Battery for Brains

It’s all there in google. Top 5 Movies, Top 5 Songs, Top 5 Cities, Top 5 Billionaires, Top 5 thing I like to do, Top 5 B schools and even Pizza with 5 Toppings. So to add to the top 5 lists, here is a unique list of Top 5 things I HATE. And when I say hate, I mean it real hate, the Despise=hate=I-don’t-like-it kind of hate. And I would rather wake up at 4 AM and not sleep again than enduring any of these things.

After much sorting, polling, rearranging, I finally arrived at the list. It was not easy since the competition was extremely tough. But eventually I had to rule out exceptional “hate things” like “Canteen ka khana” aur “Himesh ka Gaana” which nobody likes and hence are not unique.

So here is the final list:

5: Traffic / Slow drivers / Traffic police

I despise almost everything on the road while driving my car. One reason might be that the variable factors during a drive in India are so high that at one point you will have no control over your decisions. For the novice drivers here are some tips:

a) If there is a slow moving family of four on an old bajaj scooter in front of you, then you are not supposed to honk or overtake. Any of the decisions might have serious repercussions leading the driver of the scooter to release both his hands from the scooter handle and shout at you.

b) In India the average traffic fine is a constant Rs50. The trick lies in the fact that that you should never say you are a software engineer. Any other profession including the terminologies like “Advanced hydraulic research assistant” or “Chief Thatukada Officer” or even “Indian Administrative Service” will attract less attention and you can get off for as low as Rs30 in a metro like Chennai. Even though I enjoy this whole process of getting caught for a non-traffic-violation and then paying the cops “tea-kaas”, I still hate the time wasted for these stunts.

c) I hate traffic and I know I am totally helpless. But what I hate the most is the traffic caused by traffic cops who keep barricades at totally unwanted places.

4: Slow Computers

Working with slow computers is the greatest punishment anybody could take. In my case, I worked with dumb unix machines with less than 300Mhz processors for more than 3 years and I always had the feeling that both my N73 mobile and myself were faster than solaris servers.

Not to mention the huge memory grabbing applications. In fact nowadays the computers have this unknown supernatural IQ power and they are getting so jealous and cranky that they know exactly when to crash so as to cause maximum data loss and frustration for souls like me.

3: Power Cuts

If you are not an Indian or if you are a NRI, then you can skip this paragraph. For all other brothers and sisters of my great nation this section needs no explanation.

2: TV SOAPS

Now explaining this will be tricky. For those who don’t know what a local language prime time TV serial /soaps will be, here is a sneak peek.

Imagine a family of 3 daughters and 3 sons. Now undisputedly in these serials one of the parent will be a step-parent (step-mom or step-dad) so that there can be two parallel confusing scripts. Now the 2^nd and 3^rd daughter are in love with a Mr.X but the 1^st daughter knows that Mr.X is a good-for-nothing cheat. So instead of saying that to her sisters she will hire a Mr.Y as assistant. Mr Y will eventually be a big cousin for all of them in some relation but the Father or Mother will die before revealing these startling facts. ( To tell this part of the story, the director can easily take 2-3years ). Now MrX will come back and by this time he will be the good guy and MrY will be actual bad guy. Sister 1 2 and 3 will try suicide at least 5-10 times in the due course. Now the dead father will come back only to say that he was not actually dead and he went for a vacation to Mauritius (in real life) but in the soap somehow audience would have forgotten that he had died 2 years back. And all this time the 3 brothers would do nothing but gamble and drink so as to give the females in the house a reason for perennial crying. By this time the Producer, director and actors would have made enough money and hence the soap will be cancelled and taken off the air only to be dubbed or remade in some other language. The latest trend in this genre are devotional soaps with extra special effects and complicated characters and twist.

Example SOAP Names: Kollam, Periya kollam, Chinna kollam, Bhootham, Chithi, Periyamma, Periyappa, etc

Duration: SOAP time = 8-10minutes. Advertisement time = 20-22 minutes. Total=30mins.

Character qualification: Ex Film actor/actress or anybody who can cry a lot.

Audience Influence: Female species are highly targeted and hypnotized and are even ready to murder male species who would otherwise watch IPL.

1: BUGS

I hate bugs. Both living and dead. I hate mosquitoes, cockroaches, worms and everything that sort. I can even tolerate lizards, snakes but these tiny bugs piss me off. And because of these bugs I have started liking even Chinese for their electric bat. “what a technology!”. The bugs are fried like tandoori between the two meshes of the bat right in front of your eyes. Hope Maneka Gandhi is obsessed with only animals and she doesn’t start another organization called PET-B ( protection for the ethical treatment of bugs ) after PET-A

So that concludes my list of top 5 things I hate. It was really tough finalizing the list. Other things which closely missed out from the list are trivial hate things like getting up early, India’s extraordinarily consistent performance in Olympics, wearing a tie and even shaving. And ofcourse like everyone, there was a time when I hated going to school. I hope you enjoyed the list. Do post your comments/hate list in the comment section.

