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.

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!)

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+

‘Fatty’ Brain …

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

The modern face of armed robbery..

Just when i think not to trouble my mind, saturated by randomness to its full, i come across the little gems like this.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090123/od_nm/us_goat;_ylt=Ag7ntPE15g0Li3_NWwySSlgSH9EA

Apparently police in Nigeria detained a goat on the suspicion of attempting an armed robbery. Yes. You heard it right. Goat arming itself up with a shotgun and making the Vigilante men stare down the gun nozzle? All for a Mazda 323? I mean common. A Mazda 323 can only be as useful to a goat as a padded two’s to Pamela. If you neglect the lone possibility of she pooping on it. If it has been for “hay”, there was at least a chance of this happening.

That’s not it all. Actually there were a couple of them. Dude, coupling Hayek with Pamela still keep padded ones look useless. Moreover a couple of goats stealing a car? I know scientists are trying weird experiments on animals these days like cloning n all. But i never heard of such advanced experiment of churning out a species with body of goat and mind of Anton Chigurh. Not even on the fastest news reporting channel on this bloody earth, “Aajtak“. So if its not reported on Aajtak yet, its not possible even for 10 years now.

Although the main part is what might suit the tastes of few channels here. You see actually they were two guys who were trying to rob the car when the Vigilantes confronted them. One ran and other turned himself into the goat. Now the dangerous little goat is in custody and the police are waiting to prove it scientifically that it actually is possible to convert a person into a goat magically(!). Now i get it. So it was not the goat who was robbing armed, it was actually a man.

But now that it is crystal clear, i do not have even a single word to speak? First thing they actually do not shoot the white n black beast wearing so dangerous a throne of horn right at sighting it. Secondly they ask to prove that it is possible that an armed man can be converted into a goat? Common. The scientist have long discovered the dose to convert the buffalo-like-hardly-rising small dumb little ball of flesh into an ultra-active-hard-hitting beast. They call it an energy drink which does transform a sleepy crawling man into an awesome enthusiast you see. So calming down the beast to a goat look alike is just too easy a job. Just a bit of physical transformation is required that’s it.

So here i urge the related police staff to take a strict action against the goat and hang her till her death. The man that actually has transformed himself into goat is too dangerous for this world and so are his accessary. I heard they are working on something which can make this happen…

Why does darkness exist?

I have been gliding in the darkness for around 3 hours now, for one simple reason. The tube light in my room suddenly felt a strong desire not to glow. It went on blinking at me, i guess trying to figure out if i have worn any .. pajamas or not. I did try and rotate it around, with it never returning me a stare. While spending my precious time there, stroking the keyboard in darkness, a question just poked its head out of the ruffled mind. Why the heck is the darkness there.

I mean, ok fine. I know why it is there. I do have scribbled through the endless questions on solar system and planets structure and their hecking orbits. But i am not concerned about its how it exists. Rather i want to know how useful is it. I just want to justify its existence with one hell of a random reason, the farther it is from the truth, better it is.

I feel everything that exists, does so for some random reason. Even the minutest thing like a microbe is there because it leads or conjoins together to form or shape something awesomely important like virus, lets say. Yes they are weighty in a sense to control the growth of the big parasites in the form of humans. Similarly something like air, whose presence cannot be seen, is there to blow the smelly farts away. The sole reason for such senselessly senseless arguments is to emphasize the point that, yes, each thing can be tagged with the reason for its existence.

But even the random mind of mine could not reasonify the existence of darkness. To develop films?? Nah, very few do that now and those who do it actually do it by pulling over darkness. We are focusing on the natural darkness that arises with night.  To sleep??? Nah, actually sleep has got more to do with the time than it has got to do with darkness.  What then?

I know i am acting a bit ignorant, by may be neglecting many scientific things. I actually want to because i want some reason out of my mutable mind. The only reason i can think of gives me goosebumps.

I feel the whole purpose of darkness is to hide the light. So darkness is not “non-existence of light”. But actually it is the other way round. Light is “non-existence of darkness”. Whenever there is something that nature wants to do without making humans aware, it pushes darkness in. So it must be doing something at each night. Intercourse? Quite possible.

An argument can be made saying people do put on the lights then. But actually you see, that’s the reason they just blink sometimes rather than staring. And thats the reason am in dark today. Nature is at work. Reproducing

Why do I even try?

True. I try like hell not to listen to him. He goes on bumping my head. But i remain focused. He bribes me with what i like. He threatens me to run away and never return. I try not to fall for his tactics. But finally i do. I pretend i will shoo him away, but that’s the whole problem. I pretend…

Just a scenario, perfectly captured by Dilbert:

Anyways this bloody culprit in Internet just doesn’t allow me to work my plans. I plan not to plan any plan, so that i don’t feel bad when this plan of not to plan goes helter-skelter, unplanned. Thanks a lot internet.

Let me explain a bit. I reach home with a plan to read my novel, just to find the internet ‘psst’ing at me. Calls me out to check my mails, read some scraps, check out some news on tech n all. And everyday i do fall for something or the other. I unknowingly, or that’s what i pretend, plug the cable on and surf through the net.

