Mizohican

Chp 390. Of Cooking and Facebooking: My First Smoked Pork!

2012-01-27T15:05:00.000+05:30

Most of you don’t know me personally, so I must admit that I am a kickass cook :D I make awesome fried potatoes, egg-tomato curry, dal tadka and bhendi fry. The only problem is, I have never cooked a non-veg dish even once. Until last night…

Last night, I cooked smoked pork (from Mizoram) for the first time in my life, and it was freaking awesome!

I called up my sis and she briefly told me how to cook it, but when you’re doing something for the first time, sometimes a telephonic instruction doesn’t help much.

But here’s the thing about cooking in this age of social networking and easy mobile internet connectivity - So I didn’t know how to cook the smoked pork… NO PROBLEM. All I did was update the fact that I was cooking smoked pork for the first time on my Facebook status and needed assistance, and within seconds I had my Facebook friends correcting me and advising me on how to cook it properly!

A really big thanks to…

Eventually, based on their comments, I managed to prevent myself from overcooking the pork and turning it into “pork soup”. (I was actually waiting for the cooker to “phisss” at LOW flame! lolz) I also added the cabbages as instructed…

After 15 more minutes of facebooking and cooking (without closing the pressure cooker lid), I got this…

It was AWESOME!

And of course no Mizo dish is complete without my special mix of…

Yeah that’s right! Bekang (fermented beans) + Red Mizo chilly powder (EXTREMELY spicy) + Nghapih (ok I don’t know what this is called in English… I don’t even think it has a name in English, lolz) + Old Monk rum (to ferment the already fermented beans) + a little water. I then boil this ultimate concoction for a brief minute, and once the aroma is just right, I switch off the gas and let the beans soak in for around 10 minutes. After that – HEAVEN! :-)

I even took the leftover pork to office today, and everybody in office loved it!!!

So cheers to you, Facebook. Thou hath helpeth me in timeth of hunger. Bon appétit.

Chp 389. The long-distance death knell

2012-01-23T11:11:00.004+05:30

The further the death knell chimes, the louder it sounds. Loss of a loved one is a torturous ordeal when you’re thousands of miles away. Last Thursday, three very dear friends of mine here in Mumbai lost their father. One of them is the love of my life.

When you stay far away from home, losing a father or mother is more painful. At least when you’re at home, you’re with friends and family consoling you and helping you ease the grief. You’re right there with the lifeless body of someone you once loved so much, warming you with his/her presence no matter how cold the body had become.

And then there is the horrible task of journeying home in a wretched emotional condition. You’re in the flight and everything else seems normal all around you, except for the fact that you alone are going through an agony of pain and suffering.

I’ve been living in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Yercaud, Lucknow and Kolkata all my life, and I have already seen too many Mizos going home after hearing the sad news that their mother or father or brother or sister had passed away.

Being a close knitted community, the Mizos of that particular city then inform each other and soon gather at the person’s rented apartment. The close friends of that person then take up the responsibility of arranging the refreshments, prayer service, flight tickets etc. The “Mizo Association” of that particular city also plays a very important and helpful role in this.

Last Thursday, at 4:26pm, my girlfriend called me up. I was in the middle of an important pitch discussion. Before I could tell her I was a bit tied up, she told me her father passed away. No further words needed to be spoken. I left office immediately. My bosses were understanding enough to rearrange all my schedules for Thursday and Friday.

On my way to her place, I kept thinking about death, and the pain of losing somebody. She stays with her two brothers here in Mumbai, older bro M who is an IIM-A grad and younger bro H who is studying in Pre-University here.

I reached their place even before the brothers. I did what I could cleaning up the place and consoling her. Soon, other Mizos started arriving. M and I went to the airport around 6pm to book their flight tickets home.

Throughout the way, M talked about how much it pained him and we even stopped by a wineshop and I bought him some beer to ease him up. When we reached the airport, further bad news awaited us as there were no tickets available for the next day. Although there were many morning flights available from Mumbai to Calcutta, the only flights that would reach Cal in time (before their Calcutta-Aizawl 11am flight) were Indian Airlines and Kingfisher, and they were both full.

V arrived from a direct Aizawl-Mumbai flight around 9pm, and he too immediately joined us straight from the arrival terminal in trying to get three tickets for the next day.

Finally, after pulling a lot of strings and many help from Mizo IAS/IPS officers all over India, around 1 in the morning we managed to get three confirmed IA and KF tickets for Mumbai-Kol.

We reached their home by around 2am, Friday morning.

When we reached, their apartment was filled with Mizos from all over Mumbai! They were all there, paying their condolences and comforting them. That’s what I love about our Mizo community. Everybody’s always there for each other, even if you don’t know each other that well.

We had a proper prayer service and Bible reading session, followed by the Lord’s Prayer.

Around 4am, a few left.

Many people did try to cheer up others and change the mood. It’s true how we sometimes tend to hide our sorrow behind a joke. We stayed up with them throughout the night (morning) and finally dropped them at the airport.

They took the connecting flight as planned: Mumbai – Kol – Aizawl. After that, they had to spend a few more hours on the road traveling to Lunglei. Finally, they reached Lunglei and laid their father to rest after dark. In our culture, we usually bury our dead around 2-3pm before dark, but there are few exceptions like this that require a late burial.

-------------------------------------------

I can’t help but think about the ordeal they must be going through. I look around in office today and I notice most of my colleagues are staying with their family here in Mumbai. They see their parents every day… When I was in the auto with M (on our way to get the three air tickets) we talked about Cinderella’s song “You don’t know what you got, till it’s gone”. How true indeed.

May the good Lord continue giving them strength and courage to ease their pain and move on…

Chp 388. SOPA BLACK-OUT

2012-01-18T13:08:00.003+05:30

Today is January 18, 2011. Many popular sites like reddit, Wikipedia (English), boingboing and others have declared today a BLACK-OUT day, in protest against SOPA and PIPA. I for one, am a staunch supporter of this protest.

But eventually, there is a possibility that my blog may be blacklisted by the US Government for merely voicing my support for the protest. Which can eventually lead to my blog being blocked in the US and many other countries it has influence on, and my blog posts never showing up on any Google, Bing and Facebook search results ever! Which means loss of pagerank. And my Google Adsense account can be terminated, denying me of my part-time income, however measly it may be. All this is possible if SOPA has its ways.

Of course nobody’s going to do any such thing to this extremely insignificant blog of mine, but still, the very thought that it can happen to all the popular websites I frequent and find resourceful is not a very comforting thought.

And as many experts ask: Will SOPA and PIPA really stop internet piracy, which is after all the main reason why these laws were created… Many conclude it will not stop Piracy and merely make life difficult for the rest of us free citizens of the online world.

We live in dark & difficult times, my friends.

Well, anyway, to end this very short post, here is a small comic strip inspired by my friend Goldmember. A little humor side of SOPA. :-)

Chp 387. King Henry the XIIth!

2012-01-10T16:25:00.001+05:30

This blog post definitely deserves a picture post! What an awesome match this morning! And what a great return by the King, Thierry Henry. I cried. I actually cried when he scored that fabulous match-winning goal!

So, hope you enjoy this picture post :-)

Chp 386. First Random Post of 2012

2012-01-06T23:30:00.000+05:30

What a hectic first week of 2012! I will surely update with what I was up to for the New Year, but right now I am just too damn tired. I had three huge pitches this week alone, guaranteeing that I had no time to blog at all.

And then we are currently renovating a very popular Mizo community site we run – misual.com, installing new plugins and testing it out with our users.

So, for the sake of just updating, I thought I’ll just post this photo of a New Year gift my CEO gave me today – a boxer of my FAVORITE character Homer Simpson. AWESOME!

Thanx Sid! :-)

And Happy New Year everyone!.

Chp 385. Happy New Year!

2011-12-29T15:41:00.001+05:30

So this is my last post for the year 2011, and I just realized, I’ve been quite a consistent blogger for the past 7 years. In fact, from 2005, I’ve posted 381 posts, average of which is 55, which is also the exact number of posts I’ve written this year!

I hope all of you had a memorable Christmas, and here’s wishing you all an absofreakinglutely awesome New Year. Cheers!

By the way, here’s a New Year present I’m sure all the ladies will love!

I’m a head massage addict. Whenever I get a haircut, I always finish it with a massage. Always. To me, getting a haircut without a head massage is like… eating shawarma without the pickle, or spending a Friday without listening to Rebecca Black’s “Friday” :D

Many haircutting ~~saloons~~ salons now have what I call the “Hand Vibrator”. It’s a piece of electrical contraption that easily fits in one’s hand. You just have to attach the other end to a power supply, turn it on and… oooohhhh…. ahhhhhhh….

After a good round of hand massage, the barber/hairstylist puts on this device and gives my head another round of awesome massage.

Women are soooo going to love thisssss! Guys, make sure you get one for your girl (or wife).

Just imagine you attaching this to your hand and switching on the power supply. Your whole hand becomes one powerful vibrating Weapon of Mass Seduction.

Everywhere you move your hand, she’ll squirm in sheer ecstasy. Even if she screams, “STOP!!!”, know that she merely means “Don’t stop… keep going… faster.. FASTER!!!”. Wave of endless satisfaction after satisfaction. Transport her to a place she’s never been before as you move your throbbing pulsating hand all over her… feet. Her tired and weary feet. That are badly in need of a massage. Because she’s tired from walking at every Mall and street-side shop, doing her Christmas and New Year shopping. Her feet really deserve that awesome massage.

Hope you weren’t thinking of anything else. I did say Weapon of Mass Seduction, not Weapon of Mass Reproduction.

So try to get your hands on this one. It will come in handy one day… lolz, sorry for the bad pun, but hey, it’s my last post this year! Happy New Year once again, y’all.

Chp 384. Of Christmas, Farms & Rehabilitation

2011-12-20T14:09:00.000+05:30

It’s Christmas time again, the season of joy & happiness. Many of my friends at our site misual.com have already started the annual misualdotcommer charity. Money contributed by our visitors goes to various orphanages in Mizoram.

Maybe it’s because of this that I can’t help thinking about a very special place for me in Mizoram – a charity-run drugs & alcohol rehabilitation centre called Grace Home.

Three months ago, I took a one month vacation and went home to Mizoram. Apart from spending time with my dad, family and friends, dad told me to visit our “farm/ranch” at least once before I went back to Mumbai.

We have a peaceful sprawling farm outside the city, at a place called Neihbawih, Sihphir. It’s located on the top of a mountain, right adjacent to Mizoram Chief Minister Pu Lal Thanhawla’s farm.

Once upon a time when we were just kids, it was indeed a thriving farm. Mom and dad both worked hard running it, as they also had their respective official work to manage. At any point in time, we used to have at least more than 10 farmhands staying at the place. We had around 20-30 cows, 10-15 pigs, lots of hens/chickens, and grew all sorts of vegetables like squashes, cabbages, beans etc. Dad also built a very cozy farmhouse, making it the perfect weekend getaway.

I remember spending every weekend at the farm when I was little. Of course that meant no Nintendo video games (electricity was very bad at such an isolated place back then), but I really enjoyed spending time with the farmhands and playing with the animals.

On Saturdays, we would slaughter a pig from our pigsty, and then a butcher would come and chop it into pieces, which we would sell to merchants at the local Saturday morning meat market in Aizawl. They in turn would sell them to the common man at a little higher cost. Likewise, we did the same with our vegetables too. Hence, Saturday used to be a very busy day for our family back then. Busy but fun.

Milk was the only thing we sold every day and not just on Saturdays. Every day, our “milk van”, a Tata 407, would leave the city at 4 in the morning to collect milk from our farm. And I usually went with the driver. [I once saw a man who committed suicide hanging from a tree in Sihphir during one such morning routine. We (the driver and I) were the first to notice the corpse, as dawn was just about to break then, and we had to find the local YMA leader’s house to inform him about the “situation”. A very traumatic experience for me indeed.]

I don’t exactly remember how much milk we used to bring back every day then, but I think there were at least around 10 big milk cans involved. I even learnt how to milk the cows there. And on our way back to Aizawl, we would give a lift to some of the milkmaids who were also going to Aizawl to sell their milk. I was very young then, and shy. But I kinda understood everything. I’m sure our lucky driver definitely “got some” for regularly giving them free lifts almost every day (unless my mom or dad happened to travel with us) as many of them were really pretty, friendly and charming. Come to think of it, I really don’t remember our driver ever stopping the vehicle and giving a lift to a milkman! It was always the fair maidens! Lolz, the dirty rascal!

Once we reached home, the adults quickly did the measurements and divisions etc etc, and then our servants moved out to deliver the milk to our “customers” who stayed a bit farther away from our house, while I did the honors of delivering to those who stayed close by. I used to earn 1 rupee for every delivery I made! I really enjoyed those moments.

But then, like most dreams, our farm unfortunately hit rock-bottom. As the years passed, mom and dad were both busy with their official work and my sisters and I went home to Mizoram just once or twice a year (summer and winter vacations). It was also getting increasingly difficult to find trustworthy farmhands as there were many incidents of them siphoning off the profit into their own pockets, selling our vegetables and piglets behind our back.

Eventually, we got rid of all the cows, and for a long time, it was functioning with just two farmhands looking after 2-3 pigs, a few chickens and vegetables. The bare necessities indeed.

And then, the transformation.

Around 10 years ago, one of my cousins met dad with a suggestion – Since our family’s hardly doing anything with the farm, could dad rent the place to him (for free) to start a rehabilitation centre for drug-addicts and alcoholics?

Dad said yes. And Grace Home was born.

What is different about Grace Home is that, it’s not an NGO or official rehab centre run by the government or a private firm. It’s also not affiliated to any particular denomination. It is financed by different people from Khatla locality, people from different walks of life who got together and decided to do something good for the community.

Another distinguishing fact about this place is that it’s one of the few de-addiction centres where only people who volunteer are allowed to stay. Unlike many other de-addiction centres, you cannot forcefully put somebody there for “treatment”. It has to be a decision made by the addict himself. And yes, only males are allowed.

Hence, the people there are those genuinely trying to reform themselves, and are extremely nice and friendly. Most of the current camp counselors are former addicts who were once admitted there as patients!

They tore down our old cowshed and built a Church there. Beneath the Church, they built a dormitory where they all stayed together. Around 3 years ago, the entire Church burnt down due to faulty electrical wiring, engulfing the entire building along with most of their belongings. However, they rebuilt the Church and were all back on their feet in no time with help from the public and their Khatla sponsors.

They are mostly self sufficient, growing their own vegetables on the fertile land where we once used to grow our vegetables, and they even breed a few pigs and hens of their own. They also receive rice and clothes through charity donations. Apart from that, they also make domestic products like wooden TV cabinets, chairs, desks etc which through the help of various Church organizations, they’re able to sell to other people.

All in all, it’s like a brotherhood, and people who are “cured” of their addiction need not necessarily leave the place and can continue staying there supporting and looking after the others (but that means they cannot leave the compound and have to abide by all the existing rules). In fact, a lot of them had been disowned by their family during their addiction days, and Grace Home was the only solace they could find. Hence, Grace Home became their new family. Such was the bonding between each of them.

Even though I visit the place only once a year whenever I go home, many of them remember me. I’ve even played a good game of volleyball and cricket (yes, cricket! Don’t laugh at me, lolz) with them. There used to be a TT table too, but unfortunately, that is all worn out now, eaten away by time and termites.

The “rent” may be free, but they’re doing an excellent job looking after our farm, like clearing the occasional weeds and overgrown creepers, repairing the fences etc, making sure our farm doesn’t turn into a ghost farm. It was a bit awkward at first, considering how shy I am, but I really love spending time with them, listening to their stories and their point of view on certain issues like politics, sports, the opposite sex etc. and where they see themselves in the future.

If you’re into the spirit of sharing and giving, and have some surplus money you’d wanna give away to charity but don’t know where :) feel free to contact me and I can get the camp director’s number for you.

