Shippin up to Boston!

So it finally happened. 28 years of my life packed in 3 cases of 23 kgs each landing at JFK around 14.30 hrs local time. The feeling of having left home hasn't sunk in yet. Got all 3 bags checked in on Jet and even on the surprisingly welcoming AA airlines without any baggage charge. The flight in from Brussels was delayed a couple of hours, so after immigrations and security - I had about an hour before boarding my flight to Boston.

The first USDs i spent here were 5$ on a frikkin cart for the bags. I had my blonde moment tugging at the cart when I realized you had to insert coins or swipe a card to release it. Very bright of me not getting any $ along. Thankfully the jet credit card came through. Phew! Found a travelex and exchanged whatever little money i had at a ridiculous 58 Rs to a $ rate to get about 50 odd dollars. Should bide me a couple of days i guess. Walked through to my gate and passed by many shops. Some really tasty food places here. Slurp! Didn't grab a bite though. Visited this Hudson news store and picked up this Yankees shot glass. Kind of a memory of my first purchase as an employee in the US. That is if you exclude the utter waste of 5$ on that damned cart.

Immigration and security was fairly comfortable. I was handed this priority pass that let me breeze through both Met this immigrations officer woman who asked me 'do you know how many days is your work visa valid?' I said a little under 3 years. And she was like it's 1082 days. 'my brain just comes up with these numbers!'. I thanked her and complimented her ability (of reading a number off her screen I guess). The security guy was this Indian called Sunil. And he asked me if I was named after tendulkar? I said I wish I was. Which is when he pointed to his badge that said Sunil. :)

I was typing this on my networkless iphone waiting for my flight to Boston. Flight to Boston got delayed further, tried calling Amit from a pay phone and got through to his answering machine. Wonder how often people check answering machines. Do they send off alerts as well?

So i parked myself near the AA counter to get updates on the flight status. There was this big caucasian woman sitting beside me at the waiting lounge speaking with such candor over the phone. She looks like Totoro with blonde hair. Absolutely no contours at all from her boobs till her knees. She's apparently met this woman called Genele who's been in cosmetics for 20 years, wears a skull and cross bones charm around her neck - and is the nicest person she's met in her life. And the company she's about to work for is growing at such a fast rate - it's obscene. Oh my gaash!! Btw, it's been more than an hour and she doesn't even seem to be winding down the conversation. Wonder how many calories does speaking burn a minute.

People here are quite vocal, and surprisingly loud. They communicate so much more than Indians in a talking minute. It's probably 'cos they talk faster. They're also quite trusting. Probably a lesson to learn there.

Saw this funny cola dispenser at Brussels airport. 'Coke side of Brussels' Really?

Holy Matrimony!

My neighbour Nilesh finally took the plunge today…over the hill at 30 and being a ‘good Jain boy’, I am guessing he was already walking the tight rope to the wild side.

It is an interesting exercise to put it mildly…this whole marriage jamboree. The drums and the shehnai were specifically instructed to blare right into the groom’s ear…u know, this one’s for posterity, in case he has a stunted episodic memory…im sure the decibel levels will gong aloud in his eardrums even if he happens to stray with Madame Bellucci a decade down the line. No wonder most Indian marriages are so successful!

Wedding processions quite clearly map out the who's who of the marriage. Needless to say, the groom must have gone bananas to go through a public procession to mark this day in his life. So, lets imagine that the groom is a bunch of bananas. The fruit flies (read relatives) in the first valence band are the siblings and the really close friends. And with every successive valence band, the proximity to the nucleus (read groom) obviously decreases.

The groom's head gear has these floral strings that hang off the turban, covering his face. My guess is, the uglier the groom's mug, the more the floral strings. So fate has it that the ugly ones are blind-folded, perched on a blinkered horse walking into the sunset:)

Of course, in the unforgiving heat and humidity, the groom's outfit has to be a heavy silk pathaani. Don't ridicule this just yet...this is quite ingenious. Conservative Hindu men (read virgins) need a very compelling reason to break the mental shackles of celibacy on the important night. What better way of ensuring this than boiling the groom all day, while he is forced to smile at mostly strangers making small talk with them. So, the first 'shot' he gets at privacy, the Nelly sound track plays in the background 'It's getting hot in here, so take off...' to help in adding to the billion plus 'good boys and girls' ...the future of this nation:)

Where is razor blade technology taking us?

