Love spicy food, eh?
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This post is dedicated to all those people who, in order to impress the gentler sex, will overload their dish with “extra hot” for their order in a restaurant. What follows is extremely funny, if seen with the right eye. Also, don’t rub your eyes after touching spicy food. It’s worse when you are wearing contact lenses. Take it from someone who has done it. No, really. I have.
So the next time you go out with friends out for dinner, and someone in your group has been raving as to how much spicy food he can take, observe him really closely, more so if there are girls in your group. At first, he is going to declare at the table, within audible range of his object of interest how much he loves spicy food. He will then choose the spiciest dish from the menu (the one with two chillies drawn right next to it). He will further make sure that the girl has heard him. He will then tell the waiter that he wants that dish, but he wants it extra-extra-spicy.
The food arrives, and our hero dives into his red colored dish. He takes the first spoonful into his mouth to demonstrate how much he loves it. Thereafter it’s all regret.
He will blink ever so quickly at the sheer shock of TOO MANY CHILLIES. He will first nod his head and smack his lips to say how amazing it is in taste. In his head, he is telling himself that he could have gone for just spicy and not ‘extra extra’ at all. His vision is blurry and tears well up in his eyes. Whilst fighting back the tears, there is a volcano erupting in his mouth and is probably reaching into his ears. Hell hath no fury like a tongue incinerated. He makes a mental note that he is never going to eat that dish ‘extra extra spicy’ again. Ever. Oh and there are these tell-tale signs of his suffering. First, he will talk a lot less until the fire is out. Then, at one point, roughly 33% into his food, he is going to comment that the food is really hot. And is going let out a chuckle abashedly. Third, he is going to eat more rice than normal to douse all that fire on his tongue. And fourth, there is a high chance he is not going to finish his food. Fifth, he may suggest dessert.
Meanwhile, our hero doesn’t realize that all this self inflicted arson is futile because the girl he wants to impress is unimpressed by his gastrointestinal prowess. Trust me guys, IT NEVER WORKS. So don’t even try it. How well you can withstand-the-assault-of-spicy-food-without-getting-mind-numbing-gas is fairly low on the ‘boyfriend eligibility’ list. Women don’t want all that! I will tell you what women want. Meanwhile, our hero’s love interest is actually completely enamored by this other guy in the group and our hero doesn’t know it. Ah, never mind. It opens up a whole new chapter in love.
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PS: I really think waiters/cooks have a major play in this. They throw in another ‘extra’ in ‘extra extra spicy’ and sit back and watch the fireworks/waterworks.
Running away
Many a time in the past year I have thought of running away. To the rain forests of the Nile or the Amazon. To forests where there are no luxuries, no money issues, no artificial medicines, no materialistic pleasures – just live life to live, not exist. I want to take nothing with me – no electronics, no special clothes, no mechanical devices – absolutely nothing. I want to tell stories, tell tales that will become legendary, meet legends, follow the roots of myths… I want to live life the way early man used to. My daily challenge should be to get through the day alive – to catch prey and not get caught as prey – but not waking up at 7:00 AM so as to catch the 8:00 AM bus.
But then I like to eat. May be I will carry a frying pan and oil with me. And spices. And aluminum foil to store the food. A shelf to store the aluminum foil. Uhmm, may be a house of wood to keep the shelf in. A box of tools to go by. And a sharpening kit. Cannot afford them to rust, so I should probably get a nice tin roof to keep the water away from my home. I need to keep animals away too, and fire may not be sufficient always. I probably need flash lights to look for stuff in the dark. But I cannot have a lifetime’s supply of batteries – I will need a charger – an electrical source. May be it is a wise idea to get a generator too. I need to get gas/diesel for the generator – so I need to be near a city so it is easy for me to get it. Oh and what if I fall ill? I will need medication too – I may not know what herbs are safe and non-poisonous – and also which ones have healing powers. Again, I will need medicinal supplies whenever the current stock expires. It will be useful to have conveyance to make frequent trips – may be a small vehicle. Actually I will probably not make frequent trips – so it will be good if I can bring lots of things at once – so a bigger car – may be a pickup truck will help. And I will need money to buy a-
Oh.
Damn. I am back where I am now.
Photograph © Kokonad Sinha
As I grew up…
… I have wanted to be several people (or have jobs) at different points in my life (in rough chronological order) -
My brother, because he went to school that lasted a full day instead of mine, which was only a half day.
A train engine driver, because I loved traveling by train and I thought it was the best job ever.
A teacher, so I could keep assigning homework and grade assignments with a red pen.
A car manufacturer, because he didn’t have to study and take exams.
My dad, because he knew everything and also had money.
A ship captain, because water fascinated me.
A film hero, because everyone was happy with him at the end of things.