Actually i did well in between to overcome this weakness of mine. I never fell for anything of sorts. But again somehow he has caught another of my nerve. He actually works stepwise now. Makes me switch on the powerplug spike for charging my mobile. He knows i am pretending to be just charging the mobile and i will turn on the laptop next. And everytime he turns out to be right. I pretend to turn the laptop on just for a bit to work something out and shut it down. But he knows that is not going to happen. Once the laptop starts he reminds me of something i need to do on net. I again pretend not to be surfing the net but just using it for a moment. But in fact, thats what i turn out to be doing. Surfing the internet.

Sometimes i ask myself why do i even try. I know i am failing to boggle my mind away from this culprit. But somehow i think this is that cunning but wonderous buddy with whom you can neither subsist nor part. Yes, that’s what he is. Cunning, but wonderous.

Nine…

Nine… A number that has haunted me for more than a month. Would wake up with a stare at it. Take a shower, get ready and face the indolently eying number. Stagger while using it. Bump into it daily. On numerous incidents. Each one having a negative effect on my mood. Just adding to my already tangled life. Twisting it further. Something usual has happened today too. Today i.e. on 9th of this month. 9th. And hence this post.

Yeah i know. The prologue does seem a bit dramatized. But last part is indeed true. The normal routine things for last one-one n a half month have made me bump into ‘9′, unusually, a lot. And it has succeeded in screwing up my mood on most of the occasions.

First up. The most common and tiresome experience of my life. I have been staying on the ninth floor of a “still-under-construction” n beta version of a 15 floored guesthouse. Thats not all. Its each and every part was under development and testing at the same time. And we, the guests, were bloody testers.

Lets start with a moment to reach there. You say use lifts. Simple right? Not so soon. The 3000 capacity guest house just had a single lift working for major part of my stay. Best being 2. You say “whats the big deal”? Ok, this lift can be any one of the 10 lifts scattered at various different locations on the ground floor. You say “uhh now thats complex”. I say wait. Not all are on the ground floor. 2 are on first. Further take this. Each lift can take you only till/to a particular floor after or below which you have to scroll using stairs. Does that sound scary? Listen to this. The lifts were also in the “under-development-and-testing-part” list as most other parts and so had a most ill programmed chip fitted into her. Usual symptoms:

1. She used to wend  the 1st-> 0th floor path via 10th floor. That too without any entrant.
2. She used to suddenly halt its march on the most deserted floor, without sucking anyone in or puking anyone out.
3. She used to make you guess the time she would take to shut her doors for you. It ranged from sweet 10-20 secs after you are mounted or a quarter of a second by which you escaped getting crushed between her doors. (Yes she had no sensors to detect if you were in between her claws-like doors.)
4. She used to making a most ear-deafening moan if you make her wait for a little longer. (A typical girlish behavior. You are not allowed any mistake to be made on your part.)

By god’s grace i did reach the coveted 9th floor most of the times. The fact that it normally took me around 10 mins on average matters least considering what lied ahead. The floor was divided, in true sense, in 3 parts using wooden walls. So care had to be taken that you end up in your part. Else you had to crawl through the stair case. The corridors were mostly cementy because of its under contruction tags with most confusing directions (refer snap). Air conditioners in the room worked on random basis and when they did they made my teeths tremble with cold. The taps randomly decided the temperature of the water that come out. (I have got my bum burned once. No further explanations.) The mirror was situated at the darkest corner of the room with the most clearly visible part being my toe nail.

I have spent 44 days in this complete mystery house. There were other encounters with nine like never returned 9 rupees as change at the food terminals, 9 cubicals that i hopped along or the  9AM alarm that brought with it the invitation to begin the journey on mystery land of nine. The tales of these will follow up sometime later.

Finally there was just one saving grace i had with me which provided me the sole reason to go through this tortourous journey. People close to me know whom am speaking about. But i am observing a striking pattern there too. Each 9th of a month brings with it some problems. I can’t explain but it does. I hope this hauting effect of 9 stops pressing me to my limits. I hope it stops testing my patience. Signs are not too good. Post is published in the 9th hour of the second half of the day. Ninth hour. Nine.

What happened to my Ambitions?

I have always been faced with this puzzle for quite long now. What happened to me shouting i would have best house on the whole street? What happened to my plans buying the best car in the town? Where is that dream life with servants running all round? The fridge full of ice creams, pastries, chocolates, chicken (leg-straigntened sky-pointing turkey, to be precise) ? The television set running just cartoon movies day long with remote just in my hand? To be the richest man, the most honest person, the man blessed by blessings from poor, loved by one n all. The whole lust for attaining some position, achieving some goal, some ambition seems to be lost somewhere.

And now? Now is the case i have just one ambition left. Crawl through the work week mechanically just to feel and shout: TGIF… Thank God Its Friday.

Finally i have found the reason for this loss of ambition. See and examine it for yourself

Now i know who uhhh what is the culprit. And yes TGIF

by Amit Gawande Tags: ambition, humor, study, TGIF | Posted in humor