Your Horoscope for the Day

Aries (Mar21-Apr19)

Your moon is now in the house of Murugan Idly Shop and is expected to remain there for some time since two waitresses calling in sick and a third vacationing in Hawaii. The A.M. is very good time to take advantage of fools. However, seek the advice of an expert before attempting plastic surgery on yourself or someone you love.

Taurus (Apr20-May20)

Due to a slight imbalance in the tides, there is some confusion among the stars as to whether or not you really exist. This question will quickly resolved just as soon as someone makes an attempt to pick up your laundry. Rash decisions could prove very harmful today, so exercise great caution while eating. The lucky stone for you, at present, is Black granite

Gemini (May21-Jun21)

This is a day to be careful with your check book and credit cards. Keep a close eye on garbage bins, since someone is inclined to throw something extravagant. Check out cute little boutique-shops nearby your friend's workplace for a visit. The evening is excellent times for you to get together with persons whose idea are similar to your own unless of course, you are a real moron. Looking at the stars, one is bound say that you are a Moron always.

Cancer (Jun22-July20)

Make detailed plans for social activities you may wish to engage later in the day. Then, later in the day, make detailed plans for social activities you may wish to engage for tomorrow. Repeat this routine faithfully throughout the remainder of the calendar year and you can easily avoid any kind of real work. Your stars point towards good prosperity in your chosen profession.

Leo (July21-Aug22)

What was believed to have been the main star guiding your life now appears to be nothing more than an enormous chunk of degenerated garbage still floating around the atmosphere. This means any advice you’re ever read in this or any other horoscope is wrong. We apologise for any inconvenience suffered by your neighbour's at your cost.

Virgo (Aug23-Sept22)

An inner restriction is lifted. You'll have a new sense of freedom, which may cause you to move in with your neighbour’s wife. You'll be contemplating changes in your wife’s life-style. Today's news will rattle some skeletons in the family closet if lips have been loose as always. A view from the sun suggests that you stay away from fried items for a while.

Libra (Sept23-Oct23)

The main star influencing your fate has moved – leaving behind a flock of unpaid phone bills, and no forwarding galaxy address. Until such time myself at Horoscope Central can locate the Missing Star, you’re on your own. Best of luck with what you can only be described as a very bleak and altogether loathsome situation. No prediction this month will come correctly for you.

Scorpio (Oct24-Nov21)

You'll feel inspired at your job today by your 120% original thinking. Later you find that your thinking was totally skewed. There's a happy emphasis on courtship. Tonight, however, may bring conflict with you aunt’s cat. Recharge your batteries for a safe weekend.

Sagittarius (Nov22-Dec21)

Spend some time with financial record-keeping today. Members of the family will feel especially close since its payday. Your best bet is to hoard raw metals such as Cement, Mortar and also Bicycle vault tubes for future finance requirements. Sunday is the best day for you to skip work.

Capricorn (Dec22-Jan19)

Your cusp has broken into the house of Leo while Leo was on online, and has made off with a portable TV, a can opener and still-undetermined amount of cash. It would be improper for you to contact the proper authorities and vice-versa. Avoid legal crimes, firing squads and parliamentary elections. Make sure your left half of the brain is not hurt.

Aquarius (Jan19-Feb20)

A long and trusted friend may be in a bit of a testy mood today, so make allowances for a punch in the mouth or just some scathing verbal abuse. No new apart from this will develop during this month. Your old Problems are more than enough to sustain throughout this month.

Pisces (Feb21-Mar20)

You are the last of the zodiac signs and this is certainly not by accident. You have relatively few, if any, friends; you are widely disturbed; and your bad taste in dress appeal only to people’s who lack any socially redeeming values. Start drinking so that many of the down and out breweries pick up their share while you enjoy drinking.

Movies in the Bay Area (SFO)

[NOTE: This was the situation during 1999-2000, any resemblance in today's world is purely co-incidental although the plots of the movies still remain the same]

There's a famous quote: "One who breaks a resolution is a monkey and one who makes a resolution is a foolish monkey." Last week, when I saw a new Tamil movie I came to know that 99% per cent of our problems are self-made by going to lousy movies and is not thrust upon by God. So I resolved not to see any more movies until next weekend or Friday whichever comes first.

This week I went (without breaking the resolution) to a movie titled which I can't remember but was the first line of a song that was a hit 4 days back on SUN TV Top 10 chart. Couldn't I ask for a better deal on a Friday evening and having to drive around 25 miles to get there to the theater? Anyway the ride was quiet thrilling since we had broken roughly 168 rules in around 143 countries (but none on Indian road context) to get there on-time.

