My First Internation Flight - Part I

The summer day was drawing to a close and dusk had fallen on Meenambakkam International Airport. The air was filled with excitement for the students and very sentimental for the parents; especially for the mothers who are dedicated believers in the maxim of early to bed and early to rise works in the modern times. It was very much the same for my mother because I left them for a project assignment and they now had no one to pass this maxim on a daily basis. The airport during this season in Madras is always worse than Central Railway Station. The noises of each mother giving their Son/Daughter their final advice. (Most of them didn’t care … so was I)? Hence like all the others I too received it with a gratified nod in the good old English way.

Now left alone in the Immigration check, I was trying to uplift my mood with a better walk than my normal one. Hence, I tried a Walk like an Egyptian but it turned out to be more precisely like John Wayne. This was not the final; my eyes, which for some reason that I can’t state explicitly were bulging out, like the Wolf in Looney Toons. This was when I started walking towards the journey across the Atlantic. The main reason for this trip was in fact to flex some muscles in my head, which for some reason or the other had not been used at all. (The Medulla Oblongata is quiet close for a first wild guess.) I was gloomy and it must have been from the fact that solitude and further adjusting to a new environment made me look stupefied. To be more exact a look like seeing KAJOL come by and invade you in your fantasy and send our hearts beating faster than a Pentium IV processor clock. Sometimes in these crisis situations I found that it would be possible to divert the mind from the item uppermost in the agenda to something lower and uninteresting like work, documentation, physical exercise etc. I am sure that this idea works practically in all cases in a male employee. (Never cared about the Female section)

In all this time, I was strolling away and was now just steps away from boarding the plane. I really felt as though each small step of mine was indeed a giant leap to mankind – OK not mankind but at least for the frog-kind. The closest approach to a real plane previously was around 10 KMS, though I was just 10 millimeters if you considered playing Flight Simulator on Playstation-II. This also marks my first sighting of those gorgeous airhostesses who were wishing us all a happy journey. For a long time, this was the moment that looked like bringing me back to my own mood, but then there was an announcement that there was a ½ hour delay. It was probably the worst ½ hour in my life; the agony of the wait still makes my blood boil.

I sat in the lounge for several minutes motionless with my limbs and brain (goes without saying) totally inert except my eyes which were working with a speed such that it always accompanied the imminence of the perils that lie ahead. Luckily this day was not so since I was confronted with a situation in which no single man on the world could handle it alone. The plot here is that the next seat to mine was occupied by a girl (Still can’t find words to describe her) with whom I had written my TOEFL exam.

Many of my friends have known that my mouth which rarely shuts and now with an added catalyst, a cute female, with whom I can say that I have had a good acquaintance with her, it wouldn’t. This made my mouth work merrily of all the organs in my body. One has to be very careful about the first few lines when we open a conversation. I think I got it right this time, it was of course all babbling about my chivalrous anecdotes in acquiring the VISA. It was after a few lines into the conversation, which right now was a plain monologue; it was thrust upon me the fact that snakes could sometimes even penetrate into the most Gentlemanly Garden of Eden. One such snake was coming along my way at this moment. He was brushing aside me like those flies around the steaming hot Jilebees during deepavali. Hence, this was one more effort of mine down the drain.

It would have been possible that had the meeting taken place a bit earlier, I would have been in a better frame of mind to break this news to my cousin. He, a man of many words, sort to narrate his own version of this meeting to all my friends. Of course to expect a sensible and plausible defense for me in a matter like this cannot be given and nor will my friends agree to give me a chance. This news spread faster than a forest fire in Amazon and made me look like a zero when moments ago I was a hero. This was the precise moment that the captain announced our Takeoff.

And finally the plane took off in a sensational manner. We had never been on a flight before this and hence the first lift from the gravity of earth was just GREAT. This is what we were thinking until an old lady in the next row to mine disgruntled at what a rough take off. Nevertheless it was a fairly good one for us. The pilot from Madras to Bombay was an amateur I suppose from the way he chartered the trip on mid-air. Once up in the sky we saw Madras buy night for the last time. It was a good picture of Sodium lamps lit throughout the city. In fact the whole city looked so small to us. The strangest fact was that even Jayalalitha’s biggest cut out was as tiny as a passport size photograph. After viewing this we settled down in our seats and started to relax.

The night was very young and very still. From somewhere in a distance came faintly a sound of a ravishing young female while near at hand I could hear my friends whispering about her like hooting of a white or more definitely some brown owls. Thus an impressive urge swept over me to take a look at her and I made no attempts to resist it. Feeling damped that I might damage my image, I thought for a while and then not discouraged by the damage I rose and saw her. Stretched on her heels and breathing gently through her nose, she was enjoying her job of serving beverages to all the passengers. A glance of her was enough to tell anybody to what an extent she would be in the dreams to come for me. Albeit the glance was brief, it had the most invigorating effect on me. All, I felt, was for the best of all possible worlds and made an effort to converse with her. To my rather good or bad luck the hostess was also from Madras and to be precise Triplicane. Thus, it drew me like a magnet towards accosting with her.

The fact that she was from Madras was not so important but the fact that she conversed with everyone around me in English and to me alone in Tamil made my image look worse especially with a female sitting next to me. While people all around me could not help from keeping their eyes open and took to natures way of curing this problem … SLEEP. Hence with nobody awake around me I went for the bell. Surprisingly all my calls were answered quickly and this started the acquaintance with her. After a while of talking, the English tongue gave way to Tamizhl.
All the while when I was talking my cousin used to wake up, but for my luck, it didn’t take him much longer than 5 seconds to fall asleep again. He was one of those fortunate guys who had no need to count sheep’s but to drop off directly the moment the head touches the pillows. With the air around the aircraft chilled due to controlled atmosphere, Mother Nature started to call me. I thought that I might hold it for some time but then nature won over my tolerance and I decided to unseal my hands towards the famous Bell but controlled this urge. I preferred to postpone this revelation till dinnertime, but this did not appear with the spheres of practicality. Hence I reached for the Bell, the bell to me sounded like that of the "Big Ben" but for my luck, this call seemed to be invalidated and my desperation grew. I stood up and started looking around in a state of flux. Something had to be done soon, having decided to go for it; it was like a point of no return, a dead end street. There were several moments during this short wait when I would have been glad to be interrupted by somebody, which was not happening now. Then from my back a sharp pat came on my back, it was the Hostess. She could easily see a striking resemblance of me with a Tamil proverb "INNJI THINNA KURANGGU POLA" which roughly translated means the facial expression off a monkey when swallowed a gingerroot. Of course this was not the best of times when I should moot over my resemblance with my ancestors and hence I rushed to the restroom.

It can never be an agreeable experience for any passenger to find his seat taken over by somebody else and the owner cannot be censured for allowing him to disconcert him. Of course you got it correct, my cousin had taken over the seat that I held during the short trip to the rest room. If there was someone as determined as me, then there is a simple and easy way to cope with these types of situations. Let my cousin have it in his own way.

My First Internation Flight - Part II

For perhaps two or three minutes after I returned from the restroom my cousin preserved an unbroken silence. All this while I was non-chantingly whistling away to glory as if I was walking to receive an Olympic gold medal, he was plunged again in thoughts of how clever he had grabbed the vantage seat. This act is possibly achieved only by one trained in the Hard CBSE schools in Madras. In fact I was so relieved after my short but very much needed visit that I felt like back floating on the waves of Hawaii with a glass of orange juice and a group of Belly Dancers. (Of course I lied about the Belly Dancers)

My cousin, who now was wide awake like a night owl looking for its prey, started to do his part in the drama in trying to capture the attention of the girl (I am not making this up, but she was Cute. She had a pretty nose too). I was in no mood to play some part in this drama and was satisfied in being just an innocent guy watching every move of his. My cousin took some time to bring his art of palavering to its present state. In the past he was a crude babbler, but tonight he was prepared to match his wits against any Romeo under the Milky Way (except the Martian named M45 in J34 Black Hole). He started to hum some popular (acclaimed by many) Hindi songs, a thing that he has never done in the past, just because the female next to him was a Bengali and it was the only common ground between them. Of course you can't expect to start a conversation about Metaphysics and Astronomy with a cute female. However he was able to carry out peacefully some conversation about Hindi movies. They are the best and easy in the town now because all the movies today feature 4-5 songs featuring the Heroin doing some steps that need the highest ABDOMINAL DEXTERITY and also with the LOWEST costume possible on Earth (Also on Mars. Source: NASA Pathfinder) While all this was going on, it took the same Hostess with whom now I can claim acquaintance to separate them by bringing us the first can of Coke in our life. (Previously seen only in TV commercials)

My cousin and I were really thrilled at the service. I had already assured myself of the drink by passing; to be precise stretching, my hands like a Madras policeman would have done on seeing a motorcycle rider without a helmet. In order to give you a clear picture, we both were like guys waiting for Sakarai Pongal at ParthaSarathi Koil. Like any animal's instinct, whenever it comes to choosing between females and food, my brain takes the correct decision and sticks to the FOOD.

This situation was a bit different from the others that I had encountered; I thought that may be food in one hand and the female on the other would make me in a Win-Win situation. Unfortunately, it didn't workout like this for me because the female's (Who can't be taken for granted) eyes were drooping shut. Hence I also decided against my will and did what most males would have done; I went to sleep without the food of course.

For the next one and a half hour there was nothing worth mentioning except that all around me were sleeping while I was wide awake waiting for a chance to give my mouth some work. With conditions as described any quick thinker than I would have restrained from hearing the announcement and try to fade away into the night with minimum delay. Distressingly, I was thrown aback by the announcer with an accent that looked like a machine gun (Don't get confused with Bofors which never fires) firing 24 rounds/Min. All this firing, I mean talking, was to convey that we had safely (Not for the First Time) landed in Bombay. From the pilot's point of view, this was rather great but for somebody who was in the midst of his dreamland it wasn't much of a use. I was mad at them for waking me up just when I started to drowse. It is possible that sometimes a spirit like this lingers on throughout the journey but at this juncture all I could think of was that the Hostesses were to change and who would be for this leg of the journey. I feel that this is a rather good question to ponder when your brain needs something to do when you have time at your disposal.

The next part of my flight was not so adventurous because the Hostess this time was a Marati and was looking a shade better than the one before. All said and done, an airhostess in your bay is worth two in the bath tub – assuming you are no way near the tub.