A pet, preferably a dog, because they are amazing animals and everyone loved/feared them.
A person who sets question papers during tests and exams.
A doctor, because I loved the cleanliness and silence in their offices.
A pilot. Who hasn’t wanted to be one?
A bakery owner, because I loved baked cookies.
A grade 6 student, because it was at a different school and I thought was a whole different level of maturity.
A sprint runner, because in those days, I used to run pretty fast.
The president.
A singer, because every likes a singer at a party (I cannot sing to save my life)
An economist, because for some reason, it was hip to know stuff like that when I was 15.
A computer scientist, because I was realizing what a geek I was.
An advertisement designer, because I thought it would be a cool job.
An engineer. I don’t know why.
…
Feel free to take this up as a tag. 
Long ago in 2006, I had written this post – Blink – out of boredom. You can take it up as a tag too. It will be better if you read my post after you do the tag – time yourself for 5 minutes, and write a list of whatever object/phenomena comes to your mind. Be crisp. You will be surprised to know what all you can come up with!
PS: I have been away and really busy – and I am yet to catch up with so many wonderfully written blogs (over 100 unread items in my Google Reader). I am grateful to those who have expressed that they have missed activity on my blog! Thank you so much – it feels great to be missed. In other news, an old sports injury has aggravated severely and rendered me almost immobile and somewhat high because of all the pain killers. Also I met my nephew Jishnu over the weekend and loved all of it immensely. He turned three recently, and loves laughing while looking at the camera!
Ah, hostel food!
“Yuck… brinjal curry.”
“Dude, it’s tomato.”
“Tomato?! Why is the gravy blue?”
Most of you have had this conversation if you have stayed in a hostel. Or heard it from friends who have stayed in hostels. The best years – undergrad life – was flanked by the most atrocious food ever. Everyone has a hostel food story. It’s the only kind of story everyone will believe an outrageous exaggeration too! My hostel had the most exquisite food menu ever – we had biryani on Sundays, saambaar rice on Mondays, puri-chhole on Wednesdays, paneer dishes on Fridays, rawa dosa on Saturdays etc. Every semester started with brand new promise of the chef’s love – but soon after the first week, we could only tell these apart because we knew what was being cooked that day. Such was life. Then one day, a new caterer came. The cook showed promise – he was a beacon of light, a ray of hope, the sun through the clouds, rain on the desert sand, a bowl of soup. He brought together the best of spices, and the freshest of vegetables, the sweetest of aromas… but God only knows what he did with them, because nothing changed for us. We used to lovingly call our hostel food – grub.
Among the things that we found in our food across the years of undergraduate study – small branch in sambaar, spider in daal, unknown insect in rice, stapler pin in dosa, cockroach in baingan bharta, aloo in aloo parantha and a cat. Ok, I am kidding about the last two. Some guy said that there were regular sticks instead of drumsticks in his food – but no one else was sticking to the story of the sticks. It did turn pretty sticky towards the end.
Here’s the latest from The Occasional Doodle – when doodling suddenly makes sense.
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In search of a new name
Late last night I thought I should change the name of my blog. No no, I absolutely adore the name “Mostly Pointless“, but this is what happened. In the ongoing efforts for gathering donations to the relief work for Cyclone Aila, my blog comes up in the top 5 results whenever someone searches for the cyclone relief work. But thanks to the name of my blog, it appears as this:
Now it appears as if the cyclone Aila relief work is mostly pointless. I know, it’s laughable! But I felt bad. After all, I am an advocate of the contrary.
Anyway, it drove me to change the name of my blog to ‘Logophilia‘ – meaning love of words and word games – and it was like that for less than 24 hours. Because it was not the same as Mostly Pointless. Over the years (since 2006) I have grown to love the name ‘Mostly Pointless’ so much that Logophilia, though a beautiful word, didn’t have that zing. Mostly Pointless stays.
Aila cyclone relief widget
I have programmed the Aila Cyclone Relief Widget (see above image or sidebar on the right) to be added to your blogspot blog or self hosted website (wordpress or other). Due to javascript security restrictions, free wordpress blogs have a compromise that the widget is not so cool looking.
Click this button to add to your Blogspot blog
In order to spread the word thru other media and blog hosts, please add this widget (see how to) so more and more people donate! Encourage your friends to put it up in their blogs! All help will be greatly appreciated! A little thing as this can go a long way. We at AID will greatly appreciate you forwarding this link:
http://www.themattefinish.com/blog/2009/06/aila-cyclone-relief-widget/
Harmless office pranks
Ok. So today is another somewhat-partially-semi-productive day at work. It is at these times that it is absolutely essential that I tug at my brain cells that are designed for pranks. Ok, tugged. I am not going to play any pranks on you, my reader (or am I? 