We reached quiet early considering the fact that the show had already started and we missed the first few slides that shows how a guy should watch a movie properly. Many thought provoking slides would be there such as "Call us - Kiran Patel & Co for any grievances with the LAPD" and "Thanks for not smoking into my Nose" and "Park anywhere except at Seat No.12" and "Meeta PAAN available for chewing and Spitting anywhere in the complex". These are a few that really add a flavour to the movie.

Finding parking slots for the car is so tough that actually we could get a weekend holiday at Martha Vineyard but never a parking slot at any Indian theater complex. Thank god that we don’t have those 1,04,677 instruction given by the parking lot assistants on the angle which we park our cars at Devi theater (In US this area could only hold 20 cars while it holds 4,578 Maruthi 800s). Seating numbers are not there and hence it’s on a First-Come-First-Severed basis. We have never been early because my roommate for whom the famous quote: "Be punctual and get good seats in the theater" is never applicable. We always find ourselves in the first row watching the movies 3.142 (22/7) times bigger than what the last row guy is able to view.

Entering the theater after a 30-min American Gladiator's show for locating a parking slot, the second game begins. The WWF style called the "World-Wide-Fight" for getting a chance to enter the complex on the day the show is screened. It’s not often that you call something as co-incidence when it’s been repeated for 235 times within 45 days. The complex authorities inconspicuously shut all the doors and allow just a small gap through which moviegoers for 5 shows have to get in exactly within 5 minutes time interval. This in mathematical terms relates to CHAOS and in normal terms "Survival of the Fittest". I am always lucky since my friends are really huge and bulky that I flow along with their performance of the "Push the crowd for gap" play.

Since the time of the Neanderthals, man has been trying to find easy ways of locating seats in the theater. Take for example, Locatiuos Impendimentix (the greatest spectator at the coliseum) never in his 25 years experience as a spectator, has found his seat at the first go. It was perhaps for this reason that the English men invented the compass and now with G-Shock watches that carry a compass, we still shall figure out how to remain from getting lost while searching for a seat.

Guess that GOD, just to keep those late comers on their toes always, created the theater seats without numbers. The major agony is in you finding a seat that is exactly at the opposite end of the complex and getting there you find a 2 year old or a 4 feet fellow occupying the seat. Even more agonising is if the occupant is sleeping.

OK, let’s come back to the movie by assuming you follow my method of getting a seat

1. Walk into the center and shout "Asha! Are you there"? An answer yes would come, even if she weren't Asha.
2. Move towards that direction, and tell her that her Grandfather has just called her at the reception.
3. Take the seat and put on the partial amnesia look on the face.

If this method does not work, follow the fail-safe way; go to the first row which for all purpose is free at anytime of the day.

How can one forget not to mention about the chairs in the theater, even though it may be the US of A. An Indian theater has to maintain the same ambiance and authenticity of a local complex. The chairs shall be painstakingly decorated (No, wait for me to complete - not upholstery) with many key scratches with braining chilling phrases such as "I love Lucy" or "I love [Your wife's name] " or "&$*(%))^**$^#" (Roughly translated into English means some un-lady words). Well, any movie that you see in these complexes makes you feel like you are watching "The Hand that Rocked the Cradle". If the person on one of the extremes were to shake their pelvic girdle a little, the whole row moves in the same fashion like a Mexican Wave at the Eden garden cricket ground.

I really don’t want to touch on the story of the movie. You know that its always a Boy meet Girl and boy fall in love with her and in the second half the families don’t agree and finally LOVE wins and the couple lives happily ever after. The only difference is that the characters are changed for every other movie. Although I have tired every bit of what the hero does in the movies but I still haven't found one girl. The only thing that I got was few finger marks on my cheeks.

Let us get back to the finesse points for watching a movie better. In case you do whistle, its better you sit separately since many people come to the movie to actually see it with full attention as though the second world war is rewritten with the Vikings winning over the Nottinghamshire county sheriff. Then, there are those who wished somebody would whistle so that they could vent their anger (due to his wife) at somebody else. Finally, there is only one fellow, probably the guy with whom you came, to accompany you in this act. At this point, I understand you make a very serious decision in your life, whether to whistle at the movie or the guy whose wife was angry the previous hour. My guess which way you would go using my past experiences (of fingers on the cheeks) would be to remain silent.

