global warning 2

Apparently mother nature didn't think my last post on mankind's habits was worded strongly enough. My warehouse got flooded today with the first big downpour of the season. Ankle-deep water. Thankfully I have a good team there so no real harm done. I get the point.

The roof first started leaking the first time it rained, like three weeks back. I told my landlord about it and he got some people to fix the overhead drainage. Now the fuckers didn't do a proper job and now my warehouse is a freaking mess. Nobody takes their work seriously here.

I often rant about how our government has some totally screwed-up policies. No different at the municipal level. I saw the sanitation guys trying to clean this man-made lake in the middle of the city, ONE WEEK before the monsoon rains arrived. What the fuck were you doing all year??? Is public memory so short that they don't remember the apocalyptic rains that hammered us and bitch-slapped the city to a standstill????? Man you guys are asking for it!

And then there are the dudes that dig up our roads all the time. They don't start working till 9.30 am, when the entire city is on the roads trying to get to wherever it is they're trying to get to. And then they'll take 20 breaks in between where they stick a fucking twig into the debris to "warn" people that there's a goddamn 10-foot deep crater in the middle of the road. I mean, is our governments' sole aim to frustrate its citizenry to the point where they turn into rude, inconsiderate, crap-mouthed lunatics??? Why can't the road diggers do their digging at night??? There's no traffic, it's more peaceful, people aren't swearing at them, and it's safer because they don't have to worry about some scooting family with 17 kids sandwiched between them driving into the hole they're working in.

But no, they won't do it. Because that's the work ethic we've built our lives around. I see this selfish "I don't care about you cuz I'm the fucking king of my world" attitude and it makes my blood boil. I have serious road rage and will try to run down anyone who tries to cut in front of me as if he owns the road. One of these days I'm going to get the fucker. That's if I don't die of cardiac arrest first.

Yeah, so I guess it'll take one of those monster floods to clean this world of it's scum. The world is truly round.

global warning

Was shaken awake by lightning and thunder last night. I sleep with my window open so found myself drenched and cooler by a few degrees. Then I went out to the balcony and sat there watching the biggest freaking thunderstorm I've ever seen. Saw lightning hit an antenna 3-4 buildings away.....even felt a draft of warm air immediately afterwards. As I watched I started wondering (I usually start wondering about the really big issues after indulging in loud drinking sessions, as was the case last night), there's mother nature, pissed as hell with our incessant pillaging of her resources, telling me, "you're screwed, dude." I'm tellin ya, watching a thunderstorm is a humbling experience.

Now I have immense respect for nature and go to lengths to ensure I don't add to or remove from the environment wherever I am. I do occasionally release a small amount of methane (I think it's methane) into the atmosphere, but other than that I'm fairly eco-friendly. Hell, David Attenborough is one of my favourite people! So the point I'm trying to make is, why are people here so casual when it comes to not fucking their surroundings up? I mean, do the people that dump garbage outside their house really think it's less disgusting to have it sitting right outside their entrance than it is inside their house?? And then there's the freakball neighbour who'll go a step further and burn his garbage + lawn mowings outside MY house. That's right, pollute the air, asphyxiate the neighbours, and then allow the burnt crap to spead all over the place!

Clogged sewers, dirty streets, destroyed foliage......you cannot file those under "Progress" my friend. They go in the "S" section, in the file marked "Suicide"......

bored games

I'm scouting for ideas today.

Do you have or know of any kids' craft activities that you'd like to see in stores in India? Anything; stuff that you presently make by hand or even those handicraft-ish wooden items that could use a makeover. Even board games that you think might do really well. Send me your thoughts. I'm doing big time product range upgradation at work........by the way, you know what I do right?

In an unrelated incident, I'm sure you must have heard of the great Bappi da (for the unfortunate few who don't know who he is, go here) composing a song for the Football World Cup (ah....Bongs, music and football.....one of the great troikas!). I got to thinking about how much this one guy has influenced the music scene. He started the disco wave in India 20 years ago, and some of us will never admit it, but we loved it at the time (I still love it, but in a different way now...hehe). Then a couple of years ago he sued Dr. Dre for spinning one of his old numbers into a huge hit. Think about it, not only does he have black people swaying to his music, he's influenced the way they dress as well......

