  I had decided I won’t take the risk of ruining what has been a pretty wonderful place to live. I will do whatever I can for that and have already started that by thinking about it.

After all I don’t want to end up telling my grandchildren, “Once there were seasons and climate changed with them”. And I surely don’t want any one to end like this.

PS: This is my attempt to put my views on climate change and participate with thousand others in Blog Action Day.

A day when I let my unethical mind cells win

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.

Getting Choosy at Supermarkets..

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+

Quick thoughts

These days i am going through some wonderful experiences. Major chunk for this: I have the routine in Bangalore broken. I was fed up with the same life style. Same road. Same bus. Same timings. Same place. Same updates. Same people. And even same dogs!

Life at Australia has given me that chance to break the shackles with usuality. The life has changed and so have people, places around me. I am not a pleasure freak. The only thing I ask for is the change. For that matter I do not even mind spending my days at a village as long as I get a break from usual casualties of life.

Casualties they are. Each moment each day life throws loads and loads of experiences at you. Some are feather soft. Providing you with the feel-good comfort in its zone. And then there are those emotion laden heavy experiences trying to crush you under it’s weight. Casualties to your mind is what they can leave behind. And casualties is what they leave behind.

So the break was indeed welcome. It has indeed been welcome. For the better part of this change is the feeling of differentness. But this same “differentness” is what pops up in between; a small compartment in mind still calls out for those same buses. Those same roads. Those same people. And those same dogs. In between some times a thought does crawl in the mind; a thought calling out for those “usualities“. Calling out loud for the sameness in the life.

A quickie to Darling Harbour..

Need to update, but i have reached and kind of settled in Australia. I had some time at hand last Saturday. SO just had a quick walk at Darling Harbour. Below are the snaps.

I will let snaps do the talking for now. A detailed post soon to follow..

One Fine Morning…

Incidents wait for a perfect time to pounce on you, especially the bad ones. One such incident pounced on him too. One fine morning, it was.

Alike any normal day, he woke fully throttled up, with a hope for fruitful work at office. He rushed through the daily chores, preparing himself for the regular grinding sessions. However there was a tinge of excitement within him today. Surprised as he was with his full on enthu to reach office, a thought brushed his mind, ” something new, something good is about to happen today”. He knew today was, in someway, special.

He jumped into the office bus, just to get further surprised. Usually crowded, the bus welcomed him today to free spaces. He chose the best among the window seats. Clouds had already swarmed the Bangalore skies, further elevating his pleasant mood. “Something is surely in the air today”, he thought.

Whole day he yearned for the change he was sensing from the morning. However except for the persistent clouds, nothing indeed was pleasing him. He had a pretty workless day, which he hardly abhorred. But something was missing. He knew that, he felt that.

And then, on the verge of he giving up on any hope for the welcome change, it loomed, loomed through the hazy weather. He was introduced to the One. He was informed that One would be bossing him now onwards. The first few sentences from the One and he knew this was the change he has been desiring for. Fully impressed he was with the One’s fluent and vast knowledge flow. Fully impressed he was with the One’s sensitiveness for a person’s goals. Fully impressed he was with the One’s clarity of thoughts. Fully impressed he was with the One.

Few chats later an invitation was thrown at him, ” Join me for a smoke. Will you?” And that is how it all started. The incident had pounced on him, he though remained unaware. It all started one morning, one fine morning…

PS: All character are fictitious, resemblance to anyone is completely coincidental.