Albeit, the complex is said to be nicotine free, the songs are the moments when one eases their tension and go out for a drag … Oops sorry that’s in Indian theaters only. Here, they go to a small cabin in which even trying to get a small container of condensed milk is quiet tough, but you have to be there inside to smoke. Nevertheless you can spit anywhere since they showed you a slide in the beginning of the movie.

This vicious circle between the smokers and the producers in the late 1800s produced what in today's terms called "A SONG". It's also mandatory for the producers to keep the song just around 5 min, no more or no less. This was due to the results of some scientific experiments conducted at Pokhran during the nuclear development program.

The second time when you feel that any number more than 2 is called a crowd is found just when the credits for the movie are screened in the end. It’s the same people who stood 45 min at the counter for tickets and see a lousy movie for 2.5 hours and still can't afford to wait for 15 min to let all the people outside without chaos. Since early time, when Romans built the first talkies, it's been like this. This is evident from the fact while looking at one of the stone tabloids in which it states that "Please leave one by one - Last time the death count was MC IV XCI III".

So it's not new for the latest man to do these types of chaos. One small hint, never follow somebody who is twice as big as you since you can't see what peril that is waiting in front of you. There is a very high probability that he may stamp your feet with a leg that weighs the same as those anchors used in SS Titanic.

PS: Don’t stamp on his girl’s feet else you will be embossed with 5 finger imprints on your cheeks.

A Day in a Software Company

[Note: The following is a description during the pre-Y2K years]

There is a characteristics named punctuality in English which right now I doubt even the British now of, but this word has never been used or put to use in my company. This of course does not immediately precipitate a fact that all IT workers are great procrastinators. The world has two kinds of Men and I am one of them, you know which one I am if you can catch my drift.

A morning in my company, though not at the crack of dawn but surely somewhere before sunset, is very slow. The typical time would look as though the hen and its family had been to a night show, thereby doing its duty a bit late. The fact is that this typical nature of the hen and their family enjoying seems to be repeated everyday that it has become a customary event that the day breaks a bit late in our office. Even by the slimmest chance one wouldn't try to be earlier than the usual time excluding the day when we are called for a client interview or a scheduled meeting.

The next part of a rather arduous day begins by punching the time. This rather heavy duty I think should not be entrusted on the employees on a daily basis. This issue was raised and then the management made use of an electronic watchdog who unfortunately worked only in the mornings. The dog I suppose went for its evening nature calls under a lamppost thereby missing a few records of the leaving time. This made us perform what any other major IT institution would have done. Arrange for a congregation, and then proceed to see the pros and cons for reverting back to the old system.

The old system too had its drawback, mainly the instrument for punching our time (in modern era called as the PEN) would be missing. This disappearing act is generally not a magical vanishing trick but a calculated and organised civilian act known as PINCHING (in American Slanguage). These events that occurred in really rapid successions made the officials think for their first time and they attached a string to the PEN. Now the employees are pinching the pen along with the string as a bonus.

Once entered into the office area, like a roman lion in the coliseum, we are left scot-free to do anything of our own until your manager arrives. Still, since many of the employees have never tried using the small amount of gray cells that they have, resort to mimicking others. The others, who assume that they use the gray matter in their rather small head, start the day by checking the mails.

Mail checking forms an important ritual in ones work and it has to be done at the earliest possible time frame. In fact the scene in the office if the mail server were to be down would look exactly like the NASA building just before the launch of Apollo 11. Perhaps, even there it would have been less chaotic.

This daily ritual lasts around half an hour and then we start to settle down, not to work but to browse. One is not mainly interested in browsing to know the happening in Slovakia or about the tribal events in Scandinavia but mainly because of peer pressure. If a person doesn’t browse on his own interest, he is termed as a Rotten Cabbage. (This word was coined from the Spanish term "esCabbageol de Rottenishale".)

Browsing in our office is a pleasure in its own kind. The maximum speed that you get is possibly the equivalent to the pace at which your fingernails grow. Still the employee strives hard to improve the execution of his machine to match this speed. The ice topping on this cream cake is that many of the employees browse the network using illegal logins and proxy servers. In fact, the maximum privileged user never dares into enter into the web.

The employees browse different category of sites at different times. The sites are NEWS related in the mornings, later during day it’s looking for technical help (another meaning for Job Search) and finally in the evenings to areas where females never dared to go. Not those blocked sites – you stupid, it’s those matrimonial sites.

Talking of females, this concept is virtually not present in our office. The only close resemblances that we have to females are Non-Males and the ratio is something like 1:4096. This ratio remarkably looks close to the company stock division ration between an employee and the management. The work place in all aspects can be renamed as a Boys Camp where even a stick clad in female attire is considered as a Winner in the Miss Universe competition. This is the only issue where all the male employees join as a group and agree in unison. One exception is when we crib about our low and paltry salaries.