Below is a video I took at the far end of our farm… the particular area is really quiet, peaceful, misty, and a bit eerie if you’re alone (like one of those “you can scream all you want, nobody will hear you for miles” movie punch-lines), especially when one of the counselors started talking about how one of the inmates claimed to have spotted a lassi-pitar at that very same spot! Of course the only reassuring fact was that I was able to convince myself the guy who “saw” the spirit was probably going through a withdrawal symptom… :P

Here’s the short video clip. I’ve also clubbed this clip with another video clip I took just when we entered Durtlang Leitan on our way back.

And here are some pics I took that day. Click on them to enlarge.

On our way to Neihbawih, stopping briefly at Sihphir to buy snacks for the inmates. The giant white cross perching on the distant hill is so beautiful.

The path leading from the main road to our farm at the top of the mountain was so under maintained that it was no longer possible to drive up there. So we had to leave our Bolero at the base of the mountain and hike all the way up to the top. I lost 20 kgs I think :)

Our unoccupied farmhouse. I took some pics inside too but since there was no electricity, the pics didn’t come out well. What you see right outside our farmhouse is actually a (deserted and ruined) swimming pool. Man, those were some memorable times we used to have.

Below is one of our farm sheds, now almost about to fall apart. There’s nothing inside now. I still remember how scared I used to be of this particular farm shed, and how my evil sisters would walk with me till here after dark and then suddenly run away, making me run after them at the speed of light, crying.

Here are some of the rehab inmates crafting a beautiful polished TV cabinet from scratch. Like I mentioned before, this is one of the many ways they make their living.

Here is the new Church they built after the previous one burnt down. The view from the Church is breathtaking.

At a neighboring hill, a cell phone tower had been installed. During my days, we didn’t even have electricity here. Sometimes the owners of the neighboring farms would hire the rehab inmates to clear their land of weed or construct vine-supports for their squash plantations. Another good way to earn their livelihood.

And ending it with a few other pics in and around our farm.

Peace out. And advanced Merry Christmas, if I don’t get to update my blog again before the big day.

Chp 383. Sons of Anarchy - Season 4

2011-12-13T22:38:00.000+05:30

Another great season of another amazing TV show has come to an end. Sons of Anarchy, definitely one of my all time favorite shows, ended two weeks ago. That means I gotta wait till September 2012 for the next season!

First of all, let me put up this big warning sign for those of you who haven’t watched Season 4 yet….

--- SPOILER ALERT ---

Yeah, I may love to troll sometimes, but I know where to draw the lines. I don’t want to spoil an awesome show for you.

Now coming back to SoA, I’ve been in love with the show since it came out three years ago. I’ve always been fascinated by 1%er (one percenter) Motorcycle Clubs like Hell’s Angels, Pagans, Mongols etc. I still remember painting a patch of one of these MC clubs on my brand new leather jacket using fabric paint back in school. That was in the early 90s. Many of my classmates were still playing with GI Joes then…

There was no internet those days but I got all the info I needed from a series of foreign magazines called Passing Wind or Pissing Wind or something like that which was all about the 1%er MCs (and also had lots and lots of pics of babes & boobs *GRIN*).

SoA is based on the 1%er MCs, and even though the names of the clubs and rivals clubs in the TV show are fictitious (correct me if I’m wrong), they are all (partly) based on actual clubs and events.

SoA is very much the Anti-Hero TV show, where the main characters are actually the “bad guys”, running guns & drugs, dealing in the flesh trade, treating women like property and prone to violence and even murder. The show beautifully depicts what being a 1%er MC is all about and has a loyal fan following among many MC enthusiasts around the world. With “Hell Boy” Ron Perlman playing the role of “Clay”, the President of the MC, I knew right then that this was going to be an awesome show.

Sons of Anarchy season 3 had a good ending, as I already pointed out in my previous post: Chp 354. End of a Season. Stahl is finally killed. The Sons go to prison to serve minimum time. And Tara found the letters JT wrote to Maureen, where he mentioned how he feared Clay will kill him one day because he’s trying to stop the guns deal with the IRA.

So there was suspense throughout the season – Will she tell Jax or not? Will Clay or Gemma get to her first before she tells Jax? How will Jax react if he learns his step-dad and mom killed his old man? Will Piney really tell the club about Clay’s secret? Will Clay have the guts to stop Piney, who is not just JT’s best friend but also the co-founder of SAMCRO?

And then there was the new added spice – the MC finally getting into the drugs trade, something that they voted to stay away from throughout the previous seasons. I wonder what the Nords would say to this, had they still been around in season 4, lolzzz.

And with the drugs came the Galindo Cartel. The whole club, especially the senior members, didn’t want to get involved with any cartel shit, but Jax eventually had to support Clay because he wanted to leave the club and Clay was his only ticket out.

But there are certain incidents in season 4 that I need to point out…

1. The “Black” Race Card

First of all, we know that the Sons aren’t racists. Juice is half Puerto Rican, Prospect V-Lin is chinese, and Hap looks pretty much latino or black. They have done their businesses with the 19ers (Blacks), Mayans (Hispanics), the Nords (White supremacists) and the Lin Triad (Chinese organized crime syndicate) to mention a few.

They are in extreme good relationship with the Grim Bastards (an all-Black MC), and when the Sons were in prison, the Black Guerilla Family (an all-Black prison gang) was protecting them from the Aryan Brotherhood (a White supremacist prison gang).

Apart from that, Chib’s ex-wife is of Irish Black descent, and hence naturally his daughter too. I even remember Bobby hitting it off with a hot African American chick in season 1 or 2 when the Sons went to Nevada to patch-over with the Devil’s Tribe.

So when you consider all these, I think it was really lame of the Sheriff to use the fact that Juice’s dad is black in order to blackmail him. I mean, I really don’t think any of the Sons would have cared if Juice’s dad is black or not. When Juice confronted Chibs about this “dark secret” of his, Chibs too just laughed it off, telling him that what really matters is what his birth certificate says, and that’s “latino” (hence conveniently not admitting whether the rest of the Sons will accept him or not if they know his dad’s black).

Of course I completely understand where Kurt Sutter, the creator of the show is coming from. He had spent a lot of time with different MCs doing research for this TV show. He wanted to showcase the fact that most of these real 1%er MCs are racially exclusive clubs.

What I really like about Kurt Sutter is that, apart from playing the role of Otto, the uber cool SoA member languishing in Jail, he also runs his own blog on blogspot.com and writes about certain events regarding the show. In his blog, he explains about this particular Juice incident. If you’re interested, click here: sutterink.blogspot.com: Black & White of MC’s to read. He was merely trying to bring out this exclusivity criterion that exists in many MCs.

Latoya’s article regarding this issue (How Sons of Anarchy got racism right) is beautifully written too. However, my beef with this incident is not on the actual racism per se (whether it is a part of the show or not, or whether it actually exists in real MC’s or not), but the fact that it’s really difficult for a loyal SoA fan like me who knows every character so well to think that the Club members would turn against Juice if they learn about his dad’s origin.

Characterization, my friends.

2. The 14th Episode Shocker

I was biting my nails and sitting at the edge of my seat for thirteen awesome episodes. And then came the final episode of season 4. Just when DA Potter was about to launch the RICO assault against the Sons, the Kings and the Galinda cartel, Romero and Luis appeared and revealed that they’re CIA!!!! Holy $hittt!

I mean, if the Galinda cartel had been working for the CIA all along, why did they not even try to stop Potter’s RICO operation before? Why wait until the last minute?

And yes, I can picture Benito Martinez to be a cop because of his “SHIELD” background, but Danny Trejo as a CIA agent? Seriously? That really puts Machete and Johnny-23 to shame.

And you know what? Apparently, THIS was what Kurt Sutter intended all along! In his interview with Inside TV, Kurt mentioned that the CIA is known to play war games and take sides when two big cartels are fighting with each other, so that they will have control over who controls the drugs & arms money. He was afraid people might catch that on, and this was when Inside TV asked Kurt, “Was that one of the advantages of casting Danny Trejo as Romeo? I don’t think anyone would think of him as being Government Issue.”

Yup, you had me fooled there too. Shocked me real good, Kurt. But somehow, it left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth…

3. Season 5: What lies ahead?

As the episode ends, we see Tara dethroning Gemma as the new queen of SAMCRO while Jax takes over the Presidency, the two of them becoming mirror image of a much younger JT and Gemma (or is it JT and Maureen?).

Jax now knows that his step-dad killed his dad, and is also responsible for what happened to Piney, Gemma and Tara, but he cannot kill him because he needs Clay alive to keep the guns deal with the Irish going. No Clay means no guns deal. No guns deal means the Galindo cartel (aka CIA) will stop protecting SAMCRO from the Feds, who have enough evidence to close down their entire charter.

He also doesn’t know that his mother and Unser are also involved in the death of his father. Tara knows this. Gemma knows that Tara knows. Season 5 is going to be interesting!

And we don’t know if Opie is pledging his loyalty to Jax (but 100 bucks says he will be).

Also, the girlfriend of Laroy, head of the 19ers that Tig killed, happens to be the daughter of Damon pope, the most dangerous and powerful gangster in Oakland. So there is definitely going to be retaliation from Oakland in season 5. Oh how I wish Damon Pope is played by either Samuel L. Jackson or Michael Clarke Duncan. Please please please please!

Apart from this, season 5 will definitely show more of cartel retaliations from the Lobo Sonora Cartel too.

Oh yeahhhhhh, I can’t wait!!!!! SoA FTW!

Chp 382. Mumbai Mizo Association Sports Day

2011-12-07T19:30:00.001+05:30

So, as mentioned in my previous post, here are some photos and video of our 2011 Mumbai Mizo Association Sports Day. Most of the pics are from Rossi and Beethugs Facebook album, so a big thanx to them. I’ve also edited a few photos *EVIL GRIN*

But first, here is the video I took that day. It’s around 12 minutes long, so why don’t you click on “Play” and let the video buffer while you go through the photos below?

First of all, I must say I was a lot more prepared than last year’s MMA Sports which also took place at the same venue. This time, I created a lot of personalized Google Map routes beforehand, and I could easily access the KML files from my phone’s GPS, like how to get to the venue via Western Express, via Eastern Express, from Mapuia’s house, from my house etc, and then how to go to Gokuls, Bandra, Vashi etc from the venue, making sure there are enough options so that we’ll never be lost again no matter where we decide to go.

[One of the route examples]

View Greenfields - Mumbai Port Trust Sports Ground in a larger map

As mentioned in my previous post, I participated in only volleyball and football, but I spent a good time capturing videos of other people. [voyeur artist in the making]

Below are some of the photos taken that day:

Our two groups – SAW PA Group and KHA PA Group, which for my non-Mizo visitors literally mean “That guy’s group” and “This guy’s group”. Lolz. But of course it can have a deeper meaning too… hehehe…

Here we are, assembling and starting the sports function with a short prayer.

Here is our traditional “Kawikah” game, where you have to hit the target using a special holding technique, a secret that has been passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, since the dawn of civilization, a technique similar to how a ninja would throw his deadly shiruken…

Though most of the members are young, a few of of us older folks really stand out… or should I say, jut out? I call this the Brotherhood of the Dulkiarzz.

Time for some volleyball now. Hehe, I’m loving it! :)

We won in volleyball. We also won the football match.

Later, we ended the sports event with prize distribution and group photo sessions.

Now, time for some fun… :D Here are a few photos I edited…

BONUS PIC (Showstopper, lolz)

Cheers :)

Chp 381. The Past vs The Present

2011-12-06T15:46:00.001+05:30

Flashback 19 years ago. December 6th, 1992. I was in Calcutta, St. Thomas Boys’ School. We were playing basketball when our matrons hurriedly called everybody back to the hostel. Babri Masjid had just been demolished. We were told to hide inside.

Ok wait, that’s too much of a flashback.

Urmm… flashback 10 years ago. December 6th, 2001. Second Year Engineering College, PSG Tech, Coimbatore.

My diary, December 6th, 2001.

6:00AM: Waking up, to the sound of my neighbor softly playing a raga/bhajan from his room. I was up till 3AM this morning, completing an Electrical Lab assignment on Ohm’s Law. Being a computer science engineer student, I still don’t understand why we have all these other branches of engineering as a part of our course. Three hours of sleep is definitely not enough, but I have to go for our morning basketball practice…

6:30AM: Reach basketball court on time, just like any other morning. My teammates from various hostel blocks, including the day scholars, are slowly arriving at the court too. We groggily greet each other with a slight nod (and a yawn). Soon the team captain arrives, and he signals the start of our warming up session.

7:00AM: I’m panting and breathing heavily. We have just run 50 rounds around the two basketball courts, done a “shuttle-race” ten times and various other running exercises. By now I am truly warmed up. Now we will start other exercises involving a basketball, like layups from all sides and full court fast breaks.

7:30AM: Totally warmed up, I can now easily jump and hang from the basketball ring. A couple of teammates from 3rd and 4th year can do that too, but I am the only one from second year who is able to do that, which kinda makes me feel special. Now that we’ve done all our cardio exercises, it’s time for gameplay practice.

7:30AM to 8:15AM: We practice various gameplays, most of them involving our 7 feet tall centre Emmanuel from Rwanda. He, along with two other Rwandan exchange students Clement and Innocent form the basis of our starting five. I’m also in the main five. I play the shooting guard position, but if Clement, who is our point guard, gets substituted during a match, then I take over the PG realm. Hence, all our gameplays have to be practiced with Clement as the PG and then me as the PG, so that there is no confusion if either of us are playing or not playing.

8:15 to 8:45AM: We divide into two teams and start a match. As usual, Clement is in the opposite team. And again, when it comes to man-to-man, we take on each other. He is stronger, faster and a better ball controller than me, but I can jump higher than him. That is the only reason why I am selected in the University team too because having a ball controller who can jump almost as high as the forwards and pivots is not only rare but definitely gives an edge to a team when it comes to rebounds.

8:45AM: We are warming down now. That means 50-100 sit-ups, and stretching exercises.

10:00AM: Reach class, with a late pass from our sports director so that I don’t get marked absent. I try not to sleep during class, especially the boring ones.

12:30PM: Lunch break. Going out with my girlfriend to this new Punjabi restaurant near our campus.

1:30PM: Back to boring class schedules.

4:00PM: Done for the day. My friends Paolo, Johnny and Thomas are going for a new English movie that has just released. I can’t go with them because I have handball practice.

4:30PM: Reach the handball court. We practice for an hour. The captain is really impressed with my improved diving throws but at the same time cautiously tells me to be careful as it’s really easy to get injured if I play that way. But me, I’m riding high on the adrenalin and loving it.

5:30PM: Handball practice is over so I quickly run to the football ground. The football captain is a final year student from the North East, so as usual he allows me to play with the college team. I play the defense position (right back) and give our strikers a good challenge.

6:30PM: The football practice match is over and their coach calls everybody for feedback on their performance, which is a cue for me and a few non-team members to leave. I run to the basketball court. As usual, I get the evil eye from my basketball captain for being late but he doesn’t shout at me because he knows I’m the sports director’s favorite as I am a crucial member of our unbeatable handball team. Anyway, I didn’t miss much as all they did so far was cardio.

7:00PM: We start our evening practice match under the floodlights. It’s me versus Clement again. The match is more grueling than the morning practice session, and my girlfriend along with her classmates sometimes watch me play from the adjacent girl’s hostel, so I put in more effort (and style, lolz). Double team, double fake in the air, alley-oop, downtown jumper, fade-away shots, coast to coast and all that jazz.

8:00PM: Match over, we warm down as usual. Another 100 sit-ups, and then I run to the volleyball court where the college team is still practicing under the floodlights. They usually let me play too, unless they have a tournament coming up.

9:00PM: I have just taken a relaxing cold shower. I am now going out with Paolo, Johnny and Thomas for dinner, and we’ll probably be talking about Gopika, Priyanka and Indira. Hehehe…

11:00PM: We reach hostel just before the deadline. Now I will do a couple of assignments, read a few chapters, and then tomorrow, this same cycle of extreme fitness endurance repeats again.

-------------------------------------------------

My diary, December 6th, 2011.

