Following Twaroor

-I have won with a landslide, biggest winning margin in Trivandrum. Truly humbled. Now the real work begins - Tweeting!
-Travelling with the cattle classes and the holier cows.
-Called for a meeting to discuss my insensitive indiscriminate tweeting. WTF! This SM Krisna sure is a moron.
-Interesting party meeting to discuss how to control my tweet-in-the-mouth syndrome.
-Boooored. Should do something for my state. Roads? Hospitals? IPL team!
-Great meeting about our relations with China. tweeting from cybercafe in shanghai. now going back to attend rest of it.
-Interesting meeting with Pakistani counterpart. Ended abruptly when I said freedom of speech more important than confidentiality.
-Met a Lebanese dude on a flight. Could be a valuable intermediary and resolve Kashmir crisis. Asking airhostess to solve global warming.
-Intermediary is a Mallu word meaning should not interfere and mind his own business- just sorry that so many people don't know Mallu!
-Asked by party to shut thafk up on Twitter and to not tweet about the instruction to shut thafk up on Twitter under any circumstances. Funny people.
-@Mody : Met an Indian ex-hottie sunaida on a flight. Could be a valuable sweat equity owner of the IPL team I'm planning.
-Biggest challenge country faces not malnutrition but closed political culture! give man food,feed him for a day gv hm tweets instd. but guess no food means no internet also.hmm.
-@supermodel25 your visa granted @mody : oops:)
-I've done nothing wrong in office. leave alone wrong, nothing whatsoever, in fact. so quitting. tweeting will continue...

Marriage to coolbabe4u not valid : Shoib Maalik

Shoib Maalik postponed his return to Pakistan for the 4th time in two weeks, when he was dragged to court over an alleged nikaah with coolbabe4u@yahoo.co.in, alias Shakeel Ahmed, Hyderabad. Shoib, as readers will know, is paying alimony through e-cheques to lolzchick, hot_rakhi and xxx4u, his three registered marriages prior to Aisha, none of whose real identities are known.
"It all started with installing that cursed dial-up internet at home. It was too slow to download anything but fast enough for Yahoo chat", said Shoib with a sigh. "I chatted day and night with strangers. Many of them wanted me to send a marriage document with my signature, in exchange for their photos which I badly needed. I met coolbabe4u in 2002 and I was on a rebound from a bitter chat fight with hot_rakhi. cb4u as I called her affectionately, was like a breath of fresh air and I proposed on impulse. Little did I know 'she' would turn out to be the prank of a teenager in Hyderabad. He even sent me snaps of Ishwarya Rai and I was really looking forward to married life.'
This saga seems to be affecting Saina Mizra's tennis as well as she lost in the first round at the Hyderabad-Secunderabad challenge tournament earlier this week.

To whomsoever this may concern

I write to recommend Mr. Dandan Dandanadevan for the Graduate Program in Arachnomatics at your University. I offer a second year course in advanced photography at the Chennai Institute of Technology and also head the photography laboratory. I have been Assistant Professor at this Institute for the last 25 years. I have over 250 research publications to my credit as well as innumerable journal articles. But I digress.
I have definitely seen this guy Dandan somewhere. Was it at the annual cul-fest? No, that guy was thinner. I can't place him exactly but certainly looks like a decent chap.
So, CIT takes in 500 students every year. I remember about 2 students in every batch by name and 20 more by face - the ones who take my course and show interest. There are about 30 more in the grey area who register for the course and meet me only during the end term examination. And then the other 450 students of the batch who I run into in the corridors. I swear Dandan's not in the first 22.
But I urge you to consider this problem in a practical manner. From historical data, 100% of all students requesting me for a recommendation letter have taken my course. The only way Dandan could be otherwise is if he knew I would think along these lines and is exploiting my complacence. Let's say the probability of that happening is 1%, a very aggressive estimate.
I give only B and C grades to my students. About 90% of the reco-letter seekers are "B-putters". C putters come to me if they have flunked just about every other course or if they have done something extraordinary that they think I should remember them by. In either case, out of sympathy, you may consider this letter to be a strong recommendation.
So Dandan has an 89.1% chance of having taken my course and obtained a B grade. This is of course in addition to a 10% chance of being in one of the college sports teams and a 2% chance of being a coordinator of the cul-fest, and so on.
Reducing this based on data of a perfectly normal dude going crazy in the US, I have decided to give you an 80%-correct assurance overall that Dandan will be an asset to your university just as he was likely to have been to ours. If I'm provided more data on how I know him exactly, I could better my estimate.