This cribbing brings us to the first drinks break at our workplace. Usually drink breaks are for breaking the monotony of work but for us it’s a break to spread gossips and all collected valuable information such as which projects have failed and which clients have run away etc, if you can catch my drift.

The office does provide us with a pantry which offers edible drinks like Coffee and Tea tasting exactly like a dishwashing liquid, methyl-isocyanides, or phenol. The only choice that you get out of this service is to "Take it or Leave it". The other choice of course is to have it "Hot or Cold". In case did the tongue ever talks about this to the management, their first words would be "Shut this services off, they are here to work and not to drink". The only possible Homo-sapiens other than us to accept this kind of an offer would have been the Wachati Zulu tribes.

The gathering looks very similar to a Discovery channel documentary where the lesser privileged animals come to the waterhole for relaxation, while the hunters (much privileged – like a Lion) are on the prowl. The only point where we differ is that the management has never tried to step into this place since the words such as Clean, Spick and Span doesn’t apply to this area. Also it looks like cleaning not going to happen in the near future i.e. till 2300 AD or when we get salaries at par with the multi-national counterparts.

Now, we are talking business … after 3 hours of start the employees finally take their plunge into the work. This is the only part of the time you could see the screen-savers getting activated. The longer the time it's activated implies the harder the employee is trying to solve a problem. Elucidation is a word that any employee dislikes in our organisation. The best possible solution he can suggest in quality related terms is MEETINGS.

This is also the main defense that an employee has got to counter the management questioning his capabilities. The meetings are generally called for around 1130 hours so that we can prolong it by talking till lunch. Wherein the meeting status would be half-complete and it will resume at 1430 hours which is immediately after lunch.

Inside a meeting room there is nothing to talk about but from the outside it would look as though the next generation technology is going to be launched right inside this conference room. Though the language used inside is never up to the mark, the thoughts are certainly. Like the West Minister Abbey, there are a lot of back benchers who are solely there to make themselves settle into a cozy environment for sleep. The worst of them are those sleepy guys who come out of their coma once in a while and post some impossible question which makes life miserable for those who are awake. There are different types of meetings which have to be addressed in a separate document since it’s too big to handle in this one.

The period when there is a lot of buzz is during the lunchtime. This is the most productive period in our organisation. All though there is a canteen with no subsidized meal scheme, only a few of them stay back in the office to have lunch. This I guess is due to the high quality of food and the delivery model chosen by the caterers.

This water hole is the main area where the organisation’s gossip starts. There are a few chosen ones who are the only folks involved in creating the gossip. The close kith and kilns of the creators are handed the important work of spreading the gossip in plain English terms known as a Broadcasting Engineer. The other innocent bystander and those who have consumed the lunch are the ones who unknowingly give out information for the next rumour. These people are treated like dust but their information is the main ingredient in the Masala Mix that is prepared on a daily basis.

The evenings, time referred is as post-lunch, moves even slower than the so-called brisk mornings. The major activity during this time is either sleeping or sleeping with snoring option enabled. One can't deny the fact that the south Indian delicacy called Curd Rice is the best suited for Madras weather. Still the after effects of consuming quiet a sizeable amount of that brings you to a glorious state of mind … SLEEP.

Sleep is very much entitled to be envied by anyone who is awake having work after lunch. Each employee in the company has got a knack of sleeping without letting the screen savers to get activated. The exception for this case is “if and only if” the screen saver is that of an actress. The managers have a gala time during this period where they enjoy this funny episode of making surveillance rounds across the length and breadth of the floor. The reason they do this round-trip is to shake themselves out of their sleep.

The few who are caught red handed in this surveillance are called in for a one-on-one meeting and the events that follow are same as mentioned in the before paragraphs. With time employees have learnt that this is an easy way of escaping work in the post lunch. The main difference between the general meetings and these one-on-one meetings is in the latter case, one has to give a nice plausible reason for your inertness and then your boss would explain ways on how you can be proactive.

Just after this meeting one gets a feeling that he can achieve a lot for the organization by being proactive. All this really makes him start work until the guy in the next cubicle calls you for an important help that he requires. This help in an employee's term is known as a "Tea Break". The evening tea break is a bit different from the morning one. Although Gossip is the main ingredient, this time it also consists of the number times that someone has got caught sleeping and all the blunders that have been done till now from the management point of view are all discussed in length. Since this extra amount information has to flow the break takes a little longer.