I am sitting in office, every muscle, tissue and joint of my body aching. I still find it difficult to walk, sit, get up and lie down. I even took a leave from work yesterday (Monday) because of the immense pain. In fact, I was bedridden for the past two days (Sunday and Monday).

Why? Because on Saturday, I went for our MMA (Mumbai Mizo Association) Sports Day event, and participated in Volleyball and Football. I played just two games in Volleyball, and was the goalkeeper for Football. We won both the games of course, but my body took a big hit for merely playing that much.

Ten years, just ten years, and see the vast difference! Daymmmm!

Ten years from now, I dread to think where I’ll be (if I’m still alive by the Grace of God).

-------------------------------------------------

Will update next post with photos and videos of our MMA Sports Day… Cheers… and ouch*

Chp 380. Do you do these things too?

2011-12-01T11:54:00.001+05:30

Just how different are you from others? I’m sure there used to be a point in time when you thought you were unique because you used to do things differently.

Then came the internet and it brought people from all over the world closer. Forget the famous “six degrees of separation” theory, Facebook now claims that everybody is just 3.74 degrees of separation away from each other!

Apart from social networking sites and a host of discussion forums and community sites, humor sites like 9gag.com are where people share their daily unique experiences… and suddenly, you realize you’re not so special and unique anymore because there are also many others just like you.

Below are a few things I do “in my own way”. Tell me if you do the same too…

Distance - I always measure the time and distance between two places I regularly go to, by the number of songs I have listened to on the way.

Alcohol - I keep track of how much I’ve been drinking by the number of ice cubes left in my ice tray, or the duration of an ongoing live football match if I am watching one.

Security camera bomber - Whenever I see a surveillance camera when I’m at an ATM or Jewelry store or 5 star hotel or any other place, I always make a face at the camera. Not the stick-your-tongue-out kinda expression, but more of a cool, gangsta, one eyebrow raised “Yo, wassup” kinda nod. And then I try to imagine how the guard at the other end must be reacting had he been watching me.

Wrong direction - So you are going to some place and you suddenly realize you are walking in the wrong direction or the wrong street. Do you just turn around? Well, as for me, if there are people watching me (or I think they’re watching me, especially if those “people” are the pretty kind), then I just keep walking in the wrong direction, then act as if my phone is vibrating, pick it up, speak, and then turn around towards the right direction.

Porn - Yes, like any other normal hot blooded male out there, I too sometimes watch porn. But I always organize my Porn folder, neatly categorizing each video according to the genre it belongs to. Also, I hate going through a friend’s porn folder where all his videos are mixed and jumbled up.

Of roaches and lizards - I know many of you freak out when you see cockroaches and lizards inside your house. When I see a cockroach, my first instinct too is to smash its brains up. I’m no sadist, but those damn spawns of Satan will be bothering me sooner or later. But when it comes to lizards, I leave them in peace. Why? Because they mind their own freaking business, that’s why. In fact, sometimes I even name them.

The awkward disconnect - Yup there are times when I speak on the phone when I’m around people and the line suddenly gets disconnected or the reception is not clear, instead of shouting “Heellloooo, helloooo… can you hear me nowww?” like one of those people, I awkwardly (and politely) end the conversation even though I know the person on the other line cannot hear me.

The Naked Chef - Since I live in a cozy 1BHK apartment all by myself, sometimes when I’m at home alone during the weekends and not at a friend’s place or when I’m not having any company over, I love spending a quiet evening all alone, cooking, naked.

So… how many of you do these things the way I do too? :)

Chp 379. Comic Strip: Autroll-rickshaw!

2011-11-25T21:32:00.001+05:30

Had an EXTREMELY hectic week. I have been camping in office since Wednesday morning till now (60 straight hours and still counting…) due to work. Hence, hope you’ll understand if I update my blog this week with just yet another comic strip…

Chp 378. Trolling misual.com :)

2011-11-19T21:39:00.001+05:30

Another week, another comic strip update, this time using popular memes and rage faces. This is a true incident that took place on Friday. Funny as hell, well at least to me. Lolz. I hope you enjoy this strip as much as I enjoyed making it. :)

And of course you can see a video version of this entire comic strip here. Just wait for the player to finish buffering…

Cheers :)

Chp 377. Lonavala: Revisited.

2011-11-14T20:20:00.001+05:30

Nothing like a relaxing weekend at quiet and peaceful Lonavala, though it was no longer quiet once we got there, if you know what I mean. Hehehe… anyway, I’m in the mood to do just a rage comic strip update for now, so here you go. :)

:) True story :) I’ll add our photos later.

Chp 376. GPS: How it changed our world

2011-11-11T14:16:00.001+05:30

Remember those days not so long ago before the age of mobile phones when you’re supposed to meet your friends but they’re not there yet, and you didn’t know where they were? You would either wait for some more time or simply go somewhere else.

Remember a few years ago when mobile phones started becoming affordable and everybody started having one? When your friends were not there at the rendezvous point, you would simply call them up, and they would tell you that they’re almost there… and of course you had no idea whether they were lying or not.

Today, with most of my friends, it’s just a matter of switching on Google Maps on my Android device and checking on Google Latitude to see where all my friends currently are (or recently were).

And that had made life a lot simpler. There had been many times when this service had truly helped me out and made a lot of things easier for me.

I once had to meet an old school friend. He was staying in Ghatkopar, in an extremely crowded and congested residential area that had a lot of bylanes and narrow, winding, diverging, converging, convoluting alleys. (If you are from Delhi, imagine it to be like the heart of Munirka). With the help of Google Latitude, he didn’t even have to come all the way out on the main road to pick me up. I could easily find my way right up to his building by simply following the directions on my phone between his current location and mine.

And this doesn’t even have to be only between two people who have GPS on their mobile. My friend Alejandro too stays in one such locality called Kalina here in Mumbai, which has a hell lot of bylanes and alleys. The first time I went over to his place, he picked me up from the main road. Once I reached his apartment, I simply “starred” my location, memorizing it on my Google Maps. After that, I could easily go to his place simply by following the direction to that starred area.

Or take for instance the time we went to Goa from Mumbai in a couple of vehicles. When you’re on a road trip in 3-4 vehicles, it is never possible to drive close to each other all the time, especially when the journey is around 700 km long! Amit simply forwarded us the Google Maps directions (KML files) to our phones and we were all in-sync with each other, making sure all of us were on the same (and correct) National Highway.

After that it was just a matter of checking our phones now and then to find out who was where and who was falling behind and who had stopped to puke. It’s even more useful when you have to stop after dark for dinner on a Highway/Expressway that you’re not familiar with at one of those many roadside dhabas, and you want to eat together with all your friends from the other vehicles.

Yes, (almost) gone now are the days of incessantly calling up your friends, “Where are youuuu now? And now? And now?” every 5 minutes or so.

I find this whole GPS based social networking service especially useful when it comes to work. Since I’ve known most of my colleagues for more than three years now, we’re pretty close to each other. So I have most of my colleagues on Google Latitude. And that’s a really good thing. If there is a project deadline coming up or need a team member to be present for a conference call with client and they haven’t reached office yet, all I have to do is look at my phone and I’ll know if they’ve almost reached office or not.

Sometimes, just one look at my map and I’ll know what’s going on in office – “Oh that guy had gone for a meeting at that client’s office. I hope the meeting is going on well”, “WTF, that girl said she’s sick today so she couldn’t come in. Then why the hell is she currently at a competitor’s office building? There are no hospitals there!”, “OMG, that girl and that guy are together at that bar at this time of the night! I didn’t even know they were seeing each other!” and so on…

But the best part is, it can save your ass too. You wake up late one day. You look at your phone frantically. Google Latitude. Boss is still at his place. Phew. You close your eyes for a few more minutes. Boss is on his way to office and almost there – you jump out of bed immediately and rush to work without even brushing your teeth.

Lolz.

By the way, do not just randomly add friends or accept invitations on Latitude if you don’t know the sender properly. It is NOT Facebook or Twitter, where people merely stalks your status updates and photos. On Latitude, people will know exactly where you are all the time (a function which you can switch off of course), and such information can be harmful to you if it falls in the wrong hands.

In the US and elsewhere, there are already many cases of houses being robbed after burglars got information that the owners were away, through the very owner’s twitter updates! Imagine what such people could do if they have your Latitude info? *sends a shiver down one’s spine*

But like I said earlier, latitude is really fun if you use it properly. There are advantages and disadvantages too. Like, if you are planning to give a friend a surprise birthday party at his house, you can easily know when he is approaching home using latitude. However, he too can check his latitude and wonder why the hell all his friends are at his house with his wife.

Like I said. It’s fun :)

There was even one time when I was shopping at Oberoi Mall, and I casually checked latitude to see which friends were nearby. One of my friends was in the very same mall! So I decided to surprise her, but the problem was, there were around 4 floors in the huge mall complex, so I didn’t know which floor she was on.

I got it wrong the first time. Fortunately, I guessed it right the second time. Snuck up behind her, placed my palm around her eyes and said, “Guess who?” Fortunately, she guessed it right the eighth time.

:P

Here is another such “Mother of God!” moment. One day, I dropped my niece who was staying over at my place for the weekend at the train station. I then went to meet another friend, and my niece and I ended up crossing each other at the exact freaking location! I will describe that in true 9gag style.

Yup, true story bro. It kinda freaked me out! All in all, GPS has really made my life more interesting than ever, and I wonder what the future holds for this feature…

Cheers, and have a great weekend. I’ll be in LONAVALA again for this weekend, having *le good time*, so GPS me there :D

Chp 375. The Malady that is Mizo Idol

2011-11-07T11:13:00.000+05:30

2000+ years ago, gladiators lined up in an arena and vowed, Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant (We who are about to die, salute you!) And then as they fight each other to the death, the crowd would go crazy, shouting for more blood and gore.

Today, the battle axe had been replaced by a guitar, the trident replaced by a drum set, and the combat skills of a warrior replaced by the vocal cord of a singer. Yup, I am talking about the ongoing Mizo Idol in Mizoram. Different battleground, same audience.

Today, the winner of Mizo Idol 2011 will be announced. Will it be Biakmuana or Lalthuthaa? The winner of this “grand honor” depends on who gets the most number of sms votes. Yes the format is exactly similar to American Idol and its many spinoffs across the world.

And so, people are going crazy, not just voting for their favorite Idol but convincing (and harassing) their friends and relatives to vote for that person. There are many instances of people actually taking their friend’s mobile phone to vote without their acknowledgement! Others are buying new sim cards just to cast extra votes. There are even stories of some rich dudes here and there buying 3000 new sim cards or so just to vote for a particular contestant. And of course the rumors started spreading like wildfire… that guy is a drunkard, that girl is carrying an illegitimate son, that guy is secretly gay, and so on…

Before I carry on any further, I would like to state that I have no personal grudge against Zonet, the network that had been conducting this show for the past many years, or LPS that had conducted similar shows before (Mizo Youth Icon). If at all there are to be any reason for this “attack” on them, let me state that I have interviewed the host of Zonet Mizo Idol Zonuni and she's a very friendly and sweet person, and my only dissent with LPS would be the fact that we both bought the first batch of Wagon R in Mizoram, and we both happened to buy the same make, model and color, so every time I went home and drove around the city, people thought I was from LPS. That’s a very trifle issue indeed, and like I said, I would like to come clean first, since we Mizos are so fond of finding an excuse about why one person is criticizing about something.

Now, even though I am not interested in the ongoing Mizo Idol, I’ve been following it quite closely. Not that I intended to. But when most of your friends on Facebook are Mizos and you also happen to be the admin of a very popular Mizo community site, it’s really difficult not to know what’s going on. Of course I have more important things to do in life than let who becomes the next Mizo Idol dictate my life, you know… But nevertheless, I get all the newsfeeds and gossips.

And that’s what hurts me a lot.

We all know what happened when Sinate was still in the competition. On Facebook, the whole issue became a case of Mizos versus Hmars, each side spitting heinous venom on each other that makes you wanna puke. Kinda reminds you of the Huti-Tutsi conflict in Rwanda. It was no longer about who had better talent on the microphone. Suddenly everything was about ethnicity and roots.

Death threats were freely given to different members like parking tickets and people started glorifying their “terrorist groups”. The ethnic slurs and abuses overflowed from either side like an absentmindedly neglected pan of boiling milk. Actual addresses and locations were disclosed openly, challenging those who made the threats to see if they had the guts to stick to their death threats. Facebook accounts and groups were hacked and counter-hacked.

From a silent observer’s point of view, it was a tad funny, but one couldn’t help but admit how seriously we took a mere singing competition to be!

Comon… seriously? We come from a land of musicians where almost every next person you see can sing or play the guitar, and we are allowing this mere contest to disrupt our integrity and harmony? The fact that we’re still not mentally matured and prepared for a multi-ethnic multi-regional competition of this proportion was suddenly obvious.

Everybody should know by now that this popularity contest method of voting an Idol had never been fair. Remember Adam Lambert [American Idol finalist 2009]? Everybody knew he got the best freaking voice then, and yet he didn’t win because a large majority of “conservative” Americans didn’t vote for him as he was gay. To me, he was the true idol then.

And now we have the Mizo Idol Finals today. One guy representing Northern Mizoram and another representing Southern Mizoram. And of course some people started campaigning for their respective regions. “Screw talent, stick to your regional loyalty!” seemed to be the mantra of the day.

This reminded me of what my dad used to tell me many years ago. I am a Hrahsel [Saza], but dad didn’t allow me to officially use Hrahsel in my name because he said being a Mizo was more than enough and he felt all these habits of using one’s clan/tribe’s name to identify themselves only caused further disunity in Mizoram.

True dat.

If you really look at this whole Mizo Idol phenomena and how people are taking it so seriously and personally, you too will laugh at it. Is it really worth fighting with your own brothers and sisters about who becomes the next damn Idol? A man-made designation? That too designed by a television network for its own profitable gain?

It is always natural for humans to try and be in an inclusive group. If a group of Punjabis migrate to London, they will most probably move to the Punjabi section of the city, where people speak the same language and eat the same food. Similarly, people from the northeast are known to stick together in mainland India. If a Mizo moves to a new city and there are no other Mizos nearby, he/she will most probably try to stay in an area where there are Nagas, Meiteis, Khasis etc. As more Mizos move in, he/she will then move to the Mizo area. At the end of the day, we just feel more secure and comfortable being with our own kind. There’s a thin line between that and racism or xenophobia.

Speaking of exclusivity, take a look at what is going on in the online world. During the times of Orkut, Mizos created a group called Maharashtra Mizos, which comprised of Mizos working or studying in Maharashtra. Then as more Mizos started moving in, the group got divided into Mumbai Mizos and Pune Mizos. After that, Navi Mumbai Mizos group was created. Even in the Mumbai Mizos group, it further broke up into Andheri Mizos, Santa Cruz Mizos etc. Being in a group that is as inclusive as possible is always in our human DNA, regardless of who we are. You can even take a look at the sports groups in Facebook. First there was the Mizo Basketball lovers group. Then that went city-wise and we had Bangalore Mizo Basketball lovers, Delhi Mizo Basketball lovers, and that can even be divided up further more.

Similarly, being an admin of misual.com, we are no stranger to exclusivity. And that is something we never permit in our site. We have seen it happened all too often based from our experiences – Mizo mIRC chat rooms rivalry, zoram.com vs izawl.com, etc. we have seen them all. And we don’t want to see it happen again.

Even if you take a look a different Facebook Mizo groups, be it about Mizoram news, IT helplines or medical assistances, there will always be people who vowed loyalty to one particular group and immense enmity towards the other group.

Admit it. We love to be inclusive. It is in our nature.

So taking all that into consideration, is it really a good idea for ZoNet or LPS to conduct these types of events? Whatever be the outcome, most people are always going to stick to being as inclusive as possible, rather than recognize actual talent.

What is the point of it all then?

I am not demeaning the past winners of Mizo Idol or the new winner who will be crowned today. Trust me, that’s not my intention. In fact I would like to congratulate today’s winner and all the other contestants in advance for their talent and performance so far.