) because I love you so much. Here are a few harmless pranks you could play in your office, and whom you should make your target. Now, I have played some of these before – but I must warn you – make sure your target is a good sport – so that a fun war starts between the two of you. Or try your level best to be completely anonymous, so that NOTHING is traced back to you. That’s your call. Just make a judgment call before you do anything – you don’t want to get fired, right?
This feature might be a two-part post – the first is computer related pranks and the other might be cubicle related. If I work on the latter, it will be out sometime later this year. My colleagues are great sports and it is great fun playing pranks on them. It always starts a playful war which we remember for years to come.
Computer pranks are fairly simple to execute – I have played these pranks myself. For most of these you need your target’s computer at a time when he/she is not around and has left it unlocked. It is more fun if you are around to see it happening – depending on the level of ‘sinisterness’, get more people involved. Also, some of them will make them think their computer has been hit by a virus. Make sure you are around to tell them that they have been pranked upon – and to undo the prank too! You don’t want the computer administrators to come over and reprimand you when they figure out YOU did it!
1. The shutdown prank
This is a not-so-famous prank and it’s really unnerving for whoever’s sitting at the computer. It configures the icon to shutdown the computer with a given time limit and a message. Warning: This does not quite work as expected in Windows Vista. It works great with XP.
Target: Someone who plays games on their work computer. Too much.
> Pick an icon on the desktop or the start button (wherever the game is)
> Right click on it and go to properties, go to the Shortcut tab on top.
> In the Target field, remove the existing one and type in [shutdown -s -t 90 -c "Your message here"] without the parentheses. The number 90 is a 90 seconds timeout. Try it once on your own computer before going ahead with it.
> To abort the shutdown, go to Start>Run and type “shutdown -a” without quotes.
> Get creative with “Your message here” – you could write an official like message that “This computer has shown increased activity in facebook/orkut/sleazy websites and is shutting down to prevent further misuse” or “This computer has shown increased activity in games and is shutting down to prevent further misuse”
Variation: You can also modify the IE/Firefox buttons and watch that person freak out whenever he/she tries to open the browser! Make sure you are around to savor the panic!
2. The keyboard/mouse swap
This one is hilarious if it happens right. It requires two coworkers who sit close by. Wait till your coworkers have left office after shutting down their machines. Swap the keyboards and/or mice. Enjoy your day the next day.
Variation: Add a USB mouse to your one coworker’s desk and have access to that mouse at your desk. Works with USB mice. At the oppportune moment, nudge it or close a harmless window!
3. The sluggish mouse
If an optical mouse, take a small piece of clear tape and stick it over the laser. The results are hilarious!
4. The Microsoft Word AutoCorrect prank
This is my all time favorite and I have done it so many times! What you need is an unlocked computer. Open Microsoft Word and go to Tools > AutoCorrect options. Select the AutoCorrect tab and towards the bottom, you will see Replace and With.
Under Replace, type “the” and under With, type “that damn”. For example, “the fiscal year” becomes “that damn fiscal year”
Every instance of “the” will be replaced with “that damn” as and when your target types it. You can obviously make so many variations – parallel to pyarelal, someone’s name like mine – Kokonad to coconut etc.
5. The frozen desktop
Target: Anyone who has been dumb enough to leave their computer unlocked in a workplace!
Probably the oldest prank. But fun nevertheless.
> Close ALL open windows.
> Take a screenshot of the desktop (hit PrintScreen button on keyboard).
> Open MS Paint and hit CTRL+V (to paste). Save the file.
> Now change the wallpaper of your target to this saved image.
> To make it more fun, hide all icons so there are only images remaining. Right click on desktop and go to “Arrange icons by” and uncheck “Show desktop items”. Your target is going to think the icons are supposed to work, but they never do!
Optional: Auto-hide the taskbar as well. To do this, right click on the taskbar, go to properties, check the option for “Auto-hide the taskbar”
6. Mousing around
Go to mouse settings in control panel and make the cursor speed very fast or very slow. Watching someone drag their mouse across the office to move it an inch on screen is funny! Or you could go to pointer settings and make the default one an hourglass, so they will be left wondering what is keeping the computer busy.
7. Remap the keyboard
This is extreme fun because the keyboard no longer types what is written on the key. All keyboards are typically QWERTY keyboards – there is another standard – called the DVORAK keyboard. Change the keyboard layout to DVORAK and sit back to enjoy all the fun.
You must practise these at home a couple of times to make sure you know how to undo them, and also to be fast at it when you are actually executing them. Again, it is important to make a judgment call – you DO NOT want to get fired for this!
A sneak preview on cubicle related pranks: Use sticky labels for everything on your colleague’s desk – pen, mug, monitor, mouse, book, board etc. It’s amusing to see reactions! Or, wrap everything in aluminum foil. Everything.