This last session of work again is very similar to the morning one. People generally start to send mails regarding work that is postponed to tomorrow, which had to be completed the day before, and any work of yours shall be relegated to others stating that you are overloaded. To be really frank, this document was initiated and finished in the evening time, this is the man reason for my work overload.

The managers are too tired since they had a lot of meetings and let the employees carefree during this session. Of course, nothing more can be told since almost all employees leave earlier than the official time for some reason or the other.

Since I too am having some personal work – have to apply for a new Ration Card, so let me put a stop here.

An Indian Bachelor's Room in USA

So you are trying to visit my room at college on a weekend, which is a nice event that will give you a chance remember your old rooms and find the similarities with mine. Let's start from the very beginning; the Door for all obvious reasons should contain stickers reading "END WORLD HUNGER TODAY" or "SAVE THE KAULA BEARS". This reminds me that there was a time in my life, years ago, when I was so full of energy that I was going to not only END WORLD HUNGER, but also STOP WAR and ELIMINATE RACISM. Whereas today my life goals, to judge from the notes I leave myself, they tend to be along the lines of BUY DETERGENT/COOK DINNER etc.

Upon entering the house, you will look like you were transported from the Federation Ship of Start Trek to the deepest part of the Amazon jungle. Usually, no less than 4 people and approximately 200 empty boxes of Pizzas share the room. The next thing one impulsively looks for is generally the furniture, which is at the barest minimum (Zero in plain English). Of course you would find a couch, but a person who likes to be clean would never in the wildest dream take the risk on getting seated on it. The sofas are the main focal point for the collection of books.

The fundamental reason behind this is that more the books you keep on the sofa the more the fines you got to pay the Library. In fact, it is found statistically that my room contributes to more than half the library funds by the way of penalties. Most of the books which we lend somehow fall behind the sofa and get lost in the space-time continuum. Certain community firmly believes that some one from the "Lost Book behind the Sofa Committee" would come and ask for those age-old books and pay you handsomely since by the time they arrived the books would have been classified as RARE CATEGORY. (I am still waiting for one of them to arrive)

The other main items that one finds in the living room are the cordless phone and the TV. The TV will rarely feature channels such as "Discovery" or "The History Channel" but shall have HBO, CineMax, and TNT (these are the Favourite Channels List on the Remote). Speaking of remotes, the best place to find the remote would also be behind the same sofa where "The Principles of Parallel Computing" book is. At any given time of the day, both the TV and the Phone would be used not by the persons who are living in the room but by other unwanted visitors.

The next place where your eye moves is on the walls and the floor. The wall decoration is of two types - by Females and by Males. The rooms of the females have curtains and matching pictures on the walls. Of course the nature of the picture varies with the type of the female whereas the Male's room is painstakingly decorated with: Nothing. The only designer touches that you could find in a guy's room are some shoe marks, cigar stubs and some half emptied laundry powder on the windowsill. Coming to the floor, the female section of the crowd somehow manage to keep things clean, while the male room's floor looks far cleaner.

Shocking? Yes this is achieved by precisely placing a lot of shoes in random order on the floor such that you obstruct the eye to detect the flooring. The shoes are without stating the obvious dirty so the floor appears to be clean relative to the shoes. The inches of dust make the floor fluffy and as the Fluff-O-Meter index goes up, we vacuum the carpet. The normal duration between each vacuum event is a very reasonable period which when calculated turns out to be 6-8 weeks.

The very next room is the Dining room, you may immediately wonder: "What would happen if a burglar breaks into the kitchenette and steals those pizza boxes?" Do not worry; we keep a reserve supply of pizza boxes in the living room. If a burglar tried to get those, he'd trip over the cord that stretches across the room from the TV to the video-game controller held by a young man who is permanently installed on the sofa for this purpose. The only word that he would say (Polite at certain times) is "Hi" that too whenever you trip over the chord. He is allowed to stay in this room for the sole reason that he shares our monthly grocery bill.

The utensils in the dinning room are very limited, in precise terms just one spare set than the number of guys living in the apartment (Officially). Before I forgot let me warn you that the utensils may be cleaned once in 6 days without fail. It's your luck if that happens to be the day you come to dine with us. If the sofa in the Living room was the place for study books, then the dinning table is the place for all scrap books from comics to ^%^&*&, Yes those kind of books. You need to be very calculative to find a space between those books to sit and dine without damaging the existing ecosystem balance between the dusty books and cockroaches.