Exhibit A: Bappi vs. Nelly

Notice the chains, the rings, the athletic clothing. It's all there dawg! (That's not a quadruple chin on Bappi's face my friend....those are his muscular vocal chords developed over 26 years of singing "I em ay dis-sco daencer." Nelly-boy still has some singing to do before he can reach the stellar heights that Bappi has scaled.
Bappi da, I salute you!

how to spend lunch hour - option 1

I'm a huge fan of Escape the room games. Thirty minutes of brain-zapping after lunch everyday. A few days back I ran into this game that claims to be the hardest puzzle on the internet. "Hah!" I thought....."Over a trillion pages online....these guys are talking out of their ass!" Then I started solving it.......three days later I'm on level 11. There are 139 levels in the game. I've been stuck on level 11 for two days. Now I widely claim to be the smartest guy in a 100 meter radius, and I know I'm not.....pissing people off with my know-it-all talk is how I get my kicks...heheh. But this is one difficult sonofabitch, and it keeps getting tougher. I must be over-heating atleast a half-dozen Google servers with my googling. Go on, try it out and then tell me how far you got. Just don't blame me if you get jacked for spending all day staring at the same page. Addictive shit.

once a parent......

Caught the late show of MI:3 with dad. Monday night, English movie, full theatre...what is this city coming to?? heheh.....anyway, so we're watching and there's this scene where Tom Cruise injects this girl with adrenaline inside a bad-guy infested building.....real edge-of-the-seat moment. And dad turns to me and goes, "a-d-r-e-n-a-l-i-n-e.......it's to keep her from fainting." My sister trying to explain that to me would probably get a "Really??????" and Aditi would be met with a "No shit Sherlock!" but with dad it was just really amusing! My father still feels he should pass along the occasional bit of knowledge to his offspring....after all we're the "MTV generation." He's a bit like Jim's dad from American Pie, full of advice that I can't bear to absorb......oh man! And there are his occasional R-rated jokes that I have to laugh at (even if I've heard them before)......yeah, we're talking Desi Pie here my friends. With pickle.

By the way, saw X-Men III recently....I like superhero movies....dial M for mutants, maniacs, mystery. Clark Kent returns to theatres this month......faster than a speeding bullet!

Speaking of movies....I've seen some good stuff since I got my DVD library membership renewed. Dirty, Four Brothers, Two for the Money, Ice Harvest......John Cusack is one excellent mofo!

This blog will self-destruct in 5 seconds.

aromatherapy

I've just discovered the joy of brewing your own coffee. I hijacked my dad's Rowenta coffee maker, which is kinda like the Volvo of coffee-makers.....apparently lasts through generations) and got Aditi to bring back hazelnut coffee from her trip to the US. There's something about that fresh hazelnut aroma that does it for me. My sense of smell is more important to me than any of the other senses. Every smell triggers a memory, good or bad. Fresh bread, post-rain fragrances, Irish Spring soap (if you haven't tried it, I suggest you ask someone living in the US to bring you a bar......you'll never touch another brand again), tequila (makes me retch, thanks to a couple of crazy binges resulting in temporary blindness).......new car smell, freshly ground spices......endless.

The day I go over the 100 thousand $ mark I'm going to buy myself the 7-series of espresso machines. Check out this bad boy.......

I'll putt-putt along on my Rowenta till then. Fellow coffee connoisseurs welcome.

football fever

Saw a funny sight on my way to work today......well, maybe not too funny but definitely ironic. Saw this cycle rickshaw guy on the road wearing a Ronaldinho t shirt. Hmmm.......I'd dare to assume that he knew who Ronaldinho is if this was West Bengal, land of Mohun Bagan and East Bengal. Unfortunately Gujaratis aren't particularly inclined towards the sport of football. My guess would be the unavailibility of the fuel that drives football fans the world over....

Anyway, so I'm thinking it could be one of the following three possibilities:

a. The dude was a Bong
b. He was employed by a Bong, or
c. He was Brazilian.

Looks like rain. Hope he also has a matching Ronaldinho raincoat.

just like old times

Well, here we go.....it's been one year, four months and change since I created this blog, but this here is post #1. I used to put up my babble on my now-defunct website vishalvora.com back when I was in college.....some of you may be familiar with my old stuff. Then I repatriated my ass back to the motherland and started working, and so my creative juices were put on the back-burner while I tried to figure out the intricacies of running a business in India. Far cry from the engineering labs at college.

Anyway, time-machining back to the present, I was going through my buddy amit's blog today when I suddenly remembered....waitaminute, what happened to MY blog??? After some amount of password-guessing (if you can't remember your own password, nobody's EVER gonna guess it...heheh) I was allowed back into my account.

So what'll be happening on these pages you ask? Well anything......I'll be writing about stuff that I've seen, heard, consumed, learnt and felt. This should be a good trip.......