My main objection is rather with the system and process of voting. Yes, working in the advertisement industry in Mumbai for many years now, I know all too well how an audience participation event increases the ratings and viewership of a TV show. But if you consider everything I have mentioned so far, do you really think it is worth going through such an ordeal when the price we have to pay for that is so much higher?

Eventually, if you think about it, it is just a form of entertainment, designed to keep us preoccupied from our otherwise mundane life. An entertainment in an arena filled with abusive ethnic slur and regional slur uttering audience that does nothing but create more divisions among us. The question is, are you not entertained? Are you NOT entertained?

Chp 374. Five “Can’t” & “Don’t” Lies men say

2011-11-04T13:03:00.001+05:30

Yeah people do say that guys lie by exaggerating a bit, so as to boost our ego or massage our pride. Apparently, we tend to show off or brag about our skills and conquests, while adding a few “extra” details here and there.

But what most people, especially women, don’t know is that, sometimes we tend to lie by demeaning ourselves too, and we have perfectly good reasons for doing that. Yup, we are not ashamed about falsely claiming to have shortcomings and lack of common sense or skills. We play the “loser” role all too often, all for a very good reason.

Here are a few such can’t and don’t lies most guys say, sometimes to women, and sometimes to other men too. This post by the way, is written in light humor, and should not be taken seriously or literally :P

Lie #1. I can’t cook.

When it comes to the cooking department, women think there are just two types of guys – those who can’t cook shit, and those who pride themselves with their cooking skills. The second one is the real foodie type, and boy do they love cooking. But there are also many guys who CAN cook, but act like they can’t. And this holds true especially among many Mizo guys.

Yup, many of us can indeed cook but we lie about it for one very simple reason – so that you can do it, honey.

Well… it’s not actually about chauvinism or sexism. It’s about romance! (well, if women can fantasize about their Prince charming to be tall, fair, handsome and rich, this isn’t that bad either)

So there you are thinking your guy can’t even cook and how you’re the only reason why he’s still alive, and that makes you love him even more… but the harsh reality is that he’s just sitting his fat ass in front of the TV on his favorite beanbag watching the Barclays Premier League while downing a pint of Carlsberg, relived that he didn’t have to miss the match because you’re the one in the kitchen.

But of course, that doesn’t mean he loves you any less… :)

Lie #2. I can’t drive.

There are two “I can’t drive” lies guys say. One is when you use it in front of a woman because you don’t want to drive her to the shopping mall or beauty salon. The other more frequently used one is when you use it in front of your guy friends.

Yes, being the designated driver sucks.

When you’re with a bunch of your homies out for a wild time in the night, it is always the driver who has the least amount of fun. Especially when there’s a girl in the back seat with your friends. So there you are, driving your drunken yodeling friends in the back seat while you’re concentrating hard on the road… sucks right? Initially, I used to feel good about myself because I felt I was the one who could rise to the occasion for my friends… but time and experience will only teach you that it’s not worth it at all, and that even if you don’t volunteer to drive, there will always be someone from your group who’ll drive. It’s not going to be the end of the world, you know…

Lie #3. I don’t know her.

If your girlfriend ever talks about a girl and asks you if you know her, the SAFEST reply is to just say no. It doesn’t matter if you know only her name or seen her photograph once at a friend’s Facebook album. Just say no. It doesn’t even matter if there’s no chance in hell your girlfriend’s going to be jealous. Just say no. No no no.

Trust me, you don’t want to start answering uncomfortable questions if you say yes, especially when you can’t even remember where or how you know her! (ah, hazy memories, if you know what I mean). And if your girl then realizes you DO know her and reminds you who she is and how you know her, just act all “ahhhh… ok ok, THAT girl… now I remember!!” and she will laugh at your short term memory and even call you a fool. But hey, at least a confrontation has been avoided! :)

Lie #4. I didn’t see her.

When you’re walking with your girl and a hot (usually skimpy clad) girl walks nearby and if your girl ever asks, “You see that?” ALWAYS reply, “Who? What? That old uncle over there?”

Of course you bloody saw her. You didn’t even need to see her, you already “sensed” her presence using your unique guy radar. There are a lot of jackasses out there who stare directly at a girl, but there are also many of us who have mastered the art of looking without looking. It’s like the highest form of Zen. One quick glace from the corner of our eyes and a graphical mental note had already been recorded.

So always look the other way when staring at such girls, and when you tell your girl you didn’t notice her, it is more believable that way too. Doesn’t matter if she thinks you’re not observant enough, and frankly in this case, she won’t actually mind too.

Lie #5. I don’t understand.

This is by far the best free “Get out of jail” card you can play. If your girl ever says something you don’t agree with, but arguing with her is only going to make your relationship worse and there’s nothing for you to gain by proving her wrong other than hurting her feelings… just say you don’t understand what is going on.

Yeah, maybe she’ll think you’re a moron for not understanding what is being discussed. But you’ve avoided friction, and that’s what matters in the end.

xxxxxxxxx

So all in all, it is sometimes best to act dumb for the greater good. Of course sometimes if you play those cards too often, she’ll really think you’re THAT incapable of doing anything and may even lose interest in you. Like I said before, this post is not to be taken that literally. Cheers and a happy weekend :)

Chp 373. Family bonding weekend

2011-10-31T14:35:00.000+05:30

Sup, folks. Great Monday aye? (unless of couse you’re a Chelsea fan). Well, today’s the last day of October, which usually means playing “November Rain” from tomorrow onwards, but this time, I’m gonna play a song dedicated to October.

[The Rasmus feat. Anette Olzon – October & April]

Yeah it’s not a new song, but I still love it. This song says a lot about me and my relationship, if you know what I mean. Plus, this song was performed by The Rasmus (of “In the Shadows” fame) and Anette Olzon, the Nightwish vocalist who replaced Tarja. Perfect match for each other, if I may say so.

xxxxxx

Now coming to this post, I invited my “little” niece over to my place for the weekend. She’s my cousin’s daughter, and she had just joined an MA course here in Mumbai two months ago. The last time I saw her was a few years ago at a family dinner at my place in Mizoram when I graduated from Engineering college. Dad invited our entire relatives for a grand feast because he was proud as hell to have a B.E. son.

This was her then, that night when we celebrated my B.E. graduation at my house. The one on the extreme right, sitting and smiling shyly.

I picked her up from Bandra last Friday. I was still expecting her to be the small bespectacled pony-tailed little girl, but wonders of wonders, NOOOO. I guess she underwent some strange mysterious paranormal phenomenon called “growing up” because this is her now:

And from the previous other pic above, the other two girls in the pic are nieces of mine too, the daughters of another cousin. You see the one in the middle? You see the innocence in her eyes? Well, apparently this is what she is today:

The third niece in the pic had also transformed into this now:

Holy mother of *beep*, how (and why) do they grow up so fast??? They just make me feel like I am stuck in some limbo while everything and everybody else is moving swiftly past me. Swish swish swish…

Well, I know from my dad’s side, a lot of my cousins are way older than me. Another niece of mine (daughter of yet another cousin) even married one of my closest friends, who I have treated like a brother since primary school days…

…and they already have two freaking kids.

These are just a few of my nieces I’m mentioning here. There are even many other nieces who are older than me! Comon, nieces! Stop it. Give your uncles a chance to grow up at their own slow and desired pace, ok? We’re in no rush, so why should you be?

Anyway, my niece Eunice (which rhymes, capisce?) and I had a great time bonding over family and stuff, and it was something I haven’t done in a really long time. For people like me who had stayed outside Mizoram since third standard, it’s not that easy staying connected with all my cousins and their children (and I come from a really huge family from both my mom and dad’s side).

We spent Saturday watching movies in the morning and Barclays Premier League matches in the evening. She’s a Manure fan (oh the horror!!!) and we watched her team barely win against a struggling out-of-form Everton side.

After that we watched my team AR53NAL play against CH3L5EA. And we all know the result of that match. That, my friend, is the true Arsenal team.

After watching Arsenal hump Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, my niece bowed her head in shame, and quietly uttered, “You know what, uncle? After watching your team and my team play tonight, I have now come to realize that when we beat your team 8-2 at Old Trafford, you guys had around NINE main players absent due to suspension, injury and transfer. Most of your players then were from the reserve team and it was not such a great glory after all to win by that much. In fact when we lost 6-1 to City at our OWN home, with a full strength squad, that was the ultimate disgrace and shame for us. At least when you guys lost 8-2, it was not a home match for you guys. But for us, it was indeed a home match, and we all know the vast difference when it comes to pressure while playing home and away matches. So any football fan will know how much more shameful 6-1 is than that 8-2. As of now, I am going to burn all my Manure posters and I am going to start supporting Arsenal. Will you guys accept me as a Gunner fan? Please, uncle, pretty please? If not for me, then at least for my great grandfather (and your grandfather), the late Pu Zabanga’s sake?”

That’s what she told me that night…

Actually I think she said something like, “What shall we have for dinner?” but that’s what I heard coming out of her mouth.

Anyhoo, I finally dropped her at the station on Sunday evening as she had to get back to her hostel. Strangely, as I watched her go, there I was, standing like a proud uncle.

After she disappeared into the sea of commuters, I went to Santa Cruz to meet my old school mate and really close friend Hminga, who had come down to Mumbai with his dad (Pu Rinsanga, IAS rtd) and dad-in-law (Pu Liansanga, Engg-in-Chief rtd). They were on a vacation.

They wanted to try seafood, so I took them to the best seafood joint I know – Soul Fry @ Bandra. From Bombil cutlet to Surmai fry to Pomfret masala to Crab & Prawn main courses, we tried them all, occasionally flushed down with a pitcher of Tuborg draft beer. And they absolutely loved it.

Both the dads knew my parents so well that it was just like sitting with my own family members. They told me stories about my mom’s school days, my dad’s bachelor days, how they met each other, when they got married etc etc. I really had a great time sitting with the two wonderful dads and listening to them talk. What was even more fascinating was that they both knew my girlfriend’s parents extremely well too, and they started telling me stories about them also, while teasing me now and then.

I still can’t stop marveling at how so many of our previous generation knew almost everybody, whereas when it comes to our generation, we hardly know each other.

We soon parted ways, and with that ended my awesome family bonding weekend. This was definitely one of those weekends worth cherishing for a long long time.

Chp 372. This week in the BPL + Fantasy Football

2011-10-24T11:38:00.000+05:30

What a weekend huh? Manure got thrashed 6-1 at home, Chelsea lost 1-0 to QPR, Liverpool drew against Norwich, and Arsenal trashed the giant killer Stoke City (who drew against Manure, Chelsea & Spurs and even beat Liverpool & Bolton).

This was even bigger news for me at the fantasy football league I’m playing. Although I am still 8th rank in my league (the same as last week), I’ve come a long way. I started from 27th rank! Why? Simply because I hate Manure to the core and I vowed that I will reach top 10 without using a single Manure player. Now my aim is to reach top 5 without any manure players.

If you’re a fantasy league player, you’ll of course know that Manure players, especially Shrek, had been pouring in points after points every week. In spite of all that, I managed my team carefully every week, and I am in 8th position now. Most of the players above me are using manure players, so this week’s result brought me one more step closer to overtaking them.

This week I scored 46 points. I know, that’s not much, but due to many disappointing match results, others too didn’t score much either. Although I am still at the same place in my league, I moved up at the global leagues, India league, Gameweek 2 stats, and Overall.

My strategy:

This week, I took a big gamble and placed all my Man City players in the game. I mean, I could have played safe, but there was no point getting x points, and the people above me getting the same amount of points. We would all just be moving up by the same amount. My aim was to overtake them, so in order to do that, I needed to have players their players were paying against.

And yes, my gamble paid off. My biggest points this week came from my captain Aguero (12 points) and Silva (10 points) who both scored a goal each against Manure.

But I didn’t fare well with my other strikers. I got a disappointing 2 points from Suarez, and 5 points from Agbonlahor (who had an assist).

Newcastle versus Wigan, I knew who was going to win, so I placed my trusty Taylor duo in the game again. They both played their 90 minutes as expected, and I got 6 points each from both of them.

Bolton versus Sunderland, I placed my bets on Bolton, and put Cahill & Muamba in the game, while I made Larsson sit out. Bad choice. 1 point from Cahill (2 goals conceded) and 0 point from Muamba because he didn’t play (Ohhhh I am so transferring his fat ass this week), while Larrson could have at least given me 3 points had I played him.

My biggest dilemma this week was Swansea versus Wolves. Both teams are unpredictable and inconsistent. I had both Ward (Wolves) and Dyer (Swansea). It is always a bad idea to have two players from teams playing against each other (especially a defense + midfield combo) to play at the same time, but I didn’t have any other choice. Got 3 points from Dyer and 1 point from Ward.

Although my gamble with Manure paid off, my Chelsea players screwed me over. Ramires didn’t play, and Bosingwa gave me a freaking -3 due to his red card (but I couldn’t help chuckle at those players who must have used Drogba, especially if they have made him captain. His red card + captaincy would mean minus 6, bwahahaaa!)

Goalkeepers – I had a tough time deciding between Hart and SZCZ. In the end, I decided to stick to Arsenal loyalty and used SCZC. He gave me 2 points. I could have got 3 points had I used Hart, but that’s okay. Being an Arsenal fan, I am happy to have at least one Arsenal player in my team.

I used to have Vermaelen, Arteta, Mertesacker and Ramsey. I eventually had to transfer them due to injury and also because the others weren’t giving me any points. But I will definitely buy an Arsenal player/s again, once the team has settled down and the famous game dynamics and one-touch play of Arsenal is back in the game. (RVP is too bloody expensive so I can’t afford him anyway).

All in all, I think I am performing quite well so far, given the fact that this is the first time I am playing fantasy football in my life

My Team.

Cheers.

Chp 371. A True Story… of Love & Romance

2011-10-18T12:02:00.001+05:30

“Bawihi…” He softly whispered to her, as he pulled her hair back gently beneath the pale moonlight. She looked at him with her soft innocent eyes and parted her trembling lips… She sighed, “I’ll forever be yours… Bawiha.”

.............

The young couple had been in love since time immemorial. They could be you and me, for they represent every young Mizo guy and girl in Mizoram.

In our Mizo culture, unlike most other Indian cultures, being in a relationship at an early age is not only accepted, but sometimes encouraged by our parents too. It is perfectly normal for young boys to visit a young girl at her house and woo her. This concept is called “Nula rim” (Nula means a woman who is single, and rim means to court).

Traditionally, during the process of “rimming”, it is the duty of the girl to welcome the guy (who is sometimes accompanied by his wingman) to her home. She makes tea for her suitor and sits with him in the living room. Then they talk about different things, trying to see if they have anything in common or whether he can make her laugh with his corny jokes.

Sometimes, she gets multiple suitors coming from different places (and such women are called “nula luck”). In such a scenario, the second suitor usually leaves on seeing that somebody’s already beaten him to the house, but there are also incidents in which guys from different places do sit together, each one trying to impress the girl and outdo the others (pretty much like a Group Discussion round of an MBA admission process).

Meanwhile, her parents too do not get involved and while most parents move to the bedroom to give their daughter privacy with her suitor/s, there are also some who do stay within earshot of the conversation, spying and listening to make sure nothing hanky-panky is going on and that no lines are crossed.

The girl eventually ends up liking one of the boys, and they soon become a couple. He lovingly calls her “Bawihi”, and she returns that love by calling him “Bawiha”. The words bawiha and bawihi means “Loved one”. People in love show their affection to each other by uttering those words to each other.

However the concept of “bawihi” and “bawiha” is not something new in our Mizo society.

During the days of “Zawlbuk” (a dormitory right next to the Chieftain’s house, where all the young lads of a village would sleep together. Useful especially if warriors from different clans raided their village as all the young men could quickly assemble and fight back), there were times when the girlfriend of one of the young warriors would hide behind the bushes below the Zawlbuk and wait for everybody to sleep.