The adjoining room to the Dinning is always the Kitchen; this is a tradition that has been followed right from the Mohican tribes. The kitchen is an important area for the guys. This is the place where you find the refrigerator so that you could stick a lot of papers stating "You Cook Tonite - Shanks" and another on top of it, "Shyam shall cook instead of me" and just besides it would be "Jugs - Shyam is out of Town!!! So, I am ordering Pizzas". You now clearly know the source for those empty Pizza boxes around the house.

Kitchen is also the room where most of the guys don’t like to stay for too long. The average floating population would be around 1 per day since the person who stays longer has to do the dishes. Although there is an unwritten fact that the kitchen is the only places in the world that is far beyond human control, that even cockroaches fear to enter this area. Possibly, "Danger - Environment hazardous Area" is an apt hoarding for these rooms which are maintained by bachelors. This scenario however doesn’t fit for the women, who have all their crockery and dishes arranged according to chronological order in the morning and the reverse chronological order in the evening and inspected by the other roommates on every Thursday evening.

After passing through all these rooms, you finally enter into the untamed area-51, the bedroom. Although cleanliness is in our blood but this is the room that is the last in which it is reflected. Many people would be reluctant to enter this room for one main reason; you shall have to walk over the clothes. The clothes are assorted in a prearranged order that is decipherable only by the living in-mates. They shall with all their adept skills in cryptography be able to pick between a clean and washed shirt from the dirty ones. The distinction is that if the dress is not washed for over 2 weeks it’s termed "DIRTY" otherwise "CLEAN".

Another strange thing that would strike anybody is that there isn’t any bedspread over the bed, after a few moments another strike would occur in our mind; there isn’t any bed in the first place. The bed is made of make shift sleeping bags which are washed once every 2 weeks. The bedroom is the garbage dump yard for everybody when they want to make the living room a cleaner place. All the things are carefully moved and reconstructed into this room until you arrive at a drastic idea - you plan to clean the bedroom. Taking your roommates help you reconstruct the mess back to the living room thereby saving the bedroom from extinction.

This type of cleaning routine continues until you decide to change the apartment as a whole. This doesn’t mean that the new apartment will maintained just like Martha Stewart's Winter Home, but is liveable for at least one year without any problems. All the above description would be thrown into a toss if one of the roommate’s family members pays a visit to this sanctuary. The other roommates start to move (i.e. from Sleeping to Active). The best part of student life is that you enjoy the inertia. My roommates term sleeping as "Creative Inertia", and it’s really tough (I am not making this up) to move them from this state unless acted upon by some external cousins/family visit.

When I look back on these days, I get a hearty laugh since the argument is that students are there to study and not to do household jobs and in reality we are forced to do household jobs while studying. Perhaps this is the main reason for our low scores.

I guess my son will narrate stories like this in a few years from now – I hope he clean his clothes at least once a week, otherwise I have to plan for a weekly visit!!!

Have You Tasted Airline Food Recently?

The general attitude of an airline passenger is to go in an empty stomach, which is due to the excellent computer programs that reserves you the best timing for a flight. Usually if you are a heavy sleeper, it is very likely that you shall be booked for the 5:00AM flight irrespective of whether your source is Idaho or Manhattan or Bahamas. Hence majority of the passengers 89 out of 96 (Source: somebody as reliable as my friends in Bahamas) rely on airlines food for survival.

The food in general is not even as palatable as a wooden table but yet shall be served by the airlines with a broad smile. Some airlines would require you to pickup the packets while boarding the flight hence making their job a lot easier. Its like McDonald's motto "We do everything for you" while YOU order the combination, YOU collect the food, YOU have to cook it if you need it so, YOU clean the mess, YOU chew the food and YOU throw the leftovers in the trash can and yet you agree with their motto. In fact, it looks like a consumer of McDonalds should have a motto "We eat any SHIT served to us".

Coming back to the point, the airlines serve a neatly packed lunch basket, which invariably shall contain exactly 3 items. They are (not necessary in the same order mumbo)
1. A packet of "Break-fast" bar,
2. A cup of frozen yogurt (sweetened) and
3. The hardest green banana you ever seen on this planet.