Pityananda claims he is Tiger Woodz

Full text of Godman Pityananda's apology speech
"I know I have been irresponsible. I have caused unspeakable harm to my domestic life in several south Indian towns (under different aliases, of course) and have completely nipped my porn film career in the bud, with this leaked video with laughable production values.
I know many people here believed in me. They believed I was God Himself, and so the same rules didn't apply. They thought it would be my face that would be blurred out in the leaked video. They heard me say 'celibate' when I'd actually said 'celebrate', the morons. Anyway as Ranjida and Gia and Bhagirathi and... well, as they all said to me yesterday, I have to show my repentance in action. I intend to speak to Ranjida and make amends. What we will say and do, will be strictly between the two of us. And on youtube after a while for free download.
I also have thousands of emails and messages from my countless devotees, and some from the court and the local police as well. I haven't opened them but I'm overwhelmed at this show of affection. To the skeptics who don't believe in me, who think I'm not God's incarnate on earth, I have only one thing to say. I'm Tiger Woodz, actually. His Indian avatar. No really, we are the same person.
I have a lot of work to do. I intend to turn Buddhist and live the values which my mother taught me at a very young age, too young for me to remember any of that stuff now. I only ask one thing of you. Please don't ransack my ashrams. Dudes, let's face facts. I'm a really ugly dude and it takes me time to set up a racket like this with all these struggling actresses. Go find your own room...find room in your own heart to forgive me. Thank you."

Mixer remix

"Sir"
"What?"
"Project, sir"
The teacher held up what we showed him and inspected it.
"What is this?"
"Toy mixie"

In 7th standard, my project partner and I decided on 'toy mixie' as our project in this course called 'electrical gadgets' which was P/F(pass/fail - which meant it didn't matter). It was one Sunday's work - buy cups, a motor, rotating blades, some wires and a battery, connect the blades to the motor and connect up the motor to power and voila!
We got a P with distinction on that assignment. This post is not about that, though.
We were in 11th standard. We still had 'electrical gadgets' taught by the same teacher and it was still pass/fail. In the 4 years since 7th standard, the scope of the course had changed immensely to high-tech electrical and electronics mumbo-jumbo. TVs, antennas, diodes, ICs, Ritchie Street (where one presumably bought these items), transformers - you name it, the syllabus covered it. The teacher painstakingly suggested project topics which I can't even remember now and told us how we could go about buying stuff at R-street, connect stuff up and make stuff work, to put it in technical terms. What hadn't changed in four years, was our decision to not take this course seriously. Also, the toy mixie.

Me : "Looks like people are actually doing the project da"
Partner : "What nonsense. It's EG, man. No one's doing anything"
Me: "Ok"

Partner : "I saw XYZ in Ritchie street, da. Tomorrow's the deadline for the project submission"
Me : "What project? No one'll submit, man. Who dare submit when we haven't done anything?"
Partner : "Worst case? If everyone submits? Shall I bring that toy mixie from 7th class?"
Me : "You mean go to the those juniors and steal their project?"
Partner : " No no. I have ours from 4 years back"
Me : "Oh great! Done! That should work!"

And so the worst case scenario did come true. People were roaming around with ICs and antennas and the classroom felt like a miniature ISRO launch. Our mixie faded in comparison but it still worked (- we'd gotten a new battery). Our turn to submit came after an especially complicated project.

"How did you even think of submitting this? Where's the electronics, da? Antenna? Ritchie Street? I taught so many things in class? What the hell is this?"
Our teacher was delirious with anger. We didn't have much to say to redeem the situation.
"Toy mixie, sir" and I connected the wires and the blades started rotating. I thought some action would do the trick. Not to be. He grabbed it and flung it on the table.
"I know what it is. I know what it is. I know what it is. The big mistake the school made is to not include this course in your marks. You would not even have passed. You would have stayed in this class forever. In fact..."
I switched off. I think the outburst went on for 5 minutes. It was a lifetime's frustration from conducting a pass/fail course so we didn't hold it against him.
"...but now what to do. Next"
We saw him put a P in the P/F column. We looked to see if the mixie had been damaged. Could come in handy in engineering college.

The worst job in the world

I often look at people in bad jobs and wonder what keeps them going. What do they tell themselves when they wake up in the morning to be able to get to office? One such job that completely beats me is the job of a villain's henchman/assistant (VA) in Indian movies. What allows our leery evil villains to garner enough charisma to be able to make slaves out of these well-meaning energetic youngsters? Let's look at this job along some accepted parameters of workplace motivation.