Then she would gently call out, “Bawiha…” in the middle of the night. Her lover would then secretly leave the Zawlbuk and whisper back, “Bawihi…” In the darkness of the night, they would keep signaling “bawiha, bawihi” to each other and move towards the sound until they had found each other.

Such was the sweetness and romance of bawiha and bawihi.

.............

At this point, my friend could not control himself anymore. He fell to the ground and laughed uncontrollably, tears gushing out from his eyes. And then taking a deep breath, he looked at me and asked, “You seriously wrote all that shit?”

I was as serious as hell. “Yeah… I mean that was just the gist of what I wrote. I ended up writing for around 7-8 pages, you know, so that I might get more marks.”

He laughed his ass out once again.

I was starting to get a bit irritated, and a bit worried too.

“What’s so funny? Did I not get my facts about our Mizo history right?” I asked him.

Finally, with a straight face, he said, “When they asked you to write an essay on the Bawih system in our Mizo society, they didn’t mean “bawiha”, “bawihi” and any of those romance crap. They meant “slave”. Hence you were supposed to write about the slavery system that prevailed in our Mizo society before it was finally abolished in 1914, how slavery worked, the two types of slaves, how slaves were treated etc…”

Pin drop silence.

“Oh…” was all that could come out of my mouth…

That was the first AND last time I ever decided to write the MCS (Mizoram Civil Service) exams. A True Story indeed.

Chp 370. Dream interpretation, anyone?

2011-10-12T12:17:00.004+05:30

Got this really crazy ass dream/nightmare last night. I for one, am not one of those bloggers who rant about their dreams… but this time, I just want to pour it out here because it was so realistic and… intriguing as hell.

The thing about dream is, no matter how realistic it feels then, by the time you sit in front of your computer, everything had become hazy and blurry. So when I woke up suddenly this morning at 4am, I immediately took my trusty Android and started writing down what I just experienced quickly in shorthand.

Now as I sit in office typing this, if you are the type of person who’s really into all this dream interpretation (and the paranormal), maybe you can explain the meaning of my dream…

In my dream, I was asked by Arsenal FC to play for the team since most of the players were injured . So there I was, playing my first match for Arsenal.

Ok, so far, I’m sure it doesn’t take a Jung or a Freud to deduce the meaning because after all, I am a hardcore fan of Arsenal.

Now the strange parts begin…

First of all, though I love Arsenal FC, when it comes to playing, I am more of a basketball player. I have indeed dreamt many times before about dunking over Yao Ming or Shaq, or scoring a buzzer-beater on game 7 of the Conference Finals. But last night was the first time I ever dreamt about playing football (as far as I can remember).

Secondly, yes, Arsenal is my favorite team, but any football fanatic knows Arsenal is performing extremely badly this season. We are close to the relegation zone due to the loss of important players, and the last minute players we bought don’t seem to be working out at all. So how come I’ve never dreamt about playing for Arsenal during our glory days. Why now?

Thirdly – this is the strange part – I scored four goals! We were playing against Newcastle United, and the full time score was 4-3. We won because of me! But what’s really strange was – all the four goals I scored were just very simple and ordinary. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and none of my finishings were awesome or outstanding… the ball slowly and meekly rolled into the goal, just inches beyond the goalkeeper’s reach.

Now this is my dream we’re talking about. How come I didn’t tackle through 4-5 defenders as Messi would or score a goal with an unbelievable back volley shot or even a long range goal from beyond the centerfield? Why such simplicity? Yes, when I dreamt of basketball, I was the superstar. We do the impossible in our dreams, right? …flying over people and having superhuman strength sometimes. But last night, everything seemed to be really humbled.

Fourthly – now comes the strangest part, the reason why I woke up sweating at 4 in the morning.

So there I was, with my Arsenal team mates, hugging and rejoicing. Arsene Wenger too shook my hand and said something to me in French. I nodded. After I took a shower, I quickly went online from my mobile phone, looking forward to what the press would be saying about me…

But… there was nothing! Goal.com and Arseblog.com hadn’t updated the match highlights yet. So I went to arsenal.com, and a short notice read: “Arsenal beat Newcastle 4-3!” But no details of the game were there.

So I went to misual.com, and even there, nobody was talking about the match or my four goals. I thought some of the people there would be talking about how an admin of the site scored 4 goals for Arsenal and that it was a proud day for every Mizos across the world. But NOTHING. Then I called up my friend Amos, another admin of misual.com and a hardcore Arsenal fan. I knew he would definitely be watching the match.

I asked him if he was watching the match and he said yes. So I excitedly asked him if he saw me, and he said his TV view had been zoomed out so he couldn’t make out who the players were or who scored the goals!

I screamed.

I hung up and went to google.com from my phone (damn, that visual is still SO clear in my head right now, as if it actually happened!). With trembling fingers, I typed, “Arsenal Kima”.

The only results I saw were of my blog posts where I have blogged about Arsenal.

Then I typed, “Arsenal Newcastle match Kima 4-3”

No result!

It was then that everything became more distorted and my whole world started spinning around, and I woke up sweating and breathing heavily (and a bit angry too). Even after I woke up, it took me quite some time to realize it was just a dream… but damn, it was so freaking real.

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Now comes the interpretation – what does the last part mean?

From my own deduction, it looks like I desperately want attention. Or is it that I merely want to be recognized for things I have done? Things that I deserve to be appreciated for, but sadly ignored and swept aside? Am I being suppressed? Or is it that I want something more out of a relationship or in my life or even in my job, but I’m not able to get more no matter how hard I keep squeezing? At the end of the day, yes, I know it was just a dream. But sometimes, it makes you wonder because some of the reasons I mentioned above may indeed be true.

Like I said before, I don’t blog about things like this… but this one… this one is different. Eerily speaking.

Chp 369. A visit to Mizoram University

2011-10-07T23:21:00.000+05:30

Notable poet and etymologist John Ciardi once said, “A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.” Whether that’s true or not, I did happen to visit our reputed Mizoram University during my short vacation in Mizoram.

You know you’re really old when you go to a University and all your friends over there are WORKING in the University, not studying.

The day started with me going to my friend OP’s place. From there, we took his bike instead of his car because of the rush hour traffic jam.

The road to MU was, as Chris Rhea crooned, The Road to Hell indeed. I got a sore ass by the time we reached MU and I wasn’t even in Prison picking up soap, if you know what I mean. Horrible the road was. Kinda shocked me as to how our Government could ignore such an important path.

At MU, I met my cousin and friends at the Bio-Tech department. Hung out with them for some time and I got to see all their researches and experiments. Later, we all moved to the MU Guest House where I met my friend Francis who’s the caretaker of that place. Other friends from the Education department too came and we all had lunch together. I met a few faculty members too.

One thing that definitely took me by surprise was the sheer size of the University. I mean… I wasn’t expecting it to be THAT vast. It took me almost half an hour just to travel from the Bio-Tech department to the Guest House. And the University is still expanding as I write this!

Francis took me for a short tour around the University Guest House, and by the time we were done, there was no time to meet my friends in the Administration section, Psychology department (U Baby) and English department (Cherrie)! It was already 5pm then. Closing time. Dayyymmmm!

Had I known it was going to be like that, I would have definitely planned it better. So I really felt bad telling my friends that I wouldn’t be able to meet them even though I was right there in the freaking University.

I did take a few photos and even a really good video from the “highest point” of MU – On top of a water tank!

On our way back, it rained like crazy. There was no way I was travelling back in a bike, but fortunately Francis was on his way to Aizawl for the weekend, so I hopped into his taxi. The road back was scary as shit, as we battled the heavy rain, thunder, lightning and landslides in an almost zero visibility mist while avoiding falling rocks, trees and boulders, but Francis assured me I found it scary only because it was my first time. Suddenly, I was filled with newfound respect for all those who journey that precarious road every day just to earn their living or learn something new.

All in all, I had a great time there, and I look forward to visiting the University again (but of course with much better planning next time).

Here are a few photos and video I took that day. Cheers!

[With my friends from misual.com]

[Funny thing. As we climbed up the “highest point”, water overflowed suddenly from the water tank above and drenched me completely!!!]

A 360 degree video view of Mizoram University from the “highest point”.

Chp 368. Contemporary Mizoram: My thoughts.

2011-09-28T21:17:00.000+05:30

My dream vacation in Mizoram is almost over now. I have spent a lot of time with dad too, and I don’t feel that guilty anymore leaving my family and heritage behind to earn my living thousands of miles away.

Being on a vacation in Mizoram is actually not that much of a vacation. In fact it is kinda like work. Apart from looking after dad and doing house chores, meeting up with friends (friends I grew up with, old school friends, online friends) is compulsory too. And I have already attended four funerals and there’s a wedding I have to go to tomorrow. Four Funerals and A Wedding indeed, unlike the popular movie.

To make this post brief, here are my thoughts on a few observations –

1. Cost of alcohol in Mizoram.

Yeah yeah, everybody knows alcohol can truly never be banned even if you’re living in a Total Prohibition state like Mizoram. We Mizos just love taking a sip from the forbidden cup, don’t we? The cost of illicit booze in Mizoram is around 500 bucks for regular brands like McDowell and Royal Stag (which shoots up to 1000 bucks during Xmas/New Year).

When you break the law by buying something illegal at such an outrageous price, sometimes the same booze that you get every day in Mumbai actually tastes better in Mizoram, at least psychologically, due to the forbidden apple syndrome. But this time, things are different. With the recent 60-70% hike in alcohol price in Mumbai, the cost of illegal booze in Mizoram and legal booze in Mumbai of the same brand are more or less the same now, if not even cheaper! Suddenly, all the fizz is gone.

2. Invoking God’s name in every Goddamn thing

I was listening to Pu Zoramthanga’s speech on Remna Ni (Martyr’s Day) a few days ago. I found it quite disgusting. Politics and policies is one thing, but unabashedly using God’s name to gain political mileage is lower than the lowest of all things low. It’s natural to criticize opposition party members. Hell, I’m even ok with all the mudslinging and backstabbing. But to say stuff like “The MNF are God’s chosen people”, and “To criticize the MNF is to criticize God. Any Mizo doing is an enemy of Christianity”, in front of a Christian majority state is downright shameful and nauseating.

Are we that naïve? When I discussed this with my friends in Mizoram, they said they are now used to such statements from politicians, regardless of which party they belong to, and not many people take them seriously. I seriously hope so! Doesn’t the Bible say, “Thou shalt not use the Lord’s name in vain”? We used to joke about how all politicians will go to Hell. Looking and what’s going on in Mizoram, do you still think it is a joke?

3. The Bastardization of Mizo language

Ctng cuan xom cy ly miy cyiy xxy ywh yyyyy. - If you’re not a Mizo, you won’t understand this. And if you’re a Mizo, you still probably won’t understand this. This is how the Mizo youth of today speak on Facebook and via sms. And strangely, they seem to understand each other. I thought I was the only one who despised this uncouth behavior, but upon reaching Mizoram, I found a lot of my friends here criticizing this “language” too.

Well frankly speaking, much as I hate people raping my mother-tongue, I think this is just the way the teens of today rebel. Comon, even when we were their age, we have all done something to rebel against society and be a little bit anarchic, right? I don’t think it is fair to moral police them and criticize them openly. If anybody speaks to me in that strange tongue, I just ignore them, plain and simple. They think they’re uber cool talking like that. I’m sure they’ll get over it one day, just like how we got over our bell-bottom pants and self-recorded tape cassette collections. Let them have fun. Yyych llych cuan myau byau cyau piau.

4. Traffic Jams in Aizawl

Maybe because I have read so much about the horrible traffic jams in Aizawl that when I finally got to see it, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Not at all. In fact I loved it! Compare this to Mumbai traffic jams and you will know what #FML really means. And in spite of the traffic jams in Aizawl, people still drive politely, giving way to other cars and pedestrians, with nobody honking their horns or fighting for road space. It’s beautiful.

And my friends in Chaltlang told me it takes them forever to reach Dawrpui due to the traffic jams. Urmmm… why don’t you just walk? From the time I arrived in Aizawl, I’ve been walking almost everywhere and its fun. You enjoy the breathtaking scenery, you bump into old friends and relatives, you move faster than the traffic, and it’s also a good exercise especially for people like me. And then my friends told me I find it fun only because I don’t live here and that I won’t be having this cheerful attitude if I was living in Aizawl. Hmmm… difficult to argue with that because I live in Mumbai. It’s like asking you if you were a dog, would you prefer rock music or hiphop? I’m not, so I won’t know.

5. Hanging out with my homies

Gone are the days of excitedly reaching home from the airport, spending some time with my family, and then visiting as many friends as I could that very night. Now I have to call up my friends first to see if they’re at home or free to entertain friends. Because most of them are now married, and many of them have kids too, so life is definitely different now. Even during daytime, all of them are working, so it’s very difficult to meet up with friends for lunch. Couple of years ago, all I had to do was send a short sms and my friends would be at the rendezvous point even before me.

I also attended my nephew’s birthday. My bro-in-law is a member of “Aizawl Thunders”, a Bullet-only biker gang. As expected, a lot of Thunders came for the birthday party, but what’s really funny was that, beneath all the leathers and modified bikes and long grungy hairs and machismo, they were just typical dads, running to their wives and kids whenever they called out their names, sometimes feeding them and other times changing their diapers. Lolz. But they’re a really funny bunch of people, hilarious and bright, and I look forward to spending time with the gang again.

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So this is just a short update from me. I have taken a lot of pictures, and I’ll post them once I reach Mumbai because the net connection at home is not very good. Cheers, I gotta sleep early because I have a wedding to attend tomorrow.

Chp 367. Of Mizoram weather & dad’s condition

2011-09-19T11:06:00.001+05:30

One week in Aizawl now, and it had been blistering hot, humid, sweaty, rainy, windy, misty, wet, damp and freaking cold. Yeah if you wanna experience what “extremes of climate” feels like, Delhi is nothing. Come to Mizoram! Lolz.

At least in Delhi, the change happens gradually. Over here, things go from “Hell, it’s hottt!” to “Fackk it’s colddd” overnight. The first two nights I was here, I couldn’t even sleep due to the heat. And since I lost all privileges to the master bedroom downstairs (which my sis had taken over from me), I am now sleeping in dad’s old study room. It’s either that, or sleeping upstairs comfortably in my dad’s bedroom, mom’s bedroom or my nieces’ bedroom, but that means I can’t come home late (8pm is late by Mizoram’s standard) as they’re already sleeping by then, or smell of booze in front of my nieces (not that I will be drinking because Mizoram is a dry state and alcohol is strictly prohibited. Haha.)

Also, mom doesn’t allow me to smoke upstairs because she finally managed to make dad quit smoking due to his medical condition (whenever I meet people in my locality, the first question they ask me is, “When did you come home?”, second question: “How’s your dad?” and third question: “Is he really still NOT smoking? Wow!”) and mom’s afraid dad will feel like smoking again if he sees me smoking.

By the way, I mentioned earlier that dad and mom sleep in different bedrooms. That’s not because of any marital issues, lolz. Dad sleeps in my old bedroom upstairs due to his medical condition, like the loo is closer and higher (taller) in the attached bathroom etc. and the view from the balcony of that room is awesome. He’s kinda bedridden for almost two years now and was admitted to a hospital a month ago, and he’s the main reason why I took this long vacation from work. He’s pushing 80, and sometimes need assistance with his daily chores. But his great sense of humor is still intact.

He watches TV from his bed the entire day (when he’s not sleeping), and guess what he likes watching? Korean movies dubbed in Mizo. Lolzzzz! There’s nothing cuter and sweeter than watching my Old Man deeply engrossed in a Korean chick flick. I fear to ask him if he even knows what’s going on, but the expression of satisfaction and contentment on his face reassures me that he’s truly enjoying what he’s watching.

After two nights of sweat and humidity, the next three days had been extremely cold. Mizoram is no stranger to bits and pieces of cyclonic winds lashing it mercilessly, with no warning in advance, and I was right in the middle of it.