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes

“…. Or a beggar in India ” ( @4:58 mins), The very words that struck me like a bolt and the words that really suck. Well the weird words came from a “child” who addressed a UN meeting on world environment issues. It was coincidence that made me see this video but now that I have seen this video, as a true Indian , I felt I would never sleep until I express my opinions about this “bullshit” and that is exactly what made me write this blog at 0030Hrs in the morning.

I truly agree that India has beggars. In fact I too hate beggars roaming around doing nothing and India might be having more beggars than many other countries put together but what I have started disliking is the general perception of India as a land of beggars and snake charmers. I also believe this syndrome is even worse with the “always-TV-watching-potato-couches” who can’t even identify their own country in a world map and will believe whatever is told in BBC, CNN or Teleshopping. But actually many of the Indian beggars get an average income of close to $250 a month which is actually much more than what many call center guys and software engineers could make in India. Not that I am propagating a mass “save-the-beggars” movement but I feel its not improper from my part to atleast expect people to address India as the land of Budha or the land of Krishna. (And ofcourse as the land of Techies)

For once, please clean up your mind and see what ever little information I have gathered below with a clear head.

To start with, India happens to be the second fastest growing economy in the world, only behind China. Not to forget that India is the 4^th ranked country sorted by their gross domestic product (GDP), way above countries like Germany, UK and France. ( ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29 )

And for the 7th largest country whose wealth was plundered for almost 200years, these statistics are actually too good.

(Also there are some very cool data about India but I am not sure about the authenticity of the claims. http://www.wonderfulinfo.com/winfo/indiafacts.htm)

Anyways I personally feel that India has the capacity and will to “Exceed Expectations”, even with a totally impassive, corrupt & unstable government, always chaotic neighbors and rising inflation. I still believe that India will definitely come up as a world leader in another 20 years, and people like me will make sure that it does.

And for the video, I personally do care for the ozone, the forest and the climate. But even though the speech was very good it was too artificial and totally baseless. In fact most of the kids her age will not give a damn about the hole in the ozone or the forests and many might be even happy that the ugly looking Dido bird was done away with. My advice for the kids would be to enjoy whatever they have. Enjoy your food, water and ipod and hope for the best. Do not to waste precious time blabbering to a seriously slumbering crowd called “United Nonsense”. The girl didn’t silence the world for 5 minutes. The world was/is already sleeping.

Whats the best cocktail movie you can ever imagine? well its all happening here – right in TamilNadu. Presenting KURUVI, “Ilaya comedypathi Vijay’s” latest flick. Just for a prologue, the movie contains parts from Fast&Furious, Mask of Zorro (including a base script), Gladiator, Kungfu-Hustle , Shaolin Soccer and some stunts usually performed by david blaine.

For a change – My verdict first . This movie is such a super masala that its a must watch in my list. One of the sequences like jumping from a roof top to a bridge and then catching a train running at 90kmph , is something you can’t miss, right ? Not to forget scenes where Vijay kicks a full grown (atleast 100Kg) thug like a soccer ball.

Like mask of zorro (MOZ hereafter) , the basic theme of the movie is a villain trying to dig out diamonds (gold in MOZ) , without governments knowledge. As usual our hero takes things into his own hand and there is a happy ending for the story. Even the late entry of police (nowadays special investigation team) is also as per books. Same with the villian-trying-to-kill-hero in a most complicated , round about, crooked, hard to escape way where hero always escapes. ( Rather , the villian can actually wait for hero’s mother/wife/lover/children to die of natural causes. Usualy this will inturn invariably start a series of hear attacks and deaths. The probability of Son dying or going mad is so high in these cases than putting the hero in a closed lift and throwing him down the gutter and assuming that he will be dead. )

Anyways this time I am not going to go into the details of the movie, but here are some of the snippets which you ought not miss while watching the movie.

My top 5 scenes/sequence which you are not supposed to miss are :
1. The jumping onto the running train stunt.
2. Racing car sequence where our Vijay’s accelerator cable breaks and he just bends down and scoops the broken cable only to be later kept between his teeth and drive again. Also the car somehow finally flew in the air to complete the race. Quite intriguing, …infact confusing.
3. Vijay’s intro scene is quite innovative.
4. I am still cluless as to why Vijay wears a bullet proof vest for a song sequence , that too shot on a helipad. Still the songs are decent, Choreo is excellent and Costumes are negligible (esp. for Thrisha).
5. Fight sequences – They are too hilarious, especially if you like movies like KungFu Hustle.