Taking off from my last post, marketing as a function has really milked incompetence for all it's worth. Not surprising, since the talent pool that graduates with marketing M.B.A.s have wallowed around like slugs long enough to have assimilated it as a way of life.
Now here is a community that collectively decided one day - 'This is it!' They never knew about 'short term gains' and had turned suicidal enough to lose faith in the long term ones too. So here is what they did - they rose in collective incompetence. They are now so proud about it, that they lease out prime time TV slots to brag about their ware, 'marketing' it to us!

Lets take a look at Gillete. They started off literally at the cutting-edge of technology. The commercial zoomed in on the worked out face of a cheek model (yeah...cheek models make a living by chewing on 20 strips of gum at once, in the hope of turning horse faced with the broad jawline et all:) and the one ultra sharp Gilette blade snipped the hair right at the root, even for muscular ridged cheeks. So there you had it, the blade was the best in the market and was almost shaving the skin off your face.
Then sometime around next year i am guessing, incompetence must have kicked in. Gilette's next razor 'Sensor Excel' needed an additional blade for the same clean shave. This was attributed to 'latest break through in technology'. Zoom in again to the same muscular cheek, and it now takes Gilette 2 blades to do the job. A couple of years later, they came out with Mach III, which had 3 blades. Boy, with three blades that sharp, it should have been marketed as an over-the-counter homicidal best-seller!!
People aren't stupid you know, they smelled a rat...all those blades, and still the same shave. Why should they liquidate their fixed deposits to buy these blades?? Then came the marketing miracle. Gilette glorified the inefficient 'just as close' shave as being intentionally gentle on the skin because of 'aloe vera' on the edge of the blades. Take a bow people, this is clearly the work of a genius.

So, is it really the aloe-vera on the new Gilette Mach III blade thats making your shave 'softer'?? While you ponder on that, Gilette just launched a 5 blade razor called 'Fusion'...for some strategic or feng shui based reason they must have skipped the number 4 perhaps. 5 blades, ladies and gentlemen...i'm sure low-end blades from uganda should be sharper than each of these 5 blades. The day is not far when Gilette comes out with its 23 blade razor. You won't even need to move your hand while shaving...just slap the razor on your cheek and nod sideways...that should do it:)

Incompetence: the stepping stone to success

Whats the deal with success? Well, the first timers who taste it absolutely love it...its like nothing else! Universal validation.
Mind you, 'success' and 'successful' aren't remotely connected. Its like those language aberrations like 'awe' and 'aweful'. Stealing ice-cream from the home freezer qualifies you as 'successful'. If you happen to own Baskin Robbins, then we are talking 'success'.

'Reach for the stars' they say...alright, and what do i do once i get there? Hopping on to another star doesn't seems as exciting now, does it? Success is self-defeating. Its a bit like leading your life at the high-jump championships. One success just raises the bar for the next, which does so for the next and so on. Your fate is pre-destined. Disappointment at not bettering your best! Peeved as hell, you think to yourself 'How can't I be better than me?'.
Of course, it can't be rationalized this easily...its like convincing someone that smoking is harmful. Its a no brainer for the non-smoker, but when was the last time someone quit 'cos it would kill them? Success like smoking, once achieved is addictive, and hazardous to health.

Hence forth, any congratulatory note should flash the message
'Statutory warning: Success is injurious to health'

Success is like the treadmill of competence...keep running towards competence and eventually pass out, bite the rubber mat, and roll back along the conveyor belt into the welcoming arms of incompetence. Or just stand still facing incompetence, and let the treadmill take you there in style!

Yes, its possible to be incompetent and successful. But you've got to have concrete belief in your inabilities.

Step 1: Get proactive. Find fellow incompetents at the work place. Convince them to quit your current organization before they get fired.
Step 2: Offer to work for the rival organization. Your boss will give you all a raise, as you bring the rival's profitability down, and his own profitability up simply by your absence.
Step 3: Offer tips to stock brokers on the rival's share price plummeting. Then buy loads when they hit rock bottom.
Step 4: Same as Step 1
Step 5: Sell shares at bumper profit once the company recovers from your damaging presence.