Job security : I think we skipped a parameter

Security : None. In fact, assured death. The VA has many options but those only cover the means by which he dies. In about 75% of known cases, he gets killed in various gruesome ways by the villain himself for seemingly small errors such as being beaten up by the hero, and in some cases for carrying bad news. There's a third special circumstance where he betrays the villain and thinks everything's hunky-dory if he blabs the villain's secrets to the police and/or the hero. It's re-think time in about 10 seconds when he gets killed after being of partial use to the hero's efforts by giving him some cryptic clue about a treasure or the location where the hero's family's being dangled tantalisingly close to boiling water.

Boss : Talk about the bad boss syndrome. The villain is hardly seen giving any positive reinforcement to any member of his coterie. The average dancer-lady gets more praise from the villain, albeit drunk, in one song than the VA in a whole year. The villain frequently sets the VAs impossible targets ending with "..now". If the VA communicates negative feedback to the boss, he has no choice but to quit the establishment. Where quitting refers to 'run as fast as you can and I will shoot you at the count of 10'.

Compensation : There is actually no salary per se, leave alone performance incentives. The villain takes the topline and takes care of his staff's basic needs. There is absolutely no incentive to smuggle more gold or steal more cash or to do better than Saambha at anything. The VA's loyalty is inexplicable because he could easily go to the police and collect the bounty amount on his boss's head. He would get killed for betrayal but as we mentioned earlier, he's bound to die anyway.

Growth : The single factor that keeps a VA going is probably the dream that he would take over the mantle from his boss some day and enjoy the kind of absolute power he enjoys. But this almost never comes true because sadly, the villain is usually the last member of his gang to die in the movie. If it's the climax and the VA is still alive, be assured that an impatient hero will wring his neck shortly, something that would be called a 'soft dismissal' in cricket.

Team : On the whole, peer quality leaves a lot to be desired. The VAs at vantage points have terrible aim and they are in fact, the first to fall. The others blaze a trail of bullet fire where the hero has recently been and seem to suffer from a time lag of a few seconds. There is also complete lack of coordination among the VAs which is seen from their approaching the hero one by one even when they have him cornered or surrounded.

Perks : VA's usually have access to a large number of multi-purpose vehicles (bikes, cars, lorries) but these incur the wrath of the stunt choreographer, who while allowing a hero's vehicle to land safely after encountering an upward slanted cart, in the same circumstance would let the VA be bounced into a pool and killed and let the vehicle itself be mauled and mangled.

Agenda is your head

Me : Hi, I just called to say there's a review meeting this Friday at 3 pm. Please attend.
Indian agency : Yes, sir, we will be there! Just tell us location.

Foreign agency : There's a meeting? This Friday?!
Me : (No, last friday. I called to circulate minutes orally)
Foreign agency : Who's calling for this meeting?
Me : (Your father and my father calling joint meeting of both families)
FA : What's to review? I mean review of what exactly?
Me : (Dey! If I tell to come, just come silently, man. Indian agency coming no? Like that)
FA : What's the agenda?
Me : (Agenda is your head. We want to see the wire in your head that is always asking agenda, agenda. Except when cash is paid against your invoice. That time agenda, bagenda all forget)
FA : Can we make it next month instead? I have something else lined up on that day.
Me : (What? Nextuuuuu monthaa? Your this playfulness only we like very much. Cancel that something else and come)
FA : We need to pull in some resources from abroad for this meeting.
Me : (Then you are what for? I'll call that guy directly only no? and I will pay prorata that much less after subtracting your personal time being charged)
FA : We can't be presenting that piece. That's well outside our scope of services.
Me : (First tell what is inside scope, machi. All pieces falling in the well outside your scope. Inside scope only arbitration for nonpayment of your fee, that also in neutral country)
FA : We can't be held responsible for that delay. We highlighted this possibility in the previous meeting and you should have taken action
Me : (Dey! We don't take action on highlighting and all, da dey. We take only postmortem action, that's our style)
FA : Our objective view is that this whole 10 week project will take about 6 months to complete
Me : (Who said 10 weeks, man? If you say 10 weeks to Indian agency it means full-fledged 2 year project. Instead, if you give realistic timeline to them, they will soon make it unrealistic)
FA : Could we at least do a "premeeting" to look at pending issues?
Me : (Pending issues in "premeeting" means then in "meeting" what will you do? Just drinking tea and leaving?)
FA : Could we do a conference call at least?
Me : (For last time, stop calling normal phone calls conference call. Minimum is 3 in India)
FA : We'll be there. Tell us the location.
Me : (This you could have asked at the beginning only no? And avoided this unnecessary "conference call" heehee)