My First Internation Flight - Part III

We landed at Heathrow around 0430 hours, as always when the weather is not unusual, the London sun shone half as bright as it would have done in Madras at the same time. Silence gripped the aircraft except for the footsteps of some passengers hurrying to get down first and start haggling with the cabs in the morning. Some passengers also rushed to change airports from Heathrow and Gatwick terminal. Fortunately for me, I was to take the connecting flight from the same terminal. After settling down in the lounge we saw that there were just 7-8 guys in our group and we were destined to spend the next 7 hours at this same terminal.

It is difficult to say offhand of what ought to be the aspect in which one should look at 0430 hours. I have never seen this part of the day except on Deepavali day every year. Should I be pleasant looking, or somewhat ordinary face or else the seemingly dazed look on my face? Nevertheless of the looks, which I don’t bother, I decided to brush my teeth before making a dive into the breakfast which my mother had packed for us. My friend decided to act fast and decided to brush first and I was left guarding the luggage. My friend returned after quiet some time (I was thinking if he was brushing just his teeth or else brushing the teeth of all others in the restroom.) with a huge grin on his face. The grin represented as if he had achieved in doing some Herculean task and that deserved rather a big applause. He then took the rather simple job of watching the luggage, which for now was very important since it had all the food.

I should have known better not to trust my friend’s direction. He is one of those guys who believed in the proverb "All Roads lead to Rome". He pointed his finger with authority at a place, which I assumed was the restroom. It took me the next 15 minutes with the help of the information center to locate the restroom. The funny part was that I was given a Map without the important information, the RED mark that states "You are here". Then with my navigation skills I finally reached the restroom. I did not know for sure if my friend had concealed from me the correct directions or perhaps the morning was a bit slack for him that he grabbed the opportunity to have me run around looking for places which was right under my nose.

Inside the restroom I stood helplessly looking at the mirror, with the brush loaded with toothpaste in my mouth while the dumb tap wouldn’t let flow the water. My exasperation became too much for my friend. If had any lethal weapon than a small brush and a tooth paste, I would have thrown it at him for concealing all the intricate details that I should have known before entering this room. It looked like even Kaveri water would flow into Madras but this single tap wouldn’t. All it did was just pouring hot air. I was immobilised with the paste in my mouth and hence was waiting for someone to rescue me.

Then a huge built guy walked in with a bang as if he was Samson and somebody was trying to cut his hair. He went straight to the tap and put is hand under the tap and the dumb tap as I called it worked fine. It seemed as if that Niagara Falls had been transported to this place. Then did I realise that the English way of taps with two unwanted knobs on top of the basin while all it needed was a hand underneath the tap to make it work. My emotions upon seeing my friend was like a lover who had planned to lunch with the girl he adored and later it turns to be her father waiting at the restaurant. On the site of me walking towards him, he took up like a horse participating in the two thirty race and fled from the scene. One point that I wish to make here is that it was not a very attractive horse but this time it was a crowd favorite.

One of the things that rendered my task so arduous was the fact that he has a physical advantage over me in running short distances. Of course, in games where the mind comes to play I was a clean winner. Hence a compromise was made that we decided to share the breakfast. According to the compromise, it was a fair event i.e. 60% for me and 40% for him. As austere friend would have not agreed to this but since my friend is one who proves that mighty brain is no match for nimble brawn, this deal looked fair in his eyes. The breakfast was Idlis with chutney. It seemed like this was probably the last best known breakfast that we were going to have for quiet some time to come. We never had experimented with the art of cuisine till date. I would say that my cooking is not graded as an environmental hazard but is palatable at times.

With too much of Idlies, our throat dried out and we were all looking like parched cactus on the lookout for a water hole in a desert. Bang! From one of the friends bag came a Coca-Cola can. It looked like as if he was Aladdin with his magic lamp. We shared the drink; of course this time it was even a fairer deal than before, 50% each. The main point here is that unless your destination, the COKE can, is within the range of your hands we should try to get the vantage position as quickly as possible else you loose in these type of games. Just at the end of the coke-can round, Aladdin took another can out of the bag.

This needed some looking into the magic behind this and we found it by directly confronting him. He said that his seniors had advised him to stack up his hand luggage with coke cans from the previous flight so that we don’t look like parched cactus in the desert. With this answer, he started to raise his collar thinking high of himself, astute to be precise. He then proceeded to ask me if I didn’t get to do this act. This was a situation that had my ego at stake and hence squeezing my brain, which seldom works, gave back a fitting reply saying that there would be some dumb bloke who would stack his bag and that I could share it with him – so why bother?.

My First Internation Flight - Part IV

This is the final part of my journey across the Atlantic from London to Chicago. I was told that it was a beautiful trip but all together I could only see the white clouds and not once did I get an opportunity to see the Atlantic Ocean.

The final stretch is always the most thrilling and for me it was truly a great experience. The most interesting part happened during this leg of the journey. After a grueling 7 hours halt at London we started towards the boarding point. The afternoon had now reached the point where a good deal of activity prevailed even on a Sunday. Almost everybody were somewhere doing something, even if it was only having a coffee at the tea shop or waiting for a connecting flight. While the final calls for boarding were going on, my friend and I rushed to the check-in point and threw our passes as though the airline officials were waiting for a photo finish.

The female took the boarding passes and typed a few keys, a few here is an understatement and the speed was never in her constitution. She came back to us and enquired if we desperately want to be seated together. Both of us opened our mouths at the same time just as if two cats had the misfortune of having their tail stamped at the same moment by a rather heavy pedestrian. We stood for an instant staring at each other with eyes widened in speechless horror; then as if by conditioned reflex, my friend ceased and gave way for me to answer back and I immediately replied a resounding yes. Then she went back to the same old game of typing a few keys without an increase in her typing speed, which can be compared the speed at which my fingernail grows, and came back with new boarding passes. Hence, we were off to board our last leg of this long journey.

Well, at the back of my mind it was running as though that I had won the battle of Waterloo and now returning back for a victory march I was walking towards the gate. Emerging into the flight with a song in my lips, the first thing I saw was a crowd at the entrance. An airhostess then used a superb idea and it seemed to have worked. Yes, using two lines instead of one for deflection of the crowd was used here. A sensible man, I thought, would have realised the outcome of this opening would have stayed in the same place. In order to prove Murphy’s Law wrong, my friend and I changed lines and as usual the other line moved faster.

We then saw all our friends enter the flight through the right gate and hence when our turn came up we walked to the right. At this juncture, we thought that we were really shrewd by not taking the help of the attendant in locating the seats but again she stopped us. It was a shout and followed by a long prevailed silence before we came to a screeching halt. She reaffirmed upon looking into our passes and directed us to the left of the aircraft. I, still with the song in my lips, now was whistling even louder at the fact that she was wrong and she was making more noise at me. I was waiting, like an Owl starring at the night for a grasshopper, for a chance to show my vocal ability. All this while she was winning and escorted, but in actual terms we were lead by our collars, to the business class compartment.

Fortunately, the success of this mini confusion had resulted in cheerfulness enough for us. We were feeling happy and relaxed for once during this journey. We had come expecting a difficult time and it was a relief that to have a business compartment. We settled down comfortably and started to explore the New World of gadgets in front of us, like a kid being let free in a Toy-R(backwards)-Us shop. For once we both agreed that the personalised movie channel was the best of the lot since back in the economy class it was always like a Chinese state prison and now it was like an American correction facility. At least here, we could sit without having the elbow of the next passenger on your chest and sometimes if you have a bulky passenger I think suffocation is on the cards for you. Thus, we both settled down without any argument and soon were watching movies of our own likes.

I liked to explore more freely viz. walking through the aisle and while doing so I noticed a nice good magazine, its solidity had impressed me very much. It was, at a glance, the sort of thing that a novice would take full measures to read it, and not sure if he was equal to its demands. (Mail me the name of the magazine and see if you got it right) I recalled previous triumphs back in Madras library but still couldn’t cast of the odds against me this time and hence I performed what a sensible man would do; walk away without trying for it. By this time, the hostesses were back to their work – serving with a made up smile. Even in the most favourable circumstances would I have been seldom eager to eat, but with just the glimpse of her I was forced to answer yes involuntarily.

She gave us a booklet and left us flipping through it like a 3-year-old through a newspaper, while we were waiting for them to serve what was there. Little did it strike us that the booklet was in fact the menu card and she came back for an order. I, yet again, had to keep the momentum going brilliantly, asked for the menu card. This time the hostess sort to actions since it speaks more than words and pointed to the booklet in my hand. Thus We, as in WE, had a choice of food and in this case was for a 6 course meal.

With six courses of meal and a nice movies of my choice, all said and done, the best place to be in a flight. The day was clam and sunny and I was thoroughly enjoying every inch of the flight. In this respect it differed radically with my friend. We hadn’t paid money yet for the flight and hence the sudden change of class in our ticket would mean that we would have to pay more. It was this that put my friend’s mind the whimsical idea that we had to pay the difference in the prices too. There was no thought of any sordid gain in this journey for him and there was only one thing that could put a stop to it. Yes, SLEEP and after the 6 course meals, it was inevitable for us to fight staying awake. Of course, it seemed to me a most admirable suggestion (SLEEP), one that would solve everything. Hence, after seeing a couple of movies with around ten servings of ice creams we both prepared ourselves to enter into our dreamland.

After the hostess cleaned the place, we were set to go to sleep at the earliest possible situation. Though it was a little stuffed for my friend to sleep fully clothed we had to retire into sleep with them on. We, slept, of course couldn’t say like Sleeping Beauty, but something similar to that. We were later woken up to find that we were just 15 minutes from landing in Chicago. We were involved for the last minutes in filling the I-94 cards and thus ended our flight to America from Madras.

That's All FOLKS!!!

Medicines - Hope it does not hurt me

I have a major concern about medicine. Frankly I have to admit that I hate seeing human blood within a distance of 2 kilometers from my eyes. While looking back for the cause I traced it way back to my childhood (not long ago) when the medicinal man for any discomfort of mine would resort to giving me an injection.

I really would like to know the course details of the present day doctors, is there any course where they teach them to convincingly lie every time I visit them? They have always been advocating that the injection will never pain, “Oh! You will hardly feel the pinch and it would be over” is what they say but when you look at his hand he would be having a syringe the size of T-Rex with a liquid as pungent enough to kill the cockroaches under my kitchen cabinet.