Even a hammer would be difficult to split it. The banana is a part of the morning breakfast menu in all the morning flights which you travel. I presume that they have a secret agent following you to inform the airline agencies on your trip schedule and your dislike to bananas. Talking of tickets, you always end up sharing your seat with a huge fellow who requires a minimum area of 3 football grounds. Like rubbing salt to the would, he would have paid much less for the ticket since he booked it minutes after Oliver & Wilber Wright flew their first flight. While you, a rotten lazy blob, always end up paying an amount equalling the monthly salary of two attendants for the same ticket. (Reason: you booked it 4 minutes before departure)

The airlines always come up with new naming conventions such as "Bristo Pack", "Value meals" for their in-flight catering. These are the brainwave of a few marketing professionals who have a 3-week seminar in Paris, have nice food and come up with these news ideas which are consumer friendly. The rejected name during that meeting would be "a bag of inedible items", “decomposed garbage pack” or “McDonald’s happy meal”. The whole idea of calling the marketing guys into the picture was for the airline to save money. They came up with an appropriate solution "Let's stop serving real food and just give then wooden chips instead".

Most times than not you happen to eat the "Breakfast bar" since it’s a better bargain than fasting all the way to New York and falling down flat to the ground near Sax, Fifth Avenue. Also, it doesn’t matter if once a while we eat wood, take the beavers for example who since Darwin's time had only tree barks and are intelligent. They don’t travel via air and sleep a lot. Anyway, while having the bar, you are very likely to hear announcements like "We are having some FOG in O'Hare and hence, there is a delay".

One thing fails to get me, why is any technical fault in the US airlines linked with O'Hare. Or is O'Hare located next to the refrigerator that holds all those solid bananas that is circulated across the different airlines? I can not find a reason as to how they can manager to develop a FOG within 30 minutes in Houston. Another thing is that they won't let you off the flight while there is a technical snag such as a FOG in Houston. It's because they are afraid that we would run away and catch a Greyhound, which would take us to the destination faster and we get to eat at McDonalds.

Even though we are inside the flight waiting for the janitors to come and wipe the wind-shield so that the pilots can now say "The FOG has cleared and we are ready to leave", they wouldn’t like us to consume the eatables. In case, a fat lady decides to consume it, the hostess shall scream "Oh My god! One more down". I think they have a concept of recycling the bananas and the yogurt again for the return flight or keep it in the refrigerator located near O'Hare airport.

With the consumers becoming more and more like tub of lards and with increasing market ingenuity, there is no telling how far they shall take us for a ride. Perhaps some day, when we board our airplane, we will each pick up a box of dirt; this will be called "Haute Cuisine Service" or a packet of fresh decomposed ells and a badly hurt snail called "The Oriental Choice".

We will accept the box without complaining because we are knowledgeable consumers, and our motto is "Oink! Oink!"

A Typical American Late-Night Talk Show

Late one Tuesday night I was watching TV and doing a brisk skipping-the-channel-faster-than-light game, I was struck by shock that there was in fact a nice thought-provoking program on the TV. Well, I am talking about a toilet cleanser advertisement. After a second of freezing I continued to change the channel until I hit upon one that was airing a Talk show.

S-T-O-P, this is the kind of program for anybody to watch during late nights on American TV. Of course its a subjective matter and some (89 out of 100) people don’t like good topics, which makes them vomit and create an infuriating sensation, such as "Should America reduce its Talk shows" or "Are we running towards a nuclear free society" or "Should Oshkosh be on the world Map". People (this include innocent bystanders in New York sub-ways) tend to like some better topics like "Why I ran away with my uncle’s neighbour’s wife" or "I fantasize to Kill my Mother-in-law with the aid of my step-sister" or "Do we need Monica as a Sex symbol". The most liked topic by every American is "America’s favourite sport – SEX" ops sorry football was what I meant but the survey result turned out to be a little different.

The show normally begins with pleasant clippings of the past shows which feature mainly females, who are still trying to get into their dresses that were bought when they were in their eighth grade, spitting against each other. The time when they bought this dress would have been the same time when those females also dropped out of school due to lack of interest shown by the teacher in teaching Schrodinger’s Electromagnetic Wave Equation. The starting credits are done with (after 12 tons of salaiva collected by the total spitting), a huge set of commercials that mainly constitute Lawyers or Attorneys who are willing to fight for you even if you don’t insist them to. Followed by it are some thought provoking ads such as the same toilet cleanser brands since 1857.

Then, cheers for no reason will be started by the studio audiences, who have an IQ no greater than their shoe size, as soon as the applause sign is displayed. This sound marks the grand entry of our show's host. He shall always carry a mike in his hand and some cue cards which contain words that he must not use during the program. Many fanatic viewers (the whole audience to be precise) wear bright coloured T-shirts with wordings that read "I was there in the [Shows Name] Show" or "Do you want to come and puke at this show". The hosts usually would begin by uttering something that is totally unrelated to the show (yeah very similar to a Washington press release).