Make sure you take your own kids, your relative’s kids and your neigbours kids to the movie. This is your one big chance to get some brownie points for yourself coz I don’t see next harry potter releasing anytime soon. Also there are some jokes by Vivek but Vijay overshadows Vivek’s subtle comedies even with his normal dialogue delivery..

Vijay is definitely a good competitor for superhero’s of TN (Rajni ofcourse). The villian’s in this movie are as good as mojo jojo. Even “lollu sabha” cannot make another spoof for this already highly spoofed movie. In total the movie is a cool entertainer , for a real hot chennai.

Remo: What a fine day. Lets go out and play. How about playing the spitting game. I will spit on you, and you try to evade. !!!

Rumi: Are you kidding ? Its so long since we attacked someone. Lets go and do what we do the best.

Remo: I am fed up . Its the same thing every time. We go and attack them, only get beaten up later.

Rumi: So what , they are still not able to get rid of us totally. Don’t you like it when your victim is totally helpless, unable to even breath, struggling to move. Not even knowing what hit him. Wow! what a sight.

Remo: You are becoming a saddist day by day. whats wrong with you.

Rumi: Whats wrong with me? I should be the person asking that. Dear Remo, You are born this way. You are supposed to inflict this pain on all humans. This is your destiny. Then only you can reach paradise after your death. So lets device a plan and start working on it.

Remo: I am still worried. Remember that guy named bushy from “World boxing council – WBC”. He almost closed our chapter last time. I feel he is beter prepared nowadays.

Rumi: Shut up. We were always ahead of him. Luckily for him , he was able to get more troops from outside last time. But this time we will make sure that we hit those humans with such ferocity that they will get no time to react.

Remo: OK OK … So where are we planning to attack this time?

Rumi: How about Chennai ? Its summer there . Nobody will suspect us at this time of the year.

Remo: you are brilliant. Now I am also getting the energy and enthusiasm. Lets do it.

Rumi: We will stick to the basics. Attack straight in the nose. After that we can always think about other parts. C’mon lets do it.

(Rhinovirus)

And thus they set out to Chennai. There near Guindy Bus stop they saw their prey. A poor software guy. The easiest prey of all preys. The lowest resistance group, who are so used to calm quite AC atmosphere, that even small thugs like Remo and Rumi can easily attack them. Soon enough the poor chap was coughing and struggling in the hands of Rumi and Remo. Everybody around him watched in helplessness as the two Rhinoviruses attacked poor Balesh. The only thing Balesh could do was to hope his WBC member Bushy comes to the rescue soon enough and get rid of these pests . Till then he will have to bear the Cold causing Rhinos inside him and continue writing stupid entries like this one.

Cough cough …

Balesh

The Goosebumps running in your hand, your fingers trembling and your mind having the fear of writers block and then ofcourse the tension of “coming out with nonsense” while writing your first official blog …. Well all this was happening to me on last Saturday night until some idiot dug up the road next block. Next thing I knew was my screen said “404 server not available”. I had always wondered why can’t they make it more user friendly like say “Hey dude, you are online for about 87Hrs. Your internet is busted. Please Go and take a shower”. Anyways it eventually took me 3 days and 4 calls to get me online from home again .

I hardly remember what I wrote back then, but the basic funda was a straight forward introduction to my blog. In fact initially I wanted to start off with a short story but later I thought of sticking to the basics. So here is a short description of what you can expect in this blog.

First of all thank you all for reading so far. Many of my friends already know how I bombard them with very long obnoxious mails (mostly film reviews). Well this blog will not be just another review forum for sure. After all, I want you guys to check out this page quite often. Also from my own experience I have learned that many of my friends like me writing in simple English rather that bamboozling the reader with atrocious words. So quite frequently from my next blogs the previous line would read some thing like “ hey guys, I will try not to use complicated words for most of my blogs”. But for sure that will not keep me away from bringing out the “Calvin” or “Dilbert in me once a while.

Then there will be this “category” section. As of now there will be sections for “my school days”, “my Engineering days”, “My office days” ( and no specific section for My Holidays” ). Then there will be an exclusive film review section and a general section to keep you all updated. I am also planning to include a section for some happening stories like the way Bhajji became bonda because sree”shanth” was not quite “shanth” after all. And then some old stories like say the way Ronan Sen called somebody “head less chickens”. I still strongly believe he addressed the right people in the first place and then changed his statements later as he realized that they are actually headless big fat ugly gooses.

Anyways leaving these issues aside, I once again welcome you all to my blog. I hope you will enjoy this blog in the coming days and will make sure that I get all the clicks & comments to carry on.

Signing off for now,

Balesh