As a child I have always been afraid of many things including Dracula, Tamil Mega serials and Vadivelu comedy scenes. The plus side of these phobias is that you could turn them off at a touch of the button on the remote where as tetanus toxoid injection has no plus side. The most embarrassing minus point is that the injection (for most part of my childhood) was in an area which I can’t explicitly say in this forum but refer it as the B-A-C-K. The only plus was that I always got few gorgeous nurses to console me after the injection.

Today as a mature adult I can say I no longer have these childish phobias, well how did I manage to do it … I also learnt to lie. Frankly even today 8 out of 10 people will still faint on seeing human blood in real. I wonder how these same people can actually watch the movie Rambo (Part-I through Part-CXX1V) and play Mortal Combat for hours without food or sleep. I am also not too happy with the way the movie people portray medical emergencies on the screen.

Typically the scene would look like a pathetic actress is wheeled into the hospital in a stretcher which was last cleaned during the First World War and she is followed by more pathetic actors running around in a chaotic manner with the doctor never in the frame. Then the patient is pounded on her chest by her crying mother trying to convey the message “Don’t die honey! There are still 40 more melodramatic minutes left in this movie”. I feel the pounding would have been the actual cause of death (Source: the autopsy).

I feel that there is a certain clause in any medical drama scene for a movie named as “Standard Television Movie Performance Contract” where the doctors take a crack at the only patient in that hospital.

Note: the last line in the contract also has a clause stating that all doctors must wear their lab coats and reading glasses.

The most favoured cliché' dialogues:
First Doctor: I think she requires a Tetanus injection.
Second Doctor: Yes, but she must have 2 bottles of Gelusil before that
Third Doctor: Let me stick this tube lying here and connect her to artificial respiration
Janitor: I will clean up her mouth with Toilet cleaner – there is none here so I will use Pepsi.

Nevertheless the real world situation is not as described above but in fact is much grosser with lot of real blood instead of tomato ketchup. Also some of the nurses are not up to the standard as shown on TV. All this add up to my worries and makes me even more paranoid on the present day medical system than when I was 5 years old. Sometimes when my kid eats half our lawn I am safer trying to yank him upside down and make him drink my grandma’s mystical drink than to take him to a child specialist.

One more reason for avoiding today’s doctors is their astronomical consultation fees. I have a faint feeling that the doctors today don’t know much and hence to make our stay shorter that they scribble something on the prescription and charge exorbitantly. For example the tablet name is “Woodwards Gripewater” which to a normal reader would look like “Reger doow” depending on whether you are from left to right on the prescription.

All said and done I am on my way to the doctor to see if my nasal scan for running nose has some effect on my blogs.

Caution: Government at work

Have you ever wondered how the government is working for you, take for example the driving license department. They work so much that enable you to get a driving license within 23 years from the date of application. Some times you may get them even posthumously if lucky. This brings us to the conclusion that the government offices do work in-between their schedule at the cafeterias. In the beginning people were used to thinking that government offices were meant to help the general public but after correct ad campaigns and work culture demonstrated by apt politicians and administrators, today we understand that we are totally wrong.

Let us take an active example in daily life – Movies which portrays the hero as macho man who always smokes cigar while the villains try to outdo the hero in smoking. The only thing that defies Newton’s Law of gravitation is the cigars. Our hero will throw the cigar up in the sky and then finish a whole battle with 15 people, while the cigar takes a trip to the stratosphere and encounters few nimbus clouds on the way down. Just when the cigar plans to hit the ground, the hero fires a missile and the cigar gets ignited and docks with the hero’s mouth. This is how the movies have portrayed since the battle of Plessey.

So the government found that cigars were a really good way of earning money and they started to float a lot of advertisements of tobacco companies. This irritates a few social activists (Motto: Always oppose what the teenaged public wants) who file cases and try to block the advertisements but these never stopped the tobacco companies from airing the ads and increasing their market share. So the children grew up with the concept that smoking and bashing 15 people was a sure way to enjoy their afternoon. This went on for a decade after which the courts advised the tobacco companies to carry a statutory warning which was framed by the medical council and it went like this “The Medical Council advices the bearer of this cigarette that it is not suitable to smoke on top of a moving bus or on the face of a heavy weight wrestler.”

The medical association was entrusted to run sample tests on cigar and their effects and this meant that the medical doctors who were till then busy reading film magazines got together and started to order fresh loads of rats. Rats for the best samples to test according to medical associations and after mammoth testing, the medical association found that rats which smoked cigars really had an enjoyable living when compared to the teetotaler rats. This made the medical association to sit up and review the situation, after a brief review they ordered more rats so that they plan complete their analysis.

The activists were not happy with the wordings or the analysis conducted and so they continue dialogues lasting for more than 360 hours for each session until they reached a conclusion. Let’s make the warning a bit small. During this dialogue the government wakes up and bans airing of any tobacco related ad campaigns. This resulted in a loss to the tobacco manufactures who were irritated and started to sponsor the national cricket matches. Although this doesn’t help the national team to win much matches but the sponsors get to display their logos on whatever area which are captured by the TV crew. Now the government again wakes up and puts more stringent measures for tobacco companies such as that they can only sponsor for 3 events in a year.

You must be wondering (trust me, you are wondering now) why the government is not trying to stop tobacco manufacturers from selling cigars in the open market. Yes they are afraid of loosing the money and more so if the government bans tobacco, then the tobacco manufacturers will try other options such as marijuana or cocaine which will yield for more than the GDP of certain countries. So to safeguard the vulnerable citizens of this land, the government tries to keep the tobacco industry going by subsidizing fertilizers for growing tobacco and also make stringent warning messages on the cigar packets. This keeps the government coffers full and keeps the incompetent social activists happy also.

I am really thankful for the government since I can live in peace knowing that my children are all growing up with the knowledge that cigar kills a few lung cells in our body and mostly in laboratory rats. Not only are there warnings for cigars or movie clips when someone smokes but for everything that the common man has access to. I really salute the government for making my son know that Coke and Pepsi are really a nice alternative for toilet cleansers, all these are due to the fact that the Government works for us.

Destination Miami - Part-I

This is the time of year when my company makes a sincere effort to care about their employees company performance award, which determines which project team will be the champion of the entire organisation, except for the part of the world located outside the United States and southeastern Canada.

This is precisely the time when we (9 people) decided to make a tour to Miami and have an enjoyable weekend at the place where everyone wants to keep their footprints imprinted in time immemorial. This decision was taken well before I was even considered as an invitee. Nevertheless to make the names as anonymous as possible I have found a very effective way of appending “zh” before every name. Hence we can retain the anonymity in them. (Remember that I flunked in my Coding Theory class)

The itinerary was framed by zhsenthil, which had in the available time of 48 hrs for us, a way where we could cover more then 70% of the North American Continent and weather providing a short stay of 70 seconds in the North Pole. The places and attractions were marked in such a way that the MAP for us now represented only as a tool to get lost easily. Zhanbu and zhsuren the two most oldest team members in the crowd (a combined age of these two though less than zhnacha who alone tallies more then 4560 Gregorian calendar yrs) decided that in order to maintain the schedule that had been planned, we had to prepare food for the complete duration of the trip and then start the journey.

Hence, on the D-Day half the population of mainland China was involved in preparing chapattis for our trip. We had estimated to make 4 million of them though we ended up making enough to feed the African continent for the next 45 years even after our consumption. Though the idea was good, but the estimation lacked a bit of practicality like any other software development project. The idea was to make chappathis that were soft so that we can consume it even while coming back to Tampa Bay. The implementation with the help of the experienced “chapatti maker” zhrams, we created soft chappathis, which unfortunately was soft only for 7 nanoseconds from the time we took it from the stove. Then it was transformed into the third hardest known materials in the world and second in the Andromeda Galaxy. (Source NASA Mars Path Finder)

So when this dinner preparation chaos was underway, I entered and add a pinch of salt to the bruises by making curd rice with what ever was remaining in the kitchen. Though many don’t know what went into the making of it, but it turned out to be palatable. Here is a sample of the ingredients … a few ounces of TNT, methanol and some ginger oil to provide the taste. This may also be used as rocket fuel after 3 days of fermentation. Now with all the food ready we packed our bags and got us all loaded into the car carefully folded and placed between the food packets which occupied more than 80% of the car space, 10% was occupied with CD that contained songs which were possibly recorded during the signing of the American Independence.

There are a few people for whom FORD made cars as a sleep inducing medicine, one such person is zhnacha. All she needed was the sound of the gear shifting to go into a sleep mode. Like Newton’s First law, she will continue to be in the same state unless acted upon by an external force … Smell of food. Like zhnacha, there was another guy named zhsathish who also had the same syndrome. So we placed both of them in separate cars hence both the cars could have the Dolby Surround Sound of …. Yes … Snoring.

Snoring is a series problem for all car travelers in the US, one that affects more than shark attacks and Vadivellu jokes combined. Yet many people - here I am in now way referring to zhancha - refuse to admit that they snore a lot. Coming back to our drive … there was nothing much happening expect that we kept calling from our cell phones to the other car asking the precise location where we will have our Dinner … the prima motive for zhmuthu and zhkanagu. (I had to somehow introduce them into the story too.)

After roughly 3 hours of travel, we decided to take a break and wake up zhnacha. So I got out of the car and opened the boot to let zhmuthu and zhkanagu some air and also take out the dinner. We had chappathis, chappathis and more chappathis until 2% of the total chappathis were consumed by the 9 of us. After that the car that I was traveling felt that zhnacha was a danger to our lives since she started to induce sleep into the driver and thereby to all the others in the car. It went so bad that even the truck driver following us was in a state of drowsiness due to Zhnacha. Hence, a unanimous decision (I was not included in this for some reason … I am not making this up) was taken and I was pushed into the front seat to help the driver from not getting distracted – distraction such as zhnacha sleeping in the back seat.

Zhanbu requested me to remind him about filling up gas at some point before we hit Miami Beaches… hence I was on guard looking out for the possible GAS station in the middle of a Marshy forest. I failed to look at a rather insignificant board which said “Last Gas station on Plant Earth here … No Gas station for the next 32 billion Light years” or something equivalent like that. Since there were no figurative signs such as a Gas Station and a RED cross across it, I felt I better ignore it. All this while, zhanbu the driver felt that cars are better flying rather than rolling on the roads. So we were (I am not making this up also) not going too fast but literally flying too low. We got several air control messages to fly a little high since many clock towers were on our direct path.