The debates are always amongst the top [domain] experts, who feel so strongly about the correct way to do things that at times they come close to whacking each other over the head with their seats. A few muscular hulks (always in black T-shirts) come running at breakneck speed to stop the fighting experts. The timing of these hulks is so precise that they don’t come into the picture until the floor production manager or the chair owner (in most cases both of them are the same) holds up a cue card such as "STOP those idiots before they break my chairs".

This is followed by a few minutes of BEEPING sound, thanks to the ground breaking invention of computer beeps, to stop the telecast of *$%&*(the word roughly translated means many un-gentlemanly things) dialogues. At this juncture, the clap boy, who never has a concept of elementary schooling, brings up the applause sign for the seated audiences and they (never had any kind of formal schooling) go wild. This brings us to the commercial break section.

Talk shows were not always so complicated back then. Thousands of years ago, there was only one talk show book, entitled "Don't talk too much". It consisted of a big stone tablet on, which were chiseled the words "DON'T TALK TOO MUCH!" It did not sell well, because nobody could lift it, on top of which everybody back then was busy with other concerns, such as trying to invent a language system that was simpler than Greek and Latin. Meanwhile today’s scenario is a bit different. Talk Show Host is a separate industry involving many complex theories such as "How to choose topics", "How to stand still while letting 2 families fight it out on stage", "How to make billions after dropping out of college" and "How to make a crass show the number one on the network ratings".

Let me know go back in time to see how talk show hosts evolved. It was back in 1895 when a gentleman named Mostly Chattering in Arizona made a sparkling discovery one night that people could stay up late glued to the TV while not choosing to clean their toilets. His theory emphasised that people would listen to other people talk about sensitive issues while HE can make a Million. (Back then Millions was considered huge money)

For decades, everybody operated on this Theory of Talking at nights, which basically states that you should never talk anything that’s bad to others. Then along came a new theory, the Evil Talk Theory that states you can talk burning issues as long as you don’t hurt each other on stage. This resulted in a multi-million dollar industry called TCN (Turner Cable Network).

There came another major theory which states that you can talk rubbish, but should not have a decent topic. For example you can kick your mother-in-law down and eat an entire pig for breakfast and talk all shit as a topic while rejecting “How to make the World a better place to live”. This Theory is extremely hot at present, as evident by the top rated talk shows in the cable network. Also, this theory has spun many cults such as "Kidnap my wife, please", "Let's poke the cops in the Eyeball", "Guns can be used during the Peace Talks in Israel".

So anyway, the experts debated their theories while the host walked around frowning with the deep concern which those talk-show hosts always feel about any topic. The audience provided valuable feedback whenever the clap boy holds up cards that said YES on one side and NO on the other. In between there are numerous commercials, with one for a toilet cleanser.

Anyway, I watched the experts’ debate for an hour, and here's what I learned:

• My TV remote really didn’t work for an hour
• Hardly 10% of the people wanted world peace
• 10% are those who wanted world peace are beauty contest contestants
• Terrorists want more twin-towers to be built in major cities around the world
• Women on these shows are stronger than their male counterparts
• Lot of companies endorse for these kinds of shows

• The chairs are really heavy and would be lethal upon impact
• I am a bachelor trying hard to sleep

So there are the facts, readers; it's now up to you to make an informed decision.

Remember: It's YOUR television and the remote is in YOUR wife’s hands.

Top 10 Way to Find if you are a Project Manager

10. Sit in a straight, comfortable chair in an well-illuminated place with plenty of freshly sharpened pencils and a 21" Color Monitor that supports 16 Million colours.

9. When you get back to your room after a short visit, sit in a straight, comfortable chair in a clean, well- illuminated place with plenty of freshly sharpened pencils and a 21" Color Monitor that supports 16 Million colours.

8. Read over the Project Proposal again and again to make absolutely certain that you cannot understand it.

7. Start to rearrange all your CDs/Photos and other unwanted things on your table into alphabetical order at the beginning of each day.

6. Making sure that you are Audible to the last guy in the Pantry when an official call comes and if it is a personal, then you are audible only if the other party enters into the Microphone of their receiver.

5. When signing official documents [Cheques/Leave Letters/Approval], you always think yourself to be the President of the United States of America or having lots of other important jobs pending

4. Again start arranging all your CDs/Photos and scraps on your table into Chronological order during the day.

3. Delete important Folders and then call your sub-ordinates to UNDO the action.

2. Check your MS-Outlook’s appointments/calendar at intervals of 5 minutes.

1. Check your e-mail every 5 seconds to make sure no one sent you any urgent messages since the last time you checked.