Does luck keep tabs?

Whats the probability of getting a heads or a tails on a coin flip? 50% right??

Well, try flipping a coin...say you got heads the first time around. Flip it again. Now we should be twice as likely to get a tails this time around. Sadly, we still stand at a 50% chance again...so each toss is random, though somehow the probability of getting a heads is 0.5...basically, good and bad luck might be the two sides to a coin, but the coin has a mind of its own ...and it's out there to roger us...

Life's pulled the mickey on us...it really has! Test this for starters-If the professor pulls up one guy in class to answer a question, and if i don't have the faintest clue 'bout the answer...9 times out of 10, it's gotta be me. 5 days a week , i carry an umbrella, and the sixth day, it rains. Feeling a sneeze well up is almost a definite sign that i am not carrying a handkerchief.

And yeah, if you haven't figured out the loop hole yet...here goes. Like coin flips, in over a million encounters with lady luck, everything will even out quite well. Too bad, if your life could fit in just a few thousand such encounters, most of which were needless to say, unfortunately unlucky...fair probability calls for large sample sets...so if in the bleak possibility of you turning 90, you have managed to abate incontinence...there you have it...good luck's come your way!!

Then there are the slightly twisted cases of conditional and dependant probability. For eg: Statistically, women over thirty have a lesser chance of getting married than being killed in a terrorist attack. I'm not being mean here...come to think of it, im reasonably sensitive. But people in Taliban have even more sensitive ears, and the biological clocks of these women are deafening them!! So these might just happen to be mutually dependent events...surely seems the best reason of the current lot to drive terrorist agendas:)

Brake fast at Tiffany's

Its 8 a.m. and i somehow manage to drag myself to the mess for a quiet breakfast. Of course, my life, simply by virtue of being mine, never grants me the privilege of reading a virgin newspaper.
I walk up to the serving counter to fetch my morning cuppa, and then it happens...i walk into some half familiar faces...some freshers with whom i have made eye-contact before...

Romantic novels haven't explored the half about eye contacts. Accidental eye contacts, conforming with the high possibility of severe repugnance aren't very pleasant most times. The bitch is that after about 10 or so such eye-contacts, either party feels morally compelled to make conversation...obviously, since we are so acutely socially programmed, the moral compulsion invariably leads to dialogue, or in this case, an active monologue.

I won't quite call myself a morning person. And chirpy, tra la laing 20 somethings don't quite cut it for me. I sat at a table, laying out the paper, checking yesterday's headlines...and these three juniors got up from their chairs, and parked themselves alongside me.(and btw, it is common courtesy to put away the newspaper when people walk up to you during breakfast) In a mess that seats over a 100 people, the four of us were sharing one table...in celebration of human bonding.

One of them was kind enough to ask me, "Can i join you?"...quite an astute question, since he had guessed that me and my morning were coming apart. I mean, come onnn, when someone walks up to you with a cup in one hand, and 2 omlettes and wada sambaar in the other, is he really asking?? Anyways, there was this other guy, and this severely stern looking girl along with him who tagged along. The guy was carrying some class pre-reads and marking away with muti-coloured pens...the types to study for blood tests. Now, guy No.1 asks the girl as to why grades have to be so competitive...that life should be more learning centric (read: loser friendly). The girl snaps back saying that the current grading system still dosen't differentiate the ones who are the best from those who form the rest. This is someone who would probably believe that the Spanish inquisition was just tough luck for the heretics...Guy No.2 still enjoying wada sambaar seems to have his priorities clear.

All through the conversation, i wasn't even spoken to...but my presence was frequently acknowledged with passing nods suggesting that i was in tune with the intricacies of their daily lives. I tried in vain to act interested. The 'disinterested nod' is an art i have yet to master. You see, i have moved from the cutting edge of technology (read:engineering) to the buttering edge (read:branding). My reactions are still caught at the binary level...

Guess after all, breakfast was never meant as a leisurely meal...why didn't they rid us of the confusion by spelling it right in the first place...