Zhanbu, on my small piece of advice, disregarded all the warnings coming from the back seat and was pressing high on the GAS until Newton’s third law came into effect … the car started to land and we hit the road and the engines looked like stopping … reason … NO G-A-S … the indicator lights started flashing and it looked like there was no sign of a station anywhere nearby. By this time, zhanbu became tensed and so was I… but I was for a different reason. The AC blower was so fine tuned to hit the navigators abdominal region that his bladder was becoming FULL at an alarming rate … the irony was seen, his bladder is FULL while the petrol tank was hitting rock bottom. The situation went on for about 35 min and 30 miles went by still NO sign of the station nor did Zhanbu have any intentions of letting me (the navigator) answer to Nature’s call.

Destination Miami - Part-II

As we felt perhaps that we are going to spend the rest of the 48 hrs on the high way waiting for some re-fuelling guy to come and help us and this was when Zhanbhus eyes met a Gas station but since our Kinetic energy was so high (1.2 Giga Miles/Hour) we were not in a position to stop here and hence proceeded until the last drop of gas in our tank was consumed and our car luckily stopped right in front of a open gas station … we were saved … more than that I was saved, the station had a nice rest room. Since we were at such speed … we had come nearly 90% of the destination and so we started to put on the landing gears and decided to drive like normal Miami driver – Not obeying any RED signals on the way. All this while, zhnacha was not aware that we flew, the tank became empty and we have halted just for refueling asked if Miami had come. She was glad to get the answer from me that we have another 30 min to reach there at the current velocity or 180 days if the cops caught us for over speeding – precisely driving at the speed of light.

Nothing untoward happened and we reached the destination (thanks to the non-helping ness of zhnacha and zhmuthu in navigating) according to the planned time. In fact we had gained roughly 22 days due to our speed. All this was to be washed down the drain due to the latest technology in the accommodation industry … e-booking. Never trust the web and we had to sit outside in the parking lot for the next 34 days waiting for the attendants to even look at you, leave alone search for a booking under the name “Jaivel Surenderan Ramakrishnan”. So, all in all, we were still maintaining on time schedule. So after a few number of months we got into the room and hit the bed straight. None of us had the enthusiasm to have a bath and leave early for sight-seeing, BED was our answer. None of us could even resist the INERTIA calling us to enjoy the next 4 hours of sleep in freedom. (Except for zhnacha and zhsatish who had their lifetime span of sleep while traveling).

We heard the crack of dawn much pretty late and hence our scheduled itinerary was put to the place where it belonged … in the trash can and all of us decided to go with our instincts. We reached for the Chappathis for breakfast and then made our way to the most famous South Beach. We went and took a few snaps to justify our decision to go to the beach. By this time, our man zhsenthil decided to take matters into this hand and led us all to a place called Miami Secaquarium. This is a place where we get to meet all the SEA animals except the Mermaid which probably was having a bath in South Beach.

For the next 4 hours we were walking from theater to theater looking at Miami Dolphins and Killer whales dancing to the tune of their ring-master (who was exceptionally good looking) while we were dancing to the tune of zhsenthil, who was also exceptionally good in ogling at exceptionally good looking females. The 4 hours went as though we were made to sit in those compulsory extra classes for Physic lab during our 12th STD in school. The only consolation in this place was that the most beautiful looking females at least smiled at me and recognized that I was a living being on this planet. Apart from this, we had also taken roughly 12 million snaps of the Killer whale and other dolphins. I would have recovered the entrance fee money had I mailed a few million snaps to the discovery channel.

The sun was also traveling at a certain speed, which I am not sure, but the evening was already there before we came out of this Secaquarium. Hence, on unanimous decision, probably ignoring zhsenthil’s plausible explanation, we headed back to South beach for a dip in the water. There weren’t much of people … probably around 50-60 of them. Most of them would have just been freed from the Secaquarium after finishing their term of 6 hours of captivity like us. The highlight of the bathing that we had was the best dive in the water, which was 7mm deep by zhnacha.

She had come out like a failed look-alike model of “Bay Watch” star Pamela Anderson but certainly gave us a much need laughter. She came running from the shores and just went the wave came, she jumped right into the water, which was merely 7 mm in depth. T-H-U-G … she landed on the shore itself and then claimed that she was preparing for the dive in the deep … probably about 19 cm depth. We again missed our chance to earn a few bucks by not taking the video of this dive ... we could have easily won $1000 for this clip in America’s Funniest Home Videos. We were unfortunate since zhrams and zhsurens handy cam batteries had run down just while shooting the whales and dolphin diving in depths greater than 40 feet.

After 2 hours of water games, which included zhrams and zhsathish drinking the salty water in the name of swimming and zhmuthu, zhsuren trying to catch each other in the game of catch the leader while swimming in the depth of 3 feet water. We were all exhausted that we returned to the car for some refreshments and then decided to get in to the groove of Miami … get the taste of the night life. As the mention of the word night life came, zhsenthil burst with such zeal that he would have lit the whole of Las Vegas city for one whole month. We are talking in the tune of 1600 Mega watts of energy from his face alone leaving the other anatomy for the moment … if you can catch my drift.

There were 5 of us who were wise and decided to go for shopping and have a peaceful dinner and some much wanted break from the chappathis. So went shopping to Bayshore Mall, shopped heavily in the “Dollar Tree” shop and took a customary snap in front of “The Hooters”. This was pretty much what we did in the early night though we were circling Miami for quiet sometime looking for the entrance to the Mall. The entrance was so full of mazes that even the parking lot attendants would take 12 years to find the way if they left the premises.

The other 4 had quiet a life I suppose … probably more mazes than we encountered since the pubs in Miami were built by the Egyptians, just like the way they built the entrance to the Pyramid Ghiza. So I can’t elaborate on their night life trip but one thing was sure that they returned to the room only around 5:30AM the following day while the 5 of us were having a whale of a time sleeping comfortably in the room, which could easily accommodate 2 people at the maximum.

The next day was not so adventurous since we just drove in the car miles without stopping and then stopping for each mile … this was the regular pattern for all tourists who go to Key West from Miami. The “Key West” was intended for those who love to drive 12000 miles just to see a Rock that says “The End Point of Planet Earth – Only 90 miles to Saturn” and have a snap taken there for memorabilia.

Anyway, we all made it till Jupiter before we ran out of steam and hence decided to take the Glass bottom boat where they show you variety of fishes which can be seen easily and more comfortably in a glass bottom TV. We enjoyed the ride, which lasted the same time as the Second World War and was equally drooling. After the ride, you guessed it right, we had chappathis for lunch, dinner, tea, no special reason, driving and left for Tampa and reached Tampa safely with still 1.4 Million chappathis left untouched.

This concludes our trip … until the next one …, which will be planned by none other than me … It’s me signing off … Bye

Cure For Common Cold - Any Takers?

It’s starting to rain in Madras and all the bacteria and viruses are back to form. So I check up with my consulting doctor on the chances of me getting a common cold for which he said a resounding 200% chance yes. This brings me to an interesting question. I as an honest tax payer paying tons of money to the medical community to develop medicines for all known diseases but in reality I find that they are really useless. Let us say we give them just two more weeks to find a cure for the common cold or let us turn this problem to a more complicated outfit like our political parties to resolve.

Seriously I began to wonder what the medical community is thinking right now. All that we see on the media about the medical community is strikes, huge office furniture and a lot of people with white coats. The media keeps repeating information such as the medical community have found landmark treatments for rodent poisoning and many advanced operations such as installing a micro-device into a fifteen year old boy’s tonsil. The spokesperson happily says “We saw the boy and this micro device, so we figured a way to put them together. Next week we plan to install the batteries for the device.”

While this is going on, millions of Madras-ites are getting common cold and general cough making the place more noisy and dirty. There are two kinds of symptoms to find if you have a cold; one is strong nose blowing or huge continuous grunting. Madras-ians think nothing about these two things, for example the highest decibel sound found on the streets of madras is nose blowing. Not only do they blow but they also make sure that they throw the phlegm right next to you.

So as far as I can see, the only group who are pro-actively trying to solve this problem are the cold-remedy companies which create lousy ads on TV. For example:

(The scene opens in a pleasant suburban bungalow. The husband walks into the house with a running nose and falls flat on the floor)

Wife: Are you OK? Can we leave for shopping now as you promised?
Husband: N-O
Wife: I don’t think so you look OK. Are you having fever?
Husband: Yes
Wife: Is your throat chocking?
Husband: Yes
Wife: Do you feel like committing suicide?
Husband: Yes
Wife: Then go and watch an Ajit’s movie … For common cold, try this Nicks-Passion-500.
Husband: Nicks-Passion-500?
Wife: Yes Nicks-Passion-500.

(The scene shifts to an impressive medical laboratory which has never been used for research purpose. There is a desk; behind it is a huge collection of books. It is actually the complete series of Famous Five but the camera doesn’t get close enough for you to verify that.)

Medical Officer: Research test shows that Nicks-Passion-500, a collection of herbal ingredients, is extremely helpful for a person suffering from cold. When used in a conscientiously applied program for oral hygiene it gets you back on your feet in 15 minutes.

(The scene shifts to a shopping mall with the husband not in the picture but behind a pile of grocery items and a useless credit card whose limit has been reached.)

Wife: Just a second honey, I think I missed that baking powder. Let me get it.
Husband: Come back quick, while I load these items into the trunk.

Well, I guess I have made my point really clear now but still there are some people who believe that they can avoid cold by eating a lot of vitamin C. (Source: My wife) Sometime my wife eats vitamin C say in the order of metric tons during rainy season hoping that the common cold will not harm her. She sincerely believes in this approach and yet she is always down with cold every monsoon season.

I guess you have to follow my way which is very simple. Just drink a large quantity of cool drinks. It seems to work, since I started drinking large quantities of Coke. I have not had one cold that I can remember clearly since last week.

Note: Nicks-Passion-500 with Coke is a good substitute for Rum. (Source: my neighbour’s medical college going son)

Corruption – Back to the Basics

Long ago the Indian government placed some orders which prohibited industries from trying to win orders by bribing. This comes as a shock to many administrators since most of the Indian businesses live on greasing the machinery to win contracts. If this trend was to continue then many marketing executives will be clearly out of jobs and will have to look for openings such as LIC insurance agents and door to door salesperson for vacuum cleaners.

Nevertheless to give you an account of actually what happens just before signing the deal, I am assuming that I play the role of a brother-in-law to a big politician in a state where Mr.X (an honest businessman trying to make inroads) wants to do business.