When it rains heavily in Mumbai, we complain about waterlogged roads and vehicles splashing water on us. Hehe, come to Mizoram if you wanna face the real hardships of heavy rains. Rain is always accompanied by landslides over here. Since the entire state is located on mountains and gorges, every house is precariously built on mountain slopes and hillsides. That is why in our Mizo vocabulary, we have two words for neighbor – “Kawmchhak” is the neighbor who lives above you on the slope, and “Kawmthlang” is the neighbor below you on the slope. And during landslides, sometimes entire houses get washed down the slope. There had been rare occasions when such houses were still intact after such a near-death ordeal, and people would joke about how their kawmchhak friend is now their kawmthlang friend. Lolz.

Apart from the landslides, there is the mist that accompanies the rain. Yeah, if you go to Ooty, Kodaikanal, Munnar etc. for a weekend vacation, I know how much you appreciate the scenic mist-covered mountains and valleys. Such serene and tranquil beauty inspires countless number of amateur poets and bloggers, and it is the ideal destination for a romantic getaway.

From Thursday to Saturday, visibility in Aizawl was reduced to around 10 metres because of the perpetual mist. All we could see everywhere were just white translucent mists, as if one was trapped inside a cotton-candy machine. And because of that, everything inside the house was damp – the curtains, my leather boots, the sofa, everything. Trust me, mist is not that romantic!

Yesterday being a Sunday, suddenly everything was clear again! Neither rain nor mist played a spoilsport to the beautiful day. The chimes of church bells from every locality resonated throughout the silent valley in great unison, reminding me again that this was the Mizoram I had always missed.

Some of my childhood friends from my locality came over after morning Church session to pay a visit to my dad. Then my online friends from misual.com, a popular Mizo site I co-host, came in a large group and paid a visit to dad. After that, my old school mates from St. Thomas, Cal, came and paid a visit to dad too.

Basically, that’s what Sundays are for in Mizoram – Going to Church during Church time and visiting sick friends or sick family member of friends during Church breaks (There’s a morning, noon and night service on Sundays that most people attend).

I felt a bit helpless bombarding dad with all my friends because he kinda preferred to be left alone, but he was still as cordial as ever and greeted all my friends with the utmost courtesy. Then he asked them who their parents were and immediately told them about how he knew their father/mother and what they used to do when they were young etc. He spent a really good time with my friends.

And of course since at least 80% of my friends are married with kids, dad and my friends continuously made fun of me about still being single and that they should put out an advertisement on every local newspaper with the message: “Marry him and get a Bolero FREE!”

Grrrrr…

But then, this is what every 30-something Mizo working outside Mizoram who’s too career focused to think of anything else (like marriage) face whenever they go home - the dreaded “When the hell are you planning to get married?” question. So at least I know I am not alone in this. Haha. Cheers for now. Laterz.

Chp 366. Upgrading Samsung Android 2.1 to 2.3.3

2011-09-09T15:14:00.001+05:30

Just upgraded my Samsung Galaxy S I9000 from an outdated 2.1 to the latest 2.3.3! Actually, 2.3.4 is out but apparently it’s not available for India/Asia through Samsung (shitty) Kies yet, although you can upgrade to 2.3.4 using Odin etc.

Moving from 2.1 to 2.3.3 without even experiencing 2.2 is a mega jump in the Android Evolution! In Mizo, the appropriate term to use for this would be “Bawh Kân”.

I am quite a technogeek, but I am not THAT geeky enough to find joy in flashing ROMs, modifying Kernels etc at regular intervals, so I’ll just keep it simple in this post. The reason why I am posting this is to help anybody else who may have a problem upgrading their Android.

This post is about how I did it. But my method may not work for you, and I will not be able to tell you why it didn’t work for you. This is not a tech advice post or gyaan and it’s not meant for the experts out there. This is just a post for people like me who know a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

So yeah, a big WARNING in advance, for you may end up BRICKING your phone. If you really want to upgrade but you’re not that android-savvy, I suggest you find a friend who is an expert when it comes to this. I found mine – Lalremruata Chhangte (Chhanga). He guided me during this entire process through chat, and thanks to him, my phone is what it is today.

First of all, let me just state the obvious, that Samsung Kies is one of the crappiest software around. People at xda-developer forum too declared that whoever developed Kies should never be allowed to make softwares again. Haha.

You can always use other unofficial alternatives, but then, if you are not that tech-savvy there is always the danger of bricking your phone then. So for people like us, we have no other option but to use Kies.

So here’s what Lalremruata Chhangte told me to do.

1. Back up my contacts and messages

2. Root your phone

3. Download Titanium backup from Android Market

4. Back up all apps using Titanium

5. Upgrade using Kies

I don’t need to tell you how to back up your contacts and messages. You can do that using Kies, Google account and even your phone book has the option of exporting your contact list in .vcf format.

Regarding point 2, yes it is necessary to root your phone if you want to use Titanium backup software (available for free on the Android Market) as it requires superuser access. Here is how you root –

1. Download SuperOneClick v.2.1.1

2. Go to your phone “Applications/Development” and select USB Debugging

3. Connect phone to PC in debugging mode

4. Open SuperOneClick exe

5. Click on Root

6. Done, your phone is rooted and you now have Super User access

Once your phone has rebooted, go to Android Market and download/install Titanium backup. You can now open it due to SuperUser access. Click on “Batch” and then click “Run” for “Backup all user apps”. A new window will open with all your installed apps, and simply select all the apps and games you want to backup. I had around 350 apps I wanted to backup, so that took me around THREE hours to backup! I suggest you don’t do the same foolish thing, and only backup certain apps and games where you REALLY want to save your progress.

Also do NOT click “Run” for “Backup all system data”. If you are upgrading, you will get new system data and they WILL conflict with your backed-up system data.

Once all that is done, open Samsung Kies. Make sure the software is the latest version. Also, it takes a very long time to upgrade to a newer version, almost the same time as downloading the latest Kies version from Samsung site and installing it in a new system.

After that, uncheck usb debugging mode and connect your phone to PC again.

Now Kies will detect your firmware and notify you that there is a newer version. After that it is just a matter of clicking next, next, next etc. Kies didn’t upgrade me from 2.1 to 2.3 directly. It needed two steps, so first it upgraded me to 2.2.

Once the upgrading was completed, I disconnected and rebooted my phone. It took a long time to load, but my friend assured me that it was because the dalvik cache was regenerating.

Finally, I was on 2.2! Yay.

Next step – 2.3.3

Now, 2.3.3 was a l’il mother@#$@#%.

I followed the same method as above and connected my phone to my PC and opened Kies. It prompted me to upgrade to a newer version again, and I clicked next next next, and it started upgrading.

But THIS TIME, while upgrading, I kept getting the error message “Connection to device lost”!!! But my phone was freaking connected! I tried again and again for around 10 times, but kept getting the same error message.

So my friend and I googled and found out that it was a very COMMON Kies error (stupid Kies). I even downloaded Kies to two of my neighbor’s computers, but got the same freaking error message again and again.

Finally, he saw this forum and forwarded me the link - Galaxy S - problem installing android 2.3 via Kies. Over there, one user “factory resetted” his phone and tried again using Kies, and it finally worked.

So, since I had everything backed up, we decided to do this. Lalremruata told me an easy way to do this from boot menu –

1. Turn off phone

2. Press UP volume key + home + power keys together

3. Boot Menu loads

4. Five options appear. Select third – “Wipe data/factory reset”

5. Confirm (warning: This cannot be undone. You’ll also get 10 options for NO and 1 option for YES, just so you don’t do this by mistake, lolz)

After that my phone rebooted and I lost all my apps, games, phone contacts, messages etc (which was not a problem as they were all backed up) and only my system apps like camera, video player were on my phone. It’s like a brand new phone.

I connected my phone to Kies again. It started upgrading. And then it showed me the same freaking error message “Connection to device lost” AGAIN in the background, BUT WAIT, my phone nevertheless went ahead and upgraded!! Woohoooo!

I even went to the forum link above, took the effort to register, JUST to say thank you in that thread. See, I’m not a leecher! Lolz.

So I was on 2.3.3 finally! W00t!

But if you think that's the end of my fiery tale, you’re mistaken.

Upgrading my phone to 2.3.3 automatically UNROOTED it. But I needed my phone to be in ROOT mode if I wanted to access Titanium Backup in order to retrieve all my apps data.

And here was the final problem – SuperOneClick software I mentioned earlier, isn’t compatible with 2.3.3 firmware! So I couldn’t root it using the method I had written above.

Again, Lalremruata did some research and finally told me to flash my ROM using Odin, as he advised me not to use GingerBreak because it could brick my phone due to various versions. One wrong Gingerbreak on a different firmware and its goodbye phone.

He sent me this extremely helpful link - [CF-Root 4.1]

The steps are given there clearly too –

Follow these instructions to the letter. Do not touch any buttons or checkboxes that are not listed below!

1. Unzip the attached CF-Root-xxx-vX.X.zip

2. (USB) Disconnect your phone from your computer

3. Start ODIN

4. Click the PDA button, and select CF-Root-xxx-vX.X.tar

5. Put your phone in download mode

6. (USB) Connect the phone to your computer

7. Make sure repartition is NOT checked

8. Click the START button

9. Wait for the phone to reboot

10. Done (if it took you more than 30 seconds, you need practice!)

He also sent me the .tar file (mentioned in point 1 and 4 above) that I should use for this operation.

To keep your phone in “Download mode” –

1. Switch your phone off

2. Now Press and HOLD the following Keys in the same order: First Volume Down, Second Home Key, and Lastly the Power Button

3. Keep the Buttons Held until you see the phone Light up, then Let go off the power button, but keep the Volume and Home Keys Pressed

4. Once you see a yellow Droid digging and the Text "DO NOT SWITCH OFF THE TARGET", Let go off all the buttons.

I followed all the steps above and successfully flashed my ROM using ODIN.

I rebooted.

I ended up getting SOFT-BRICKED! Lolz.

A red fish (piranha?) kept blinking on my screen and my phone refused to start up. Haha. I wasn’t able to go to boot menu either.

Again, Lalremruata browsed different forums and finally found another person who had faced the same problem I was facing. And the fact that that victim was also from India made me feel much better, as firmwares are also region specific.

That person finally managed to solve his problem, and Lalremruata sent me the same .tar file that person had used to resolve this issue.

Using that new .tar file, again I followed the steps mentioned above, and FINALLY it was a grand success. My phone loaded and it was perfectly rooted.

I accessed Titanium backup immediately and retrieved my apps.

So now, I am a happy man! :)

This is how I upgraded my Android OS. If I was an iPhone user, all I had to do was connect my phone to iTunes, click a button, and it’s done. Lolz. Yeah yeah, I am a huge iPhone basher, but regarding this particular incident, I must praise iPhone, like it or not.

A big thanks to Lalremruata once again! Cheers! \m/

Chp 365. New Blogger Interface: Posting Tips

2011-09-06T13:16:00.000+05:30

blogger.com has finally changed its interface. Lolz. In my 8 years as a blogger, they’ve made a change only once, and that time too it was more about template design and features. This time, it looks like they have revamped the entire backend UI.

Frankly speaking, it looks more like a WordPress backend now, and navigation is much smoother and slicker than before. Monitoring your blog visitors is also much easier now with a built-in analytics report right on the dashboard itself.

I haven’t had the time to explore much, but from my first few impressions, I’d give blogger a thumbs up (seriously, it’s about time!) and inserting images seems to be just a matter of copy-pasting too.

However, there is one flaw I noticed immediately, and it’s about the new post editor.

Again, this post is meant only for those few people (like me) who still like to write their post first on a Microsoft Word document before copy-pasting it to the post editor. I guess we prefer MS Word because we are too lazy and the auto-correct feature seems to solve a lot of problems for us. Lolz.

A year ago, I wrote about Five important blogging tips for those who use MS Word on blogger.com. Now that the interface and CMS editor have changed, I guess those tips don’t mean much.

In this new blogger post editor, it is no longer possible to copy-paste your article from a Word doc to the “COMPOSE” or the “HTML” section. I mean, it is of course possible to do that, but if you do it, your entire formatting (paragraph, alignment, line breaks etc) will now go haywire.

In the previous blogger version, I advised you all not to paste your word document article in the HTML section and that you should paste it in the COMPOSE section only, right? And once you did that, you could click HTML and everything would still be formatted the way you wanted it.

In this new version, if you paste anything in the HTML section first, you will lose all paragraph and line breaks!

And if you paste it first in the COMPOSE section…

…and then click HTML to format your post, you will now unfortunately get this sh*t.

Yup, blogger apocalypse!

But don’t get scared, I know a way to prevent this. I am familiar with this type of display result as Posterous is having this exact same CMS editor feature! Your entire post in posterous will go for a toss if you copy paste the content from a Word file.

One simple solution to this is – REMOVE MS Word formatting.

You can easily do this by using a TEXT document (.txt extension). Once you’re done writing your blog article on an MS Word document, simply copy-paste the content into a text file, with the exact line break and paragraph spacing that you want. Once you do that, again copy the content from the text file and paste it now in the new blogger editor under COMPOSE section.

Thadaaa! Problem solved.

Your post will be formatted exactly the way you wanted it to be.

And even if you click HTML on the editor after pasting it in the COMPOSE section from the text document, you will get this -

See how clean the codes are now! All those unnecessary and irritating MS Word related codes are gone, and this section now consists of just the basic (and proper) HTML codes which you can easily edit if you are even a little bit html-savvy.

If you are really interested in seeing the difference between pasting your blog article from an MS Word directly, and from a text document directly, here are the two results of this very same post –

From MS Word document to COMPOSE section – eww!

From text document to COMPOSE section – wow!

Of course most people do write their blog posts directly on the blogger editor directly, so I guess this post will not mean anything to such people. But to all those who use MS Word docs to write your blog post, this is how you can easily solve your formatting problems with the new blogger interface.

I don’t know about you, but me, I am kinda like an OCD patient when it comes to webpage layout and content uniformity. I die slowly every time I see an ugly blog with unequal and varying font sizes, spacings and colors randomly placed here and there (unless it is done purposely with an artistic direction).

Hope this helps. If you have a better solution to this or any other tips regarding the new blogger interface, please feel free to share here.

Cheers.

Chp 364. Staying Positive, Staying Happy

2011-09-02T20:15:00.000+05:30

So Mumbai is still under heavy assault by the rains and the streets are waterlogged most of the time. People who rejoiced on twitter when the first drop of rain fell, are now perpetually cursing this hydraulic damnation.

But if you try to look at it in a positive way, trust me, you will have no resentment towards the rains. Being positive not only makes you happier, you will also end up having a great day. Nobody likes being in the company of a grumpy person forever complaining every damn time about every damn thing.

Renowned French writer and philosopher Voltaire once said, “Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”

The worst thing about travelling during the rains is when other vehicles drive past you and splash water all over you. FML right? Mumbai is infamous for its pot holes during the rainy season. And with great pot hole comes great drenching.

But instead of cursing at the driver every time you get splashed on, how about changing your attitude? The next time a passing vehicle splashes water on you, try laughing! And believe me, suddenly, everything will become so much fun and cheerful! Think of how much fun you used to have playing in the rain (against your parent’s wish) when you were a child? Reminisce those memories and wallow in nostalgia. The next time water gushes into your auto like a tsunami, scream out, “Woohoooooo!” \m/

Because this is the bloody monsoon season, and if you are so adamant about not getting wet, maybe you shouldn’t step out at all and hibernate like the good person you are. But if you HAVE to step out, then by all means, expect to get wet. And when you do get wet, having a positive thought will definitely make the shitty day feel better for you.

Calling the son-of-a-bitch who splashed water on you a jerk may give you momentary satisfaction, but it will still make you bitter and even spoil your mood the entire day. Instead of showing him the middle finger, grin and show him the “sign of the devil” with your fingers because that was “absolutely rocking”. Imagine you’re at Water Kingdom or some other Water themed amusement park and you were sliding down a monster slide!