So relax and enjoy this fictional conversation on the phone for a business deal:

Mr.X: “Mamma ji, it was the most wonderful buffet that I have ever had. Thanks for inviting me”

Myself: “It is my pleasure, what brings you to Chennai?”

Mr.X: “My Company is interested in setting up a plant for mosquito coils in Chennai. We believe this would make a great health contribution to Chennai. It would save many young lives from Chikkun-gunia”

Myself: “A lot of them are offering for mosquito coils, what’s so new about yours?”

Mr.X: “5 million shares and 15% dividend every quarter, 20 million in low interest rate loans.”

Myself: “Looks like my BIL would be interested but her wife may not be too inclined in this”

Mr.X: “No, we plan to invest 60 million in her Women’s Welfare trust and sponsor 2 grand events of A.R.Rehman concert for their trust”

Myself: “Good, the money is to be deposited in Switzerland”

Mr.X: “Why there?”

Myself: “That’s where the head quarters for this welfare trust is”

Mr.X: So it’s done deal now I think

Myself: Well not so fast, you see my son is running a Clothes shop and he is in the middle of a fund drive you see.

Mr.X: so what, we shall contribute in that drive also. So now does it make a done deal?

Myself: You see I am not the authority, my BIL is the minister for commerce and he is a very tough nut to crack. I shall write a note on your tender and we shall see. By the way he loves diamonds.

Mr.X: We will find the diamonds and have it delivered, anyone else in the list?

Myself: If you can spare a few thousands for the Pinter’s Press Association of Chennai it may be of some help.”

Mr.X: where is this association?

Myself: It’s not started yet, but my daughter is dreaming about one for a long time.

Mr.X: so be it – Now let me convey this to me boss and we shall see it from there

Myself: Good, I will write to the note once I hear from my bank on those transfers. Sleep well my boy.”

Mr.X: Thanks a lot for saving our business in the hour of the need

Myself: For any other favours also get back to me.

C-L-I-C-K
C-L-I-C-K

Well, this is how many deals get over and is precisely how our economy runs.

No wonder I am still a stupid nut who is law abiding and a proper tax paying poor bloke not knowing where to grease the machinery. While I still believe in the legislation to avoid bribery which remains in BOLD letters in every government office may work some day just the as Ghandhi ji’s Portrait hanging in the office walls.

Schools Today Are So Smart

This is a kind of age old cliché that we have been hearing from our parents, but today I feel that the schools today are smarter than when I was doing my seniors. In today’s world to feel confident and superior we just have to complain or make derogatory remarks about the current educational system. Those who are listening will feel that you actually know a lot and are commenting to improve the situation. (Much the same way as all these TV News channel works)

Often you hear parents shouting “These kids today seem to enjoy school and I do not know what they teach there. They pass college and then only start to read and speak. But during my days we had to read the Tale of two cities around 250 times just for our fourth standard”. If I were to take Tale of Tow cities as a base line I wouldn’t mind these comments.

To research on this issue I went around finding facts, which is talking with my neighbours. I found the main evidence that they say is these II-JEE and CAT examinations and their questions.

Remember CAT exams and the only thing that comes to my mind is to sharpen our brains and more importantly sharpen those Natraj 2HB pencils. I wonder how I too was in this race sitting in my college canteen trying to solve one of these questions which may go like this:

“Ashok wanted to redo his bathroom in pink wallpaper and green bath tubs. So he invited Shankar over for help. If Ashok’s bathroom is eight feet by seven feet and has a ten foot ceiling and each roll of wallpaper is thirty inches and you have only 7 feet of sticker and 200 ml of glue, how long will it take for shankar to leave you with a half-finished bath room?”

I have to be sympathetic to these students who appear for CAT exams today much on the tight schedule that they have for preparation. I have my own doubts as to whether any single question in the whole of the CAT paper tries to test someone’s intelligence which one may need to survive in the real world. These papers are set by an elite panel of educationalists sitting around a table for 7 years and design a test paper for CAT. No wonder do the oldies shout and the average students who come out of IIM do know nothing about the real world such as which side of the bike is the kick starter on. Some of them are even worse than this; they can’t comprehend the existence of a bike.

The reason for this level of ignorance in real world things is that we are all taught to learn all the crap in school to get into a college and then to a high paying job so that we can write all our money to the banks which let us buy a house with a covered car park in some remote part of the city.

That’s why I feel that kids today have to become smarter and try not to work their brain cells on questions such as how long will Train A take to over take Train B if they both started from opposite direction 50 KMS apart and traveling at the speed of internet. By scoring less in these exams they let their older generation feel proud about education while the students can live a happy life where failure meets elder’s requirements.

My other worry is that if all students start going to college and thereby graduating themselves as engineers may dilute the degree program. I presume that we are not far away when an engineering degree would be treated much the same way as a gift coupon available with the super market cashiers. (NOTE: It’s for this reason that I choose to fail in all these exams.)

The final worry for me is that schools today teach a lot that I am unable to comprehend. Take for instance trigonometry, I feel that I am incapable of answering some of those questions such as how long will the shadow of a light pole which is at 45 degree angle to a light house 50 meters away in the east while the sun is at 15 degree from the horizon. I don’t want to expose my illiteracy in trigonometry but this question is currently being taught to a second standard child. Normally it took a child around 10 years to know that their father also failed in trigonometry but now with the invention of the decade named internet it takes only 2 emails and 6 scraps in Orkut.

In my days we were told a lot of junk information which we never questioned. For instance, if our history teacher said that the battle of Plassey was never fought in India we would accept it without reasoning while today my kid questions me as to why Europe and Asia though not separated are called as 2 continents. My answer (Which is purely a guess) is that the French and English didn’t want to be in the same continent as the Czech republics.

I guess this is enough about the education of today; I am very allergic to studies. More over I have to run to my home to finish my son’s mathematic home work in advanced calculus.

Note: He is just 4 years old and invests in shares during lunch time.

Men And Their Necessary Evil

Man has always shown signs of adventurism which is very evident from the fact that he in always inclined to marry a woman. Supporting this fact, if you were to look into the apes when they descended from the trees, we find that they fell into the trap of hunting food while the female apes sat around a cozy fire place and gossiped all day. This irritated the male species but due to their adventurism they restrained their emotions on the females and expressed it via crude cave drawings depicting them savagely killing their opponents.

Men have always longed for something which is termed as a “Necessary Evil” or in plain English a “Wife”. There is a time when he refuses to listen to thinking part of his brain and this leads to Bigamy (Motto: I don’t know that one wife is too many). Having said that, I may also be persuaded to look at another angle where many have been successful with bigamy. It’s just that they haven’t come out with those formulas in open and my guess is that they may be selling them on need basis. If anyone of you has got it kindly email it to me.

There is no way in the world that a man can ever understand a woman and I say this because I am married and you are going to read beyond this line because you are also married. Let me explain the reason for the above statement with scientific data (i.e. what happened to my neighbour’s family). We all know that if you want to celebrate some occasion we got to get some gifts. Men would accomplish this task with such ease say for instance it’s your friends house warming ceremony. You would straight walk into a departmental store and pick up the new power tool box with 256 equipments (3 AAA batteries also included) and walk out of the store in under 5 minutes. While the same scenario with your wife would be that she would have gone to the mall 45 days in advance and yet to return. Finally she arrives with a Chinese flower vase depicting a monk with a fiery dragon breathing fire which is of no use to anybody.

Not only has she paid 45 times than what you have but also would have spent 3 more days selecting the gift wrapper. I wonder who found this gift wrapping technology. This is the only technology which becomes obsolete fast than even computers. The whole wrapping of the gift takes roughly 3 years and yet those who receive the gift would tear it apart in less than 7 nanoseconds. So why waste the time on it? Tell this to a woman and you know what will happen. It may result in one of the main causes for the third world war.

Women have a preconceived notion that any gift which may be of some use to someone is not at all a choice. Like that tool box which I said maybe of much use to the man while trying to either fix a leaking faucet or as a surface-to-air missile during a fight with his wife. Yet they never agree to it. They rather gift a Van gosh painting or a China Flower vase or a 3rd Century cave drawing of a snake to the tool box (Even with batteries included in them)

Next is about dressing sense which is a separate blog by itself but nevertheless has to be mentioned here. I wonder how a women’s eye is able to differentiate the 16 million colors which come in Adobe Photoshop while men can never even differentiate between a red and a maroon Ferrari. They seem to be obsessed with colors that it always takes them ages to buy a dress for themselves (sometimes civilisations come and go by the time they are done) but when it comes to selecting your trousers you will be given a graceful 2 minutes. As any other man, you would have picked up that grey pants which you have 40 numbers back home. I guess the dress makers use up all the colors for the women’s apparels that all they have left is black and grey which is used for our pants.

I got to put a stop here, since my wife has come back from shopping. In all I would say with all these difference known to us we still for some reason beyond our reasoning capacity seem to grovel at their feet always.

One point of view is that if we were not after women then the whole economy would fail. There would be no malls, no bouquets, no market for Chinese vases and most importantly no credit card and telemarketing calls. If this was the case, then all men would do is to sit in their couch and watch a cricket match and expect the women to bring the remote to our hands. It would be great if life was like that but let’s not dream too much.

So my reason is that perhaps we are trying to convince them that the tool box is a good gift at least for our carpenter.

Note: Please turn the power driller settings from HIGH to WIFE when used as a missile during a fight for maximum benefit.

Today’s Hot Topic: School Science Project

Come summer and the Indian school system has a way of making its presence felt. During the holidays the student given a task to prepare a science project. This is a yearly ritual since not many teachers like students being free (Their Motto: We hate you). I am not intending to say that science projects are always a “PAIN” but it can help you in many ways. For example, it will teach each parents the Newton’s third law “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. Since you shouted at your son, he shall remain silent till the holiday ends and then on the night before school reopening (when you have just entered the pajamas) shout “I HAVE A SCIENCE PROJECT TO BE DONE AND I NEED TO GO TO THE MALL”.

Basically any project can be classified as a science project, but this time around you son is sure to give you guideline details as to how to present them. The last minute running around in your pajamas for a project is a ritual that is most important part of any summer project. The project has to be delivered in a thick card board paper with proper calligraphic titles and all items bonded to the chart with proper adhesive etc. If any of these items are not used then the school authorities will out-rightly reject the science discovery which you have made. This may be one of the main reasons why many top Indian scientists have failed to win a Nobel Prize in Science. (They forgot the thick card board as a base, I guess)

Once you have returned home at the stroke of midnight like Cinderella (with one leg of the pajamas missing) and start to unfold the card board base you are all set. Set to think of some innovative and creative project – kindly allow 6 hours for your brain to rack up an award winning entry like the “Origin of Earth” which is instantly rejected by the panel consisting of your wife, son, the milk man and 700 cockroaches. After much deliberation you come to a conclusion that the prize winning entry would have to be clearly imaginative and original. So you can immediately drop out of the race, forget winning.

What you need is a project which can be done in 30 minutes with materials found in your unwashed kitchen and untidy bedroom. Ideally the women of the house would like to execute the project without any property damage (i.e. Your Life) which is why she volunteers to do the whole stuff. Based on advices from elders and past experience I am refraining myself from explaining the popular projects and previous year winning entries since it may require certain amount of plumbing and nuclear activities.

Irrespective of the topic you choose, the project has to be dived into 3 parts: (1) The Objective, (2) Some thing which goes after the objective and (3) The Conclusion (which should be nothing but the objective). If we fail to follow this policy the project shall be rejected. Perhaps this is why all government proposals get a quick nod, no one cares for item (2).

With not much of luck (I am certain) you are still glaring at the ceiling and looking for a topic such as “Waves”, “Gravity”, “Light”, “Cellular Phones” etc. The gravity is a good one considering that you can take pictures of you holding your baby down and then take another snap of the baby falling and then another snap of you picking up the baby. This proves that there is a lot of gravity around you.

The only problem with this experiment is that you don’t realize the actual gravity of the situation in hand. All you want to do is to come up with some idea which can be done in 10 minutes. So you are back to square one at “Our Solar System” which takes 10 minutes to prepare. Out of these ten minutes, 9 minutes are devoted to searching for plastic balls of various sizes and rubber bands to string them in order.

Anyway you made it for this year and this whole routine shall occur exactly the same time next year, until then you may not have any problems with Science. The only problem you now have a deal is that your son is not going to get a good grade. For good grades you need good projects and for good projects you need good amount of time to think. So think about it.

Note: I am off early from office; have to go to the mall for buying things for my son’s pre-kg project named “Prehistoric Farm Animals”.

Obsession with Home Improvement

My wife always finds some reason or excuse to go to the Departmental store. Like for instance if I didn’t wash my car or if we needed to patch the ceiling, she will immediately put her slippers on and call out “Let’s go shopping”. I guess from so many male readers reading this line that I am not in a minority group.

I hate sarcasm and more than that hate the 3 most used sarcastic words in English “You do it”. You must be wondering why even a third rated super market in your locality is always crowded, well it’s because we males are afraid of those 3 words. Men hate to do anything themselves except getting lost in the car or watching cricket on TV. So the “Y” chromosomes in this planet have adapted to dislike the concept of sharing house-hold work with our wives.

What really baffles me is why all these supermarkets are carrying a big section for home & kitchen appliances, vegetable stalls when every 9 out of 10 families prefer to eat out. I presume that the shop owners are obsessed for success since even if we prefer to eat out, they tap the female instinct to shop unnecessarily. I have never seen my wife return empty handed from a super market, even if she doesn’t like anything in there she may buy a new fair of silver ware when we hardly eat at our residence.

The supermarket folks are very intelligent; even if we are not willing to cook inside our kitchen they come out with products to mordernise or remodel our kitchens. The only best thing I like about this idea is that every time when we either remodel or mordernise the kitchen, we make sure that we dump those 23 million cockroaches and 43 million lizards out of the kitchen. Perhaps my wife buys those cheeses, breads and cement concretes which stay for inside the freezer (roughly for 43 years) for the roaches to feed their colonies.

Another interesting fact is that these home improvement shops and restaurants are always full of guys who are instructed by their wives to modernize their kitchen or shop unnecessary grocery items. Even at 10:30PM when the store wants to close you will see many guys leaping and diving to enter before the shutters go down. If you don’t believe me, then try to get a vantage parking place at 10:30PM in a super market. After these call centers, I assume the next thing which is 24/7 is the super markets sales counter.

The recent trend is really disturbing, families go out buy houses than rent them so that they can go and shop for home improvements, furnishings, kitchen accessories. Not long ago, my friends used to say “Why waste your money on renting a place when for the same you can buy one. Thus you create equity out of it.” Now, seeing the queue in front of these home improvement shops and super markets, I guess my friends are creating equities for these SHOPS.

On a trip one day to the home improvement shop, I had to visit the restroom. The rest rooms in these shops are always located in the next available planet or 2 miles from the entrance. I walked right through the shop which had sections like plumbing, nuts ’n’ bolts, PVC pipes, bathroom accessories, marbles, tiles, clay, soil and hardware clothes etc. Upon reaching the rest room I find that I can not enter it. It baffles me if so many guys are out there buying these accessories and building a home but can’t flush a single toilet. Perhaps the only solution which I can think of for this problem is that we out-source this work too.

My Son's Driving Turns Me Neurotic

My sons learning to drive and he is really terrific. He is just 4 years old.

Well every parent would love to see their kids learn to drive as long as the vehicle which they drive is manufactured by Fisher-Price and moves in pace with a mega serial. One thing which is safe is that the Fisher-Price set comes with toy Fisher-Price people who are unlikely to swear when you are driving rashly.

Technically from the perspective of a parent, there is no difference between 4 and 18 year except that when is 4 you have more control over him while he is driving his Fisher-Price manufactured Ferrari. Recently when I looked into my driving license I found that according to the law, whenever your child reaches 18 he is allowed to apply for a license and drive an actual car on the actual road with an actual speed of 60 KMS. This puts a big shrill down my bone marrows since I keep seeing him drive, on a daily basis, between the bed room and the kitchen.

According to the law, when my son is 18 he shall be allowed to drive a vehicle with a restriction that he be accompanied by another person (preferably over 40) who has a valid driving license and is not Salman Khan. [I rather let my son drive on the road and kill people than drive on the foot path.] So I request the government to make this restriction a bit stricter by saying that he can drive along with a co-driver, 2 Supreme Court judges, my mother-in-law and a child surgeon.

This is not to hint that my son drives badly but the actual people on the road are worse. My son today follows all laws which are prescribed in the driving learner’s manual and I am afraid. He drives at correct speed; shows hand signals, slows down while turning and honks at my wife while crossing the kitchen etc. My worry is what if my son starts to believe in the manual and tries to replicate this in the real world?

Motorists in Madras believe in some sort of a black magic curse would fall upon you if you follow the driving code and display speeds ranging from Formula 1 to Concorde even while trying to park in a busy shopping mall. If this is not a deterrent to you then I wonder how all these drivers receive calls on their cell phone only when they drive, perhaps their wives are calling them to give instructions on how to come back home. “Swerve left and hit the auto out of the road; turn immediately to the right, 2nd flat is our house, B-A-N-G … The Green one is a garbage lorry you hit, I am wearing a RED dress”.

Veteran Chennai drivers like me precisely know who to go about this system. For instance it is OK to park in the middle of the road; to rush after the Red signal has come. It’s OK to go through the RED as long as you can remember when it was YELLOW. Never to follow an auto-rickshaw because following his wheel makes your head spin. How is my son going to learn all these tricks?

What worries me a lot is that, he may want to drive one day (guessing from his passion for speed in his current Ferrari). My urgent requirement is that there be some kind of a summer camp between school holidays where in they teach you these tiny driving tips which will save many parents from becoming neurotic patients while watching their kids drive. I hope some event managers are reading this piece and start thinking in those directions while I stop typing since my son is approaching me in his Bulldozer @ 250 MPH

Note: Fisher-Price Bulldozer manual says it’s advisable to drive to a maximum of 10 MPH only.

Further Note: The bulldozer is driven by trained child drivers below the age of 4. Never try this at your home.

News As The TV Covers Them

Not long ago the average TV viewing people had very high regards for media journalist who are covering useless news but today this regard has gone way high. Basically I would like to say “It’s rotting”. When I say “it’s” it is referring to the news content and when I say “rotting” is it based on the shockingly new development within the TV channels in covering the top headline of stories that are happening around you and me.

Let me dissect what would happen if hypothetically a news item such as “dead frog found in school canteen” arrives and how would this story be blown out of proportion by these media giants in search for lousy TRP ratings. Let us assume that the story was that a school watchman had ordered a combo meal and noticed that the “Paneer” was chewier than it ought to be. So he spit it out and found it was a piece of a frog. More frighteningly, the head was missing and the watchman was violently trying to vomit food that he had since he was 14.

Before the channel crew members and other innocent bystanders could arrive, the school canteen manager has a tug-of-war and finally takes control over the frog and refused to surrender it. If you knew anything about Indian media journalist, then you would know what happened next, namely, crew members materialized from no-where. Then a group of experts in frog and frog related diseases appear, now it becomes a real head lines for the day and the viewers could be left with frightening visuals of the dead frog, a vomiting watchman and 5 experts wrestling between them. There has to be one lone outsider fanatically shouting slogans like “Stop cruelty to frogs, eat lizards instead”.

With this as a backdrop, the news channels will then form a short documentary featuring interviews with those related to the incident such as the watchman’s second wife, a tea shop owner next to the canteen, the canteen manager’s son-in-law and the school principal. Each of them gives their 10 cents worth of wisdom when the nation is facing economic crises and slowdowns. In-between these documentaries they will show clippings which zoom-in and zoom-out of the actual plate which had the dead frog. Some channels will use latest graphics to recreate the frog in the plate.

In the mean time, the journalist would think and come up with interesting angles from the legal point of view, animal rights and carbon footprint analysis. A PIL would be filed with lawyers stating to the canteen manager that “the frog is vital to the case and that they are to maintain custody of the frog to insure it’s not lost, or damaged or consumed till the case ends”. In reply to this the advocates for the canteen manager would reply “At present we can’t reveal the exact location of the frog but wish to convey that it is being tested by a reputed multinational laboratory at an undisclosed place.”

As soon as we viewers loose interest in this news line item, the channels start their next round of attack. They create a nation wide SMS poll consisting of 32 people well trained to keep sending SMS. They are highly skilled in choosing different options using latest scientific methodology involving “Inky Pinky Ponky” and “Shaat Bhoot Three”. News with charts stating the same numbers in 1000 different ways will be repeatedly aired. They would create headline stories like “Did you Frogget your lunch today”, “A frog in the box”. These stories will be followed by discussion panels answering burning questions related to this incidence like “Are today’s frog suitable for meals?”, “Is the canteens safe for lizards?”, “Face the Nation: Frogs or Onions, which is cheap?”.