Of course having this positive thought can apply only if you are going home (or you have spare clothes in office). One time I was in an auto when a vehicle zoomed past us and splashed water on us the size of a mini tidal wave, soaking us completely. The auto driver started abusing the driver’s mother, and I reassuringly told him to cool down and cheer up. And then he told me that I could easily change into dry clothes once I reach home, whereas he had be in those dripping wet khaki uniform the entire day. After that conversation, I am no longer provoked when many autos refuse to ply during this rainy season.

Another time, I was in an auto, and this time my auto driver was the perpetuator. He was driving extremely fast, splashing water on bystanders and other autos that were moving slowly. When I asked him why he was doing that, he told me it was a case of either splash or be splashed. If he slowed down, other vehicles will splash water on us. Hmmm… food for thought indeed.

It’s kinda like one of those B-grade slasher movies or an episode from Criminal Minds, you know, where a psycho kidnaps four hot chicks and locks them up in a dungeon, with the condition that if they fight among themselves and kill anyone, the remaining three will be released. Now all four can cooperate and not fight with each other, but at the same time, they have to trust each another and make sure none of them do anything stupid.

Likewise, we can all trust each other and drive slowly so that nobody gets splashed on, but then, that is nothing but a utopian dream. There is bound to be one jerk driving fast because he is a jerk, or a case of real emergency where somebody’s driving fast in order to reach the airport or hospital in time.

Hence, it is really not possible to have something like that. So, just expect to be splashed on and get wet during this raining season. Instead of complaining about it, if you can meet it with a positive thought, trust me, that will definitely make your day much better!

So enjoy the splash! Cheers.

Ending this post with YET another RAGE COMIC strip I made. I seriously think I’m gonna start making a rage comic strip for every new post from now onwards!

Chp 363. Sunday Bloody Sunday: 8-2 defeat.

2011-08-29T11:40:00.002+05:30

I usually leave for work around 9-10 am. Today, I left for work at 6:30 am, surprising not just my apartment watchman but our office watchman and office-boys as well. Why so early? Because I just couldn’t sleep anymore.

Yeah we all know about the devastating sports news – Manure thrashed Arsenal 8-2. That’s why sleep eluded me. I kept going to our Arsenal discussion forums, and I kept seeing other gooners posting messages at 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning, 5 in the morning, complaining about not being able to sleep too. I’m sure every gooner worldwide went through the same phase.

The last time Arsenal conceded 8 goals was in 1896. Of course everybody knows the Arsenal team that played last night was an extremely weakened side, with 3 main players sold recently, and eight main players missing the match due to injury or suspension. Rumor has it that two Arsenal fans who came to watch the match were also pulled off from the stands and forced to play by Wenger

But nobody’s going to remember last night as a weakened Arsenal side losing 8-2 to Manure. This will go down history as Arsenal losing 8-2. Nobody gives a shit about how strong or weak a team was or whether there were controversial calls by the ref or not. In the end, people remember just the score line, and that’s what matters the most.

We usually have our injury and “not enough players” problem towards the end of the season for the past 6 years. This time, it’s right from the very beginning. And throughout the world, I’m sure many gooners are frustrated with Wenger’s policy of not splurging big money to buy experienced players. And this time, it’s not even as if we don’t have any money!

In fact, the sale of Nasri now puts Arsenal 19th in the list of Premiere League Clubs with the highest net spending, and the current net spending of Arsenal is actually NEGATIVE!

[Source]

Yeah, financially, Arsenal FC is a very healthy club. But what’s the point when it is not doing well on the pitch?

And with a net spending difference of a whooping Rs 13,34,17,26,508/- !!!! between Manure and Arsenal, Manure was able to beat us by this much ONLY ONCE so far? Lolz, poor Manures. Just imagine if we start spending like everybody else (considering we have that much to spend). It would be the days of the Invincibles again.

In a way, I am glad this thrashing came just days before the transfer window closes. Now Wenger is under pressure not just from the fans but from the board as well to buy some #$%#$^ experienced player(s). All the top teams not only have a formidable starting 11, but a very impressive bench as well. We on the other hand are struggling with the quality of our first eleven itself!

When Ashley Cole left Arsenal for money, we called him Ca$hley. When Adebayor left for more money, we called him Moneybayor. But at the end of the day, if you really think about it, most of us do the same too – we tend to shift jobs if a competitor is offering us more money. To us, football is a passion, but to these players, it is after all work. That’s what we often fail to remember. As Wenger stated, yeah, most of these players are overpriced, but teams that are overpaying them are at least getting something, somewhere. If you can’t beat them, join them?

I can already picture every Arsenal fan screaming out “SPEND SOME F*CKING MONEY” again, and let’s see what Wenger has in store for us. Until then, I will still vehemently say, “In Wenger I trust”.

Some manure friends of mine are asking me to burn my Arsenal jersey because this defeat is a humiliation. Lolz manure fans! So that means if manure loses, they will immediately burn their manure jersey and switch loyalty to another winning team? Typical manure fans. Remember what I said in my previous post about Glory Chasers? In fact, I just realized, their anthem sounds a bit like “Glory chaser, Glory chaser Man United!!!” Haha.

I’m so not burning my jersey. In fact this is me proudly wearing our jersey to work TODAY. I am saddened by the defeat but I am not ashamed of my Club.

So yeah, fuck 8-2. Gooner 4 Life.

Ending this post with this amazing video of Arsenal fans singing in support of the team after the match despite the 8-2 defeat. Makes me proud to be a gooner.

Chp 362. Of Adulthood and Online gaming

2011-08-25T15:26:00.003+05:30

HAHAHAAA!!! I still can’t stop laughing at The Oatmeal’s latest update – A comic strip of what it’s like to play online games as a grownup. I can sooo relate to this, and you really have to check it out!

[Click on pic to view complete comic strip]

Lolz. So true!

Even till today I just can’t get over gaming. I love gaming – computer gaming, mobile gaming, online gaming, you name it. But I did stop describing myself as a “hardcore gamer” because these days, any schmuck with an iPhone playing “Angry Birds” describes himself as a hardcore gamer too.

A few years ago, I was a part of a historic team that dominated a major World of the popular browser MMORPG TribalWars. We battled out day in and night out, regrouping whenever it was necessary and counter attacking with merciless destruction. Within our tribe, we all had our ranks & roles & duties to perform, and we played them out to perfection. But at our private discussion forum, guess who stood out?

Lolz. Yeah, I know how I look like to many of you. Don’t say the P word! Haha.

When it comes to games like AOE, Warcraft, Command & Conquer etc, I actually used to go 2-3 straight days without even sleeping because I couldn’t do anything else until I had completed the entire built-in campaign!

And now it’s the age of mobile phone gaming. Contract Killer, Inotia3, Zenonia3, My Country, Free Townsmen 6, Myth Defense, these are just some of the many games I am currently hooked to. And most of these games are MMORPG! Gone are the days when you interact and play with different players across the globe using a bulky computer and modem connection. Now you can easily do all that from your mobile phone even while sitting in the loo. And with mobile phones coming out with dual core processors and more features, the future is extremely bright for us gaming enthusiasts.

Taking all these into consideration, when exactly is someone “too old to play online games”?

In my defense, let me just tell you that we never had online games when I was a kid. We didn’t even know what internet meant back then. So there is no question of outgrowing online gaming, because we basically never had them while growing up!

Over here in India, during the late 80s, gaming meant playing Space Invaders, Pac Man and Pong on my Atari console.

Then during the early 90s, gaming was about playing 8-bit games like Contra, Super Mario bros, Donkey Kong, Double Dragon, etc. Do you remember any of these?

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but here in India it was Sega who came out with the first 16 bit console, and I literally cried in sheer joy when my dad bought me one even though I already had an Atari and Nintendo system. Yeah, I was really pampered then, lolz.

Ah ohhhh let’s not forget about the ADAPTER! Lolz. A device that lets you play Nintendo cartridges on a Sega console, and Sega cartridges on a Nintendo console! My dad’s friend in Cal managed to get one for me, and I was one of the few kids in Mizoram who had it back then, and the news spread like wildfire and many young boys of my age who I didn’t even know used to come to my house everyday to check out this amazing “technological wonder”!

The late 90s saw computer games taking over, and we were hooked to Dave, Prince of Persia, Doom etc. Those were the days when hard disk drives were 2GB and carrying a large 8 inch floppy disk was considered hip!

…until the 3½ inch version overtook the market later

Then the computer games revolution happened and I will not talk about those games because there are just too damn many to mention!!

What I want to say is, even though I’ve been playing games all my life, online games where you interact with real people across the globe are different. It brings in a new level of gaming experience whether you’ve been playing games right from childhood or not. You can now do things that were once deemed impossible.

Hence, once again, this is something that just cannot be outgrown because it is an entirely new phenomenon! To outgrow something, you need to be doing it for quite some time first. Therefore it is practically not possible to outgrow online gaming. There, I’ve said it. I rest my case.

And oh, one last parting shot – The average age of online gamers is 34.

Chp 361. Football Fans Mentality and Fans Rivalry

2011-08-19T21:16:00.004+05:30

Ah! The new EPL season has started! Time to start blogging about Arsenal games again, lolz. However, this is not one of those posts. I just want to say something I’ve been observing for a very long time now.

This is probably the first time I’m writing a football post and not thrashing ~~Manure~~ Manchester United. In fact, this is definitely the first time I’m going to write something positive about ManUtd fans here on my blog.

Shocked? Surprised? No you’re not dreaming, and no, my blogger account has not been hacked.

Being a hardcore Gunners fan here in India, things may be a bit different from the Gooners in UK, especially those in London. Over there, Arsenal’s main nemesis in terms of fan rivalry are definitely Spurs and there is a long history of enmity and bad blood between the two groups.

However, here in India, our main rivals are ManUtd fans. For the love of Lucifer, we hate each other like Hell. We’re like fire and ice, locked in a steel cage with rabid dogs chained at all four corners.

Even when it comes to other top rivals like Chelsea, Liverpool etc, if ManUtd is playing against such teams, we always support the other team. I’ve been supporting Arsenal for around 15 years now, and all these years, all I ever see is how much Arsenal and ManUtd fans hate each other.

I’m a member of AMSC (Arsenal Mumbai Supporters Club) which is an OFFICIALLY recognized fan club of Arsenal FC. And I won’t be wrong to state that the most hated club and fan of every AMSC member is definitely ManUtd.

I still remember that fateful night last year when we went for the Carling Cup final screening (and lost), where almost 150 Gooners turned up. Before the match started, there was an ad about an upcoming match promotion. At first Chelsea players appeared on the screen. Immediately everybody started booing and screaming “F*ck you Chelseaaaa”… and then the opponents appeared. It was ManUtd! Suddenly everybody started screaming, “Comonnn Chelseaaa!! We love you Chelsea!!!” Lolzzz.

Some of my Mizo Gooner friends have also formed the Arsenal Mizoram Supporters Club and have currently petitioned to Arsenal FC for an official recognition. They boast of a strong membership support of around 100 members in Mizoram alone, and I sincerely hope they do get the official recognition from Arsenal FC very soon.

Even among them, mention ManUtd and it will probably mean war. That’s how much bad blood there is between the two fans.

Now what I want to say in this post is – yes, when there is team rivalry, there is bound to be fan rivalry. We all swear by our teams. But one thing I have noticed many Gooners call ManUtd fans is “Glory Chasers”.

“Glory chaser” here is actually a negative term which means that a person will do anything to be in a winning team (as a fan) without even having any real spirit or passion about the game. Such people don’t even understand the game sometimes, and may not even know what is happening in the football world but act like a hardcore ManUtd fan just because the team is winning and he/she thinks people regard them as hip for this.

Now, football banter is nothing new. In fact, that’s a part of football. I will definitely gloat in front of my ManUtd friends and irritate them the entire day if Arsenal beat ManUtd. Likewise they too will do the same to me if Arsenal loses to ManUtd. Again, all that is normal and I am ok with it.

But what pisses me off is when people who are not even crazy about the game act as if they are suddenly a hardcore ManUtd fan and start annoying Arsenal fans. And this holds true for any football fan, irrespective of whether the person they're annoying is a fan of Arsenal, Liverpool, Bolton, Fulham etc.

Arguing with a hardcore fan of a rival team can often be heated, but at least it makes sense as we both know our shit – we know our players, our team, our history and our game. But arguing with a wannabe fan is perhaps the most frustrating and painful ordeal in this world. After Arsenal went trophyless for the sixth consecutive time last season, this irritating little fuck of a self acclaimed ManUtd fan came up to me and said

“Haha… So you just went six consecutive years without a trophy since the last time you won a cup!”

He probably read that in the papers or internet. I don’t know why I even bothered to reply, but I said nonchalantly –

“Do you know there were times when you went more than 30 years without any trophy?”

Any hardcore ManUtd fan would say stuff like, "That is old history while this is recent history", or some shit like that and argue about how Arsenal too had gone many years without any trophy before… But nooo this little wannabe prick of a ManUtd fan had the audacity to reply –

“Haha don’t lie okay. Manchester United has been winning almost every year since they were formed. Don’t spread dirty lies just to make yourself feel better. Look at how strong we are - we have Rooney, Ronaldo, Giggs…”

Arrrghhhh… Ronaldo!!??? Thank God he didn’t say Beckham. I really really really wanted to slam dunk my monitor onto his puny head right then and tear through his guts and brains with my bare hands. That’s what you get for arguing with a wannabe fan who will probably have no idea who most of the starting 11 of ManUtd are or what an offside means, and yet goes around acting like a hardcore fan. Fucking poser.

And this is exactly one of the main reasons why Gooners hate ManUtd fans so much. Too many posers and wannabes

But at the same time, it would be wrong to say they are all posers. I have many genuine ManUtd friends, and the fights I have with them are the ones I enjoy the most, no matter how fierce it may get, because at the end of the day, we all share one thing in common – LOVE FOR THE GAME.

The reason why ManUtd has so many poser fans is because of their recent success in the past few years. Everybody wants to be in the “in” crowd. If Arsenal has been successful the past few years, I’m sure even we will have a lot of poser fans too. Thank God for that.

And that is exactly why a part of me is not that disappointed about not winning anything, at least from a fan’s perspective. Because if I see another Arsenal fan, then we know immediately that both of us are hardcore fans because at this stage, no poser would wanna be an Arsenal fan. They go only for the glory. Hence, this is like a filtering mechanism, and for the love of God, I am thoroughly enjoying this.

In a strange way, it makes me bond deeper with other Gooners because we are all true fans.

I’m ending this post with my first ever 9gag style comic strip using popular face memes (Me gusta, forever alone, etc). If you frequent 9gag.com or reddit boards, you will understand the facial expressions I’ve used here. Even if you don’t, I think you’ll still find it funny :)

Friday Cheers!

Chp 360. Mob Mentality

2011-08-12T12:47:00.002+05:30

These past few days, I’m sure many of you are also talking about the Tottenham riot, which started after an alleged gangster was fatally shot by the police. Every day, all we saw in the papers and news channels were about the mass looting & arson.

Anyway, I’m not writing about the looting that’s taking place in London or in the past at other places like New Orleans (after Hurricane Katrina), Haiti (after the earthquake), Vancouver (after Canucks lost in the Stanley’s Cup), or even the looting that DIDN’T happen in Japan (after the terrible tsunami tragedy). There are many discussion forums and websites where people can write their opinionated thoughts about such incidents where you’ll get the usual dosage of online commentators – a potpourri of racist comments, smart comments, stupid comments, insightful comments, biased comments, troll comments and completely unrelated comments.

However, this post is not about judging other people who are at a different location going through something we’re not. Instead, this post is about you and me. Something that we may have experienced many times unknowingly.

First of all, mob mentality is nothing but an unconstitutional (and usually violent) version of herd mentality.

Yeah, we’ve all been there, if you really think about it.

One clear example when most of us experience this everyday would be when you’re on the road. Picture a busy traffic signal at a crossroad (where there are no cops). Vehicles stopping at the red signal are waiting for it to turn green, while a few vehicles are moving across in front of them because their signal is green.