By this time the frog issue would have reached to such a height that the parliament would be rocked. The opposition parties would start to blame the ruling party and stall proceedings for 3 days. They would then bring out facts that in-fact the canteen manager was linked with the ruling party and was employed using false certificate for his caste. This would bring the anti-reservationists into the picture and the whole of the media would be having a ball of a time.

Why forget the stock markets, all the restaurants and hotel stocks would have nosed dived and market research analysts would be talking about this deviation. In my opinion anybody who has a nice suit/coat and knows few jargons such as “correction”, “market fundamentals”, “global cues” would be hired by these channels as a market research expert.

While all this is going on, the poor watchman who had tasted the frog and the canteen manager who served the frog would have been pushed to oblivion. Both of them, not to be shocked, would have in their short time of fame enrolled into some opposition political parties and would be campaigning for the next general election. I wouldn’t be shocked if the canteen manager was elected to the health minister portfolio.

This whole drama ends when another headline story is created namely a 14 yr old student wanting to elope with his math teacher. Anyway this ends my point of view on today’s responsible journalists who try to bring news as they occur without distortion. Perhaps I have a different perception of what they show nevertheless I can’t stop watching them on a daily basis for entertainment.

Time For Pre-KG Admission

We are moving inside our own house every 4 minutes and I got to blame this on my son. He is only 42 months old but somehow seems to have got something in him to be always in the news just like our Indian cricket team. This time around we are lurking like a cat in the house due to the fact that we have to get admission for him in a school.

When I was a “YOUTH’ (not long ago, this is to keep me happy) schools were mainly to make sure parents get some time off and the children have some past time. In today’s fast moving world, school is the ONLY thing which a family thinks right from the moment they hear that the wife is pregnant. Even as I am typing these words, some couple would be thinking of which play-school to put their kid in. It has gone to such an extent that many couples like their friends to present school bags, Tiffin boxes, geometry box for their baby shower so that they are well prepared for sending their kid to pre-school.

The process starts with the selection of the school. This involves more calculations than what was encountered by Einstein while solving the theory of relativity. The major criterion is the school being located in the same solar system of ours. Then the issue is about the affordability comes into picture. For all practical purpose consider any school as non-affordable. The reason for this is the schools thrive on your competency to teach your kids. There are 2 methods of filtering the schools of your choice. First method is to look at your neighbour and follow them or the second method which is highly scientific and works all the time – “Inky Pinky Ponky” as a filter.

The second item in the list of things to do is to procure an application form. Usually the forms are given on a day and time which is never suitable for any of the parents. Getting an application form is a real big ordeal compared to buying a nuclear missile from the US Defence Ministry. Parents have to employ 2 people for 3 months to go and stand in-front of the school to be first in line. For many parents who can’t afford people go personally and camp before the school thereby letting their houses for rent. As we read this line I am sure many house owners are contemplating of leasing their homes and pitching a tent before lucrative schools and then think of marriage and kids.

The next item on the list is to find a suitable mode of transportation. As far as I know it’s the same mini-van in which the driver, through very precise calculations, fits as much of human flesh possible inside the van and where ever there is space he will carefully fold the small children and stuff the gap. In the rear end of the van he will mount all the school bags which will weigh roughly 23 metric tonnes. It is truly an engineering marvel on how this van travels through the roads with its wheels hardly in contact with the surface. The driver’s mood often reflects that he is trying to keeps his bladders from breaking while driving the vehicle. In one sense it is really nice that the children don’t feel the drive to school but for other observers outside the van it is horrible.

Even though the above tasks look heavy, the heaviest is yet to come. Getting the child to a ready state is a big struggle for the parents. Firstly to wake the kid up is such a Herculean task that it saps 60% of your energy. We have to put him in the bathroom while he is half awake and brush him up. While the man brushes the kid, the woman undresses him for the bath. Like trying to catch a crocodile in swamp, the woman returns to the room with the kid tied around her shoulders to dress him up. Invariably the guy always gets the dress combination wrong but yet the lady will assign this task to the guy on daily basis. Perhaps both of them went to Harvard Business School for education and the school didn’t teach them this.

Once the kid is dressed up, he looks exactly like Buzz Aldrin just before his launch. Only thing was that Buzz didn’t have to take this Tiffin box and water bottles. Apart from this, in case you kid spills (eventually he will you moron) food we have a bib tied to his collar. While doing all this, the kid shall remain in his sleep like Newton’s First law and shall be forced to wake up only in the evening for watching TV.

The school bag is an issue which I have to touch upon. The actual weight allowed as per law maybe around 450 gms but in reality it is the same weight as the Rock of Gibraltar. They have to take note books which are classified as actual class note, scrap note, rough for the scrap note, rough for no reason, home work notes, promissory note, text books, Britannica encyclopaedia, Income tax law books etc on a daily basis. The heavier the bag the more studious the kid is, this is an unwritten rule according to the educationalists. The second part is the course for these kinder garden kids which includes integral calculus, financial management, foreign law and if time permits some nursery rhymes and good manners. No wonder my kid keeps failing just like me.

On the whole for those couples thinking for a kid and those expecting couples beware of our education system. While the lady is entering the labour ward, you husbands kindly pitch a tent next to the school compound. Don’t cry that I never warned you – I am on duty from tonight near the school grounds.

Note: take the pizza delivery numbers with you & if possible the hospital number for emergency.

15 Early signs of Company Lay-offs

The Top 15 Events that tell you that your company is going to down-size drastically

15. CEO frequently overheard mumbling, “Inky-Pinky-Ponky.”

14. Your workday consists of coming in at 10, thinking up where to lunch with your coworkers and then leaving at 5.

13. Windows XP shutdown screen reads, “It’s Now Safe to Start Looking for Another Job.”

12. Company recreation room is access controlled now.

11. Sudden proliferation of IIT engineers as interns.

10. Your boss keeps asking you “Do you like your present assignment?”

9. Company president now driving a Hyundai Santro myself.

8. Annual company holiday bash moved from Sheraton banquet room to abandoned company guest house.

7. You are allowed to take only 4 print-outs per day (Back-to-Back).

6. Guard at front desk nervously smiles at you whenever you pass by.

5. Giant yard sale of used laptops/desktops in front of corporate headquarters.

4. Babes in the HR suddenly start flirting with dorky technical managers.

3. Employee Discount for your company’s products are discontinued with immediate effect.

2. Company dental plan now is applicable only to select management employees.

and

1. Sign Your Company Is Planning A Layoff …
President begins weekly meetings, “Good morning, you ignorant developers and testers.”

Chandramukhi – II: Erandaam Pagudhi

I am at last really happy that I am the first man to have the scripts for the sequel to the block buster Chandramukhi. I am calling it Chandramukhi-II: Erandaam Pagudhi which for the legal records will show as I am the first to write a sequel.

I am daringly proud of this script which was penned without sleeping or eating except for 2 dinner buffets and 35 minutes in total. I feel like it is really a very heavy work. Guess what would have been for the original scripter writers who had taken twice the amount just to plagiarize the Malayalam script.

As you may know, the original movie titled “Chandramukhi” garnered a record 96 awards including: The best motion picture which was screened for 700 weeks without a single viewer, best makeup artist to make the hero look viewable, best motion picture lasting longer than the Bofor’s case, best supporting role for displaying total lunacy on screen, best movie with copied scripts. The one thing which is very clear from this movie is that if the hero was really a doctor as claimed in real life, he would be hanging upside down in his clinic held by his patients.

The phenomenal success of “Chandramukhi: I - the original” as served as a rebuttal to all the critics in the cinema world that one can make blockbuster movies with copied scripts. Hence, I am saying with full confidence that the script writers are the most talented men in history including Shakespeare, Darwin, Edison and all the four Beatles combined. Why I am saying this is that the script writers will pay me a hefty amount for the sequel.

(The movie opens with a bullock cart moving at high speed and lot of thumping sounds in the background. The hero is sleeping with hay on his face)

Savarana: Whew, I am 50 and still can fight 8 fellows 20 years younger than me.
Senthil: I thought you were in Himalayas, how come you are here?
Savarana: The director said he can’t do an entry scene for me in the Himalayas, so had to come down.

Senthil: How did you manage the cold wave there?
Savarana: Fortunately, they had put 50 coats of whiteners through which the cold could not penetrate. By the way who is this?
Ganga: I am ganga remember you saved my life the last time …
Savarana: But ganga was played by Jothika
Ganga: She didn’t want to do another movie with you in the same mental costume. So they looked for a younger female and chose me, I am baby Sandhya.

(The scene shifts to the haunted house)
Murugesan: Do we really need to go inside this house?
Saravana: We have no other option, the eerie sound-track has already began
Murugesan: I hear some spooky sound, do you hear the same?
Savarana: Don’t be silly; what is the chance that they are going to make the same movie plot again?
(There is a loud cluttering sound, the computer animations start with a 50 feet snake and a Stegosaurus coming straight at Savaranan)

(The scene shifts to the family house, all of them are curious as to who the villain is? Saravanan tries to help them)
Villian: Out of my way, I am not prepared to fight another loosing battle with him.
Saravana: No, you have a signed contract and better fight with me else I have to do a duet song shot in Iran with this girl who is twice younger than me.
Villian: For that reason I agree.
Fight goes on and eventually Saravanan (an acclaimed psychiatrist) wins the battle hands down.

The scene shifts to the D-Day, the festival in which Chandramukhi plans to elope with her lover and killing the king Vettiyar.
Saravana: Look through this pin hole and you will understand how bad Ganga dances.
Prahu: (After looking through the window slit) Yenna Kodumai edhu Saravanan
Saravana: Now as per plan let’s spilt and meet at the centre hall after 5 minutes
Senthil: Why 5 minutes? Do you have some kind of a plan?
Saravana: No, That’s how long the climax song runs.

Audience: (Running out of the show)
Director: Why are all of them running?
Audience 1: It’s the song “RA RA” again
Director: Why?? you don’t like it?
Audience 1: Yeah I like it but the music director comes at the end and says “Repeat a” and the song starts again. Once is too many for this song.

They keep a dummy corpse of the king and Ganga avenges her thirst and all are happy. I don’t want to dissect the plot on how Saravanan arrives at the conclusions, for that you have to wait for the release of this movie on the silver screen

US Visa: A mid-summer Night's Dream

[Setting: A Scene at a software office during the pre-Y2K era.]

Since Mohenjodaro and Harrappa days, IT industry has had its own say in the many different stages of Visa processing. Here is a small introduction about all these types.

The prerequisite before you are called upon for the first stage is that the Manager would come and call you only when you are surrounded by 43 employees at your tea break. Then he will proceed ask you if you were willing to travel to the US, Slovakian Republic or to Uganda. Most of the employee using the method of elimination (same as in KBC) choose US and says he is geared up to go. Then the second question to follow this is if he/she can relocate within short notice. A short notice for them varies from 1 day for an overseas trip notice to 287 weeks for approving a technical book.

The first Stage is Resume Collection: This is one of the most preliminary stages wherein the Manager would come running at your seat and pestering you to give in your most recent resume. Here, the word most recent means resumes that are only nanoseconds old. (Note: Not even a day old resume shall be accepted.)

In this kind of a situation, the employee would sit down and prepares a resume, in a traditional format. No one would be able to tell the difference between an ancient Egyptian inscription and the traditional format. One shall always wonder why such fonts and sub-headings are chosen in the first place. Although the main rationale of a resume is lost, we still have to act in accordance with these rules furnishing unnecessary information such as my neighbour’s chest size, my favourite pet's name, do you like Abhishek Bhachan etc.

While this process of building a latest resume is going on, the Managers can't wait. They look like cats that have sipped a boiling hot pan of milk and keep jumping here and there. Their momentous commands makes you think that they would even try going and sitting inside the Printer and pull the paper so that they could tender the resume.

Once tendered, then it's left to lie low like how you prepare mango pickles. Collect all of them and FILE it, File is the last nail in the coffin. For a debutante, filing the resume means a lot since he doesn’t know that this is the one and only step in this type of processing. After a few submissions, he is more matured and just changes a few words here and there in his name, so that it is qualified as a Latest Resume. (Note: Further matured employee file in the previous version without any change since mostly all managers can’t even differentiate between a Word File and a Carbon Paper)

Only if an employee has had more than 6 resumes collected from him is entitled to enter the second round of processing.

The second stage is Telephonic Interview or in technical jargon Conference Call: Since the employees in this stage have already felt the mental trauma of preparing resume after resume, they are giving a small break. In this stage, the managers call the overseas department and fixes up a time for an interview. This time is generally during the nights since most of the clients belong to the Wild West.

Although the time of the call is very uncomfortable, the employees are again made to fall into the same trap as in stage one by saying that if the interview goes well, then its barely hours before you leave this country. Employees are also not given much time to prepare for an interview, and are handed over a bunch of mock sessions that closely resembles the Shakespeare's Hamlet, with a bold message "Something rotten in burning in Denmark". These booklets which are purely aimed to help an employee better in building a conversation, is in fact mainly used as a bib for many lunches to come.

For example:
Interviewer Question: Hi, this is Jim, how are you doing today?
Employee : Hello Jim, I am [Your Name] (Note, Please don’t say Hi Jim, when his name is Tom)

Interviewer Question: Tell me in short about yourself?
Employee : Poorly paid hairy weasel. (Note: This is an assumption that you are in a software consulting job)

Interviewer Question: What is your Weak Point?
Employee : Females (Note: Be specific for example Blondes. Red necked or Spanish)

The employee has been given a date and time and made to hang around through the night waiting for the call. He very closely resembles those people who go to receive their cousins coming by the Howrah Mail. Never has this train, to the best of my knowledge, come on time and so is the interview call. Since being a Quality oriented organisation, you are required to stay till you can be sure that the call did not happen. Let’s assume that the call was to be at 8:00PM and then the algorithm is that the employee waits till 3:45AM the following day to clarify that the client hasn’t called.

The next plan of action for the manager is to again call the overseas department group and fix up another appointment and then turn to tell you that the client was off to Hawaii on that day as the mail which he sent had reached a bit late. Hence, the employee has to redo all the things on the second day too. This continues for 5 days (not contiguous days), after which the overseas department group get wild and disclose that the client has found another suitable candidate.

The only good thing here is that, this doesn’t damage you in anyway. In case the client had called for an interview and then you had failed, that was the last time you can think of going abroad through this organisation. Now, since there is no faux pas of yours, you shall be expected to do this routine again.

On an average you repeat the above procedure for 4 times and after which you finally attend a call. You were supposed to be interviewed by a Web Development project manager, but the call is from an Accountant of the client who purely asks what your name is and what salary are you drawing currently and things like that. Since the helpful tips given by the organisation didn’t carry these you make up by answering on the spur of the moment.

For Example:
Interviewer Question: Hi, this is Tom, How are you doing today?
Employee : Hi, this is Mahesh here and I am doing pretty lousy since you have called 4 hours late.
Interviewer Question: J (laughs)! I am not sorry. Now what's the salary that you are drawing?
Employee : Almost close to Zero
Interviewer Question: What is your Expectation?
Employee : $23 Billion per Annum
CLICK!!! The Phone hangs up.

The overseas department group conveys that the call was well handled by you and they would get back to you by tomorrow. This is the only time that they are prompt, they call you up tomorrow to say that you were technically not sound to handle such a tough project and hence you had to repeat all over again for another Web Development project.

Assuming you get through 7 client interview, it brings us to the Third Stage called the Consulate Visiting: In this stage we fill up those 2,94,587 forms that repeat the same questions like shown in below:

Form 1023

(Fill it in Bat’s Blood only, NO owl blood. Please use Hebrew Font Only)
1. Has the employee ever flown to Madagascar and Sent Back due to Flu
Yes/No
2. Does the employee wish to take his Neighbor's Wife along with him
Yes/No
2a.
If answered yes for 2, please specify which Neighbour
Name Age Relationship with you Sex

3. Do you need Money from your Organisation *
Yes/No

4.Do you own any share of Infosys Ltd **
Yes/No

5. What is the purpose of this visit
A/B/C/D/E/F

A) Tour to Intel
B) Detailed Weather Report
C) Refer Invitation Fax

D) Y3K COBOL patch fixes

E) None of the Above

F) All of the Above

*: If yes, you may not be permitted to leave for overseas assignments.
**: If yes then surrender them if you want to leave, If NO please buy them and then surrender them to us.

Once you have filled in the essential forms (in triplets), they instruct the travel agent to send the forms to the consulate. As any Indian travel agent, he juggles with the forms and the certificates, which creates an alarm in the consulate and they land up calling the manager. The manager, who in the brightest time of the day, will hum and haw in their replies causing the embassy officials to panic This results the person to appear for a direct face-to-face interview.

As a customary thumb rule, the last employee whom the company doesn’t want to appear before the embassy is the one who is chosen. For these kind of emergency events also we have a document. (This is because we are a CMM level company which has documents for everything from going to the lavatory till using carbon papers) The employee has to rehearse and practice before he leaves for the interview.

A typical sample is shown below
Consulate Interviewer : So how long to do you plan to stay in the US
Employee : All daylong and the night too if you allow us.

Consulate Interviewer : What is the purpose of the visit?
Employee : To spearhead a new pilot project in DVD domain at Sony Labs.

Consulate Interviewer : Do you know anything about Chip Technologies?
Employee : Yes, many of them like Potato, Tomato and Plantain.

Consulate Interviewer : Could you clearly and lucidly elaborate about your credentials
Employee : (Tamil) Soaka Sonna lady, Naanum Edhai Yengayavadhu use pandren Catch my point.
(Note: see Michael Madhana KamaRajan, the film for more clarity)

By all things, Murphy's Law works to its true nature. What must go wrong will go wrong and the chosen candidate does answer in the same lines as shown above and gets himself rejected. Once rejected, the candidate is crestfallen since he now has to initiate from the first stage yet again after a year. Now it’s been unofficially established that when you are summoned for an interview use your brain and not the handy sheet that the company gives for reference.

For some lucky candidates, they bypass this step and get their passports stamped and do the next step which is Post-Stamping. Along with this, the Managers also show a variety of documents such as a Sunnyvale Road Map, a proposed Project Plan without any reference to your name in it, 1385 sites that show what the actual project is about etc. These things are shown so that they develop a confidence in the employee’s mind, while he is well trapped into this drama. The employee is made to believe that he should be able to leave at any moment in the next 48 hours.

The build-up for this event is so pleasant that right from the Project Manager to the Project Leader, they give such nice sugary dialogues that make each of the selected employee's float in their dreams. Many things will look like happening from a fairy tale. (In most cases it's SLEEPING BEAUTY.) You would start to wonder if it’s the same HR that made you wait for 345 hours for a Salary advance are now staying late to send in your papers 456 hours before the deadline, but with a valid H1 all these will happen.

Many new employees, who have not gone through the first and second stage for some reason, fail to understand the principle motive behind this drama. This is purely done to keep the employee busy and also give an impression that he is really an asset to the organisation.(According to a survey employees came 8th in the most valuable asset in an organization, 7th was Carbon Paper) As the hour's starts to tick down, the Visa comes through without any problem, the flight tickets are all confirmed and the Foreign exchange all comes through with just a single nod.

In the meantime, the fresh employee would be on a spending spree right from a baggage to all the masala mixes, while the seasoned professional traveler remain as stationary as a rock watching the events with at most calmness. At some time nearing the 30 hours mark, the Manager could call upon those who are supposedly to leave in a tone as to convey perhaps how to conduct ourselves or whom to meet once we reach the US. The actual ulterior motive is to convey the best climax statement in this drama, the TRIP stands CANCELLED.

The way a manger normally says this news is shown below
Case I:
Manager : (sad voice if the team is really big) I got a Good/Bad news for you. Which do you prefer?
Employee : Sir, I prefer the Good news first.
Manager : Well, here is the good news, the Hurricane Andrew is not going to hit San Jose as expected. Also Salma Hayek is going to do a live show there after you reach.
Employee : HAHA (Background thinking about the Bad news)
Manager : The Bad news is that you will not be there in San Jose to witness that event. We have just heard that the project has been suspended.

Case II:
Manager : (sadder voice if the team is big) I got a Good/Bad news for you. Which do you prefer?
Employee : Sir, I prefer the Good news first.
Manager : Well, here is the good news, The Malaysian Flight is not going to be hijacked as expected.
Employee : HAHA (Background thinking about the Bad news)
Manager : The Bad news is that you will not be there in that flight. We have just heard that the project has been suspended.

Of course the employee may have faced many a trauma, but at this juncture it gives him some solace because he is not alone in this group.