Observe carefully and you will see that most of the vehicles on the red signal are revving up slowly, moving inch by inch forward. And then suddenly one or two vehicles (usually a two-wheeler or an auto) jumps the red signal when he sees the chance, hence blocking those vehicles that have the green signal. The moment this happens, other vehicles on the red signal lane join in.

Now they know that this is a group effort. If it was some lone vehicle breaking the law, the vehicles coming on the green light may not even stop. But when a large number of vehicles break the rules simultaneously, they have the power.

Even if you abuse the drivers who are blocking your path, they will just shrug their shoulders and point at the vehicles in front of them, as if to say they too are doing it so you must abuse them too, or that they are simply going with the flow.

And here’s the irony. Sometimes if you don’t want to join the vehicles jumping the red signal and decide to wait for the signal to turn green, other vehicles behind you actually honk their horns and abuse you! Thomas Fuller was right when he said, “The mob has many heads, but no brains.”

Being in a large group where everybody has the same agenda gives you more confidence, even if you don’t know the other members in your group.

Take another road example. This time you are a pedestrian. You have to cross a busy road where vehicles are speeding and not stopping for anybody. Imagine you are not allowed to cross that road and there’s an underground/overhead pedestrian crossing nearby but you are too lazy to take that extra effort to climb up and down. If you are alone, you know how hard it is to cross that road right? But then, if you are in a large group where everybody wants to get to the other side, then crossing that busy road suddenly becomes so easy. All of you slowly inch forward and vehicles seeing the large group of people automatically slow down.

That’s the power of a large group. Even if you are all breaking the law, you know you are in a large group so chances of something happening to you are reduced. That’s how mobs are created. Samuel Johnson once said, “Get together a hundred or two men, however sensible they may be, and you are very likely to have a mob”. True indeed.

Is it from the movie Gladiator or the HBO original series “ROME” that someone said, “Control the mob, and you control Rome”?

Even in Mizoram just last year, did we not see the fury of the mob when a child rapist and murderer was caught? The police tried their best to control the mob, but they were no match for them and the rapist slash murderer died violently in the hands of the people.

But at least mass looting like what took place in London, Vancouver etc will never take place in Mizoram, because after all, Mizoram is known as a place where “everybody knows everybody” types, so if any group of people try to loot a store, the store owner will probably recognize them!

Just imagine a group of disgruntled youth (hipsters) trying their best to look all anarchist and all, charge into a shop clutching chains and machetes. The store owner looks at the ringleader-

“Oh, Sanga, how are you? How’s your dad doing these days?”

“urrmmm… fine, Pu Thiang, thanx and I hope all is well with your family?” (frantically whispers to his gang – “Not this one. Next shop. Next shop.”)

And as they all meekly leave – “Are you leaving so soon? You sure you don’t want tea?”

“Errr… no thanks Pu Thiang.”

“Oh you’re going to the next shop? Good. You will not believe Pi Chhingi has opened up there! Remember her? I think she was your primary school teacher?”

“F$%^%$” (whispers to his cronies – “think it’s better if we all just go home”)

Ahh… the beauty of Mizoram :)

I’ll end this post with a prolific quote by D.H. Lawrence:

”Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.”

Amen to that.

Friday Cheers, and Happy Independence Day in advance!

Chp 359. Hard Disk not detected by DVD Player

2011-07-29T13:55:00.004+05:30

Sorry for the lame post title, but I have to use this for SEO’s sake. Yup, this week’s post is a little bit technical, and I am doing this so as to help others who may have the same problem – Why is your DVD Player usb slot not detecting your portable hard drive?

First of all, the main reason why I am writing this post is that, problems like this are rare. Very few people (like me) still watch movies on their DVD Players these days. It’s all computer this and computer that, so if you try to google for a solution, most of the search results will be quite irrelevant.

I went through many tech forums and even mentioned my problems there, but the replies were all unhelpful. Most of them told me, “Why don’t you just watch it on your PC?”

Uh… what if I don’t have a computer or don’t want to buy one? What if I am content watching movies using my plain old DVD Player and TV, the old fashion way?

So after a lot of trial and error, I finally found a way to solve this problem.

These days, all new DVD Players come with a usb slot. Gone are the days of limiting your entertainment to just CDs or DVDs on your DVD Player. We can just take our pen-drive, copy the movie file we want, insert the pen drive in the DVD Player usb slot, and enjoy the movie.

After that comes the next level – Instead of inserting my 4GB or 8GB pen drive, what if I insert my portable 500GB hard drive? Will that work too? And won’t that be awesome?

And so, a lot of us tried, and the DVD player of course couldn’t detect the hard drive.

“DEVICE NOT SUPPORTED” the DVD Player proudly displayed.

Many so called “experts” on numerous Tech forums then said that the DVD Player didn’t detect the 500 GB portable hard drive because it couldn’t support such a huge data storage size, it was not built that way, blah blah blah…

BOLLOCKS!

Last night, I finally got my plain ol simple DVD Player to detect my 1TB portable hard drive! Yeah, one freaking TB, baby. 1000 gig of Movies, TV shows, Music etc. Suck on that.

So here’s how you should do it.

First of all, let me just briefly explain the basic – Your hard drive can be formatted in either FATxx (FAT16, FAT 32 etc) or NTFS. NTFS is a more popular file system, and considered to be safer, faster and more space efficient.

Most hard drives come pre-formatted in NTFS, while most pen drives are formatted in FAT32. In FAT32, you cannot save a single file that is bigger than 4GB. You can do that in NTFS, but it has many compatibility issues with third party devices.

And that is where the PROBLEM lies.

Your DVD Player cannot detect your portable hard drive simply because it is in NTFS format. You will find the same problem with a car music player that has a usb slot, your PSP etc.

The simple solution to this is to format your drive and convert it to FAT32.

Of course this is not so simple as I learnt recently.

First of all, formatting a 1TB hard drive using command prompt is apparently not possible. I googled and found the correct cmd command – Suppose the drive you want to format and convert is G:

Then type: convert G: /fs: FAT32

It will start converting. Slowly. Very slowly. 10%. 40%. 98%... Since it was converting a 1TB drive, it took nearly 3 hours to complete!

And finally when it’s done, *drumroll* I got the message that the drive could not be converted to FAT32 because it is too big! Aaargghhh…

Next, I tried formatting it directly, like how most of us would format pen drives – Right click on the drive letter, and select “Format”.

The problem is, Windows does not support formatting a hard drive of more than 32GB size to FAT32 format! And so, while you have the option of selecting either FAT32 or NTFS while formatting a pen drive, if you do the same with a hard drive that is greater than 32 GB, you will not get this option. Instead, there is just NTFS and a vague FATxx option! (See screenshot below)

So one of my colleagues took my 1 TB hard disk, formatted it in NTFS using Windows, and then converted it to FAT32 using a Linux system.

mkfs.vfat /dev/hd7

In just a matter of seconds, my 1TB drive was converted to FAT32! Whoah!

So I rushed home all excited and all… connected my newly FAT32 formatted 1TB drive to my DVD Player… and bloody hell got the same freaking message that the device is not supported again! Aaaarghh!

So yesterday, for the last time, I googled again, trying to be more specific. I did come across some discussions saying that Linux formatted FAT32 drives sometimes don’t work well on third party devices. Which didn’t surprise me much because it took just 4-5 seconds to convert the 1TB drive. Lolz. Linux systems are not exactly my area of expertise, so I browsed for some more time and took another advice – Use softwares like Partition Magic to format it in FAT32.

I found the perfect software – Aomei Partition Assistant. Using this, I could format up to 2TB partition in FAT32! Me Gusta!

There’s a freeware version from the link mentioned above. Less than 3MB file, the software is very easy to use. I formatted my 1 TB drive to FAT32 in 5-10 minutes.

And FINALLYYYYY my DVD Player can now detect my 1TB hard drive. W00t!!

Imagine all the movies and TV series I can fit into this and easily watch via my DVD Player and TV. And 1 TB portable hard drives now come cheaper than 5 grand, so it is indeed a good investment.

Of course there are many disadvantages to having a FAT32 drive, like you cannot save a file that is bigger than 4GB. So if you are a gamer, you will come across many .iso files that are bigger than 8GB. Also, many of these HD movies are more than 4GB per file.

So in the end, it’s your call. Meanwhile, if you just want your DVD Player to detect your portable hard disk, whether it is 250GB or 500GB or 1TB or 2TB, it can be easily done the way I’ve mentioned above. Don’t let any so called tech expert tell you that it cannot be done because of the file size limitation.

Friday cheers!

Edit: WARNING!!! Please BACK-UP your files before you format! :D I was working on a new 1TB hard drive above so I didn’t have any data on it, but if you are doing it to your existing hard drive, do back-up all your files first before you format, or you’ll lose everything. [Thanx @mnowluck]

Chp 358. History of STUDS in Mizo Society, 1980+

2011-07-22T15:14:00.020+05:30

Who is a stud? The exact definition may differ from culture to culture, but at the end of the day, a stud is one who is surrounded by women or can easily be with any chick he wants. As the universal Bro Code aptly puts it – A stud is respected by all other Bros.

Yes you may find this post a tad sexist. Like how my friend Jerusha would say, “If a girl sleeps with different men, she is labeled a whore, but if a guy sleeps with different women, he is called a stud? That’s not fair!” Or as my friend Amos would say, “If a girl sleeps with different guys, she is called a whore, but if I do the same, then suddenly I am called gay? That’s not fair!”

A stud is a guy other guys respect, especially by us nerds and geeks. While we slogged our asses off during engineering exams, he was constantly on the prowl, always in the company of women. We respected him and envied him at the same time. “Don’t worry nerds, study hard for your exams and you will get all the bitches you want later,” he would tell us, as he took the assignment we did for him with one hand, and held the hottest girl in college with the other hand.

Oh we hated him right then. Because we didn’t want any female dogs. Why the hell would we want female dogs? We just wanted to speak to women, that’s all. But even though we never actually understood him, one thing’s for sure – We may have hated him, sometimes even loathed him, but at the end of the day we respected him!

In our Mizo culture, the word we use for such a person is “Luck”. Yes, it is derived from the English word, and it means exactly that. “Tlangval luck” means a guy who has a lot of women admirers or one who has no difficulty appealing to the opposite sex. There is hardly any moment in his life when his relationship status remains “single”.

In Mizoram, things are different.

I still remember being asked by a friend in Bangalore when he saw me play a riff of “Hotel California” and end it with the intro of “Sweet Child of Mine” – “Dude! You’re bloody amazing with the guitar! You must be having a lot of chicks after you, back in Mizoram huh?” Hahaha! Nopes. In Mizoram, women don’t give flying crap if you play the guitar or whether you're in a rock band. Because 90% of the guys can play the guitar over there. It’s as if we were all born with our fingers clutching an A minor chord and the first time we cried in the hospital bed, we probably did so in tonic sol-fa.

Nah, things are different in Mizoram. There are actually different time periods when a person with a particular designation was considered a stud. Every profession had an era of being deemed a “Tlangval luck”.

Here are some of them, and the reason why many Mizo children (like me) had once upon a time dreamt to become just like that person, so that we too would be surrounded by women. Ah… the dreams of a folly youth!

1. The TV Antennae Twister

This is as far as I can remember. During the early 80’s, Mizoram, which was not even a state then, was just starting to develop. The insurgency led by the MNF was slowly coming to an end, and few “privileged” people started buying TV sets. There was only Doordarshan channel back then, but Mizoram being situated on a high altitude and lying between Burma and Bangladesh, we could get (free) channels from Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, and even Korea, simply by adjusting our TV antennae reception!

That’s where the Antennae twister stepped in. He’s usually around 20-25 years old, jobless, clean shaven, smokes like hell, skinny, and really got a badass talent of climbing up the roof and twisting the TV antennae to find a particular channel. Women used to sigh in admiration as he twist and twist and twist… androgenic sweat dripping off him as he turned the antennae… switching from Burmese channel to Korean to Bangladesh… ahhh… ohhhh… ahhh…

Watching the women squirm in ecstasy, that was when a lot of kids decided they wanted to become just like the antennae twister when they grow up. And maybe that’s why a lot of guys started training by practicing with their little antennas first…

2. Driver/Handyman

The mid 80’s saw the signing of the Mizoram Peace Accord, and Mizoram became a state. Employment rate started growing and more and more people bought vehicles. Of course people who had vehicles were considered affluent, but they were not considered “Tlangval luck” because most of them were married and had a family. But the drivers were not. And boy oh boy, they had all the women!

Whether you drove a private vehicle or a government vehicle, being a driver was the new definition of being a stud. My dad was working in the Power & Electric department then, and I used to go with him during his tours across Mizoram. He usually moved in a convoy of 4-5 vehicles. And during those tours, I spent more time with the drivers, probably because I have three elder sisters and no brother, so they were like the elder brothers I never had.

During the tours, I used to just sit with them and listen to their campfire stories as they exchanged stories about their conquests and sexcapades, about the many virgins they "conquered" at this village and that village etc. And they weren’t just bullshitting. Wherever we went, while my dad and other senior officers were working inside the local office, these drivers always managed to find a village damsel they could take to their rooms. I was young then, but I understood.

And the best part about being a driver was that sometimes many of these drivers, especially truck drivers, had handymen. The handyman acted as the wingman. Now what better ways to score than having the stud reputation of a driver with an equally cool wingman! Ah, it was Paradise for them. That was definitely their era. In my mind, the studification process started right then.

So after we got back from one of those tours, I told my mom I wanted to become a driver when I grow up. She nearly had a heart attack. Strangely, my dad never took me along on his tours again…

3. SDO/JE

With more employment opportunity and Government sectors opening, the late eighties saw a sudden surge in a new stud category – the SDOs and JEs. The SDO (Sub Division Officer) and JE (Junior Engineer) bachelors were the center of attraction at every function, regardless of whether they were in the P&E dept, PWD, PHE, etc.

Maybe it was because of their lifestyle and the way they partied, even till today, if you go to any Mizo house party, people will be doing the “SDO dance”. And yes, to have an SDO or JE son-in-law was the desire of many Mizo parents back then.

4. Doctor

During the 90s, the stud crown was passed on to the doctors. Hell yeah, they not only saved lives, but made lives, if you know what I mean. They were that “lucky”.

In fact, I think more than the girls, it was the mother of the girl who was more in love with the doctors – most of them would do anything to make sure their daughter married a doctor. Now this kind of fight and attention, every guy loves, right? And so, many of us slogged hard for various medical entrance exams, hoping to become a stud one day too.

In addition to that, I was hooked to Robin Cook novels those days, so I really used to think doctors had an extremely glamorous lifestyle. After school, I was probably the only Mizo guy who had never even kissed a girl, and the ambition of becoming a doctor only became stronger.

But then, after the entrance exam results came out, I got into Guahati Medical College (GMC) which is a well reputed college, but I got a much higher rank in the Engineering entrance exam – So after much consultation and contemplation, I told myself – Ahhhh chuck it. I’m a nerd. And I’ll always remain a nerd. I’ll die alone, unknown, unconquered, unridden. Let the other guys enjoy, maybe this is my fate.

And so with a heavy heart, I said goodbye to GMC, lost the opportunity to become a stud, and dwelled even deeper into NerdDom and became a Computer Science Engineer. After graduation, I went back to Mizoram and everybody thought I took a four year course on how to install Windows. Now which mother would want their daughter to marry somebody like that huh?

5. Pastor

Ahhh now this is one stud who isn’t a badass and yet commands deep respect. He’s the apple of every mother’s eyes, the gem of the locality, and sometimes even the entire local community would go around searching for a fitting bride for him!

Take this scenario for example. Guy comes across a beautiful hot girl. He asks people around about her, and learns that she is extremely homely, devoted to God, sincere, honest, and all other things nice and sweet. He doesn’t think, “Dayymm, I gotta nail that” or “I gotta marry her”. Instead, the first thought that comes to his mind is, “Yeah, she’s perfect for our Pastor. I gotta fix them up!”

See, that’s how Pastors roll. Wicked! You come across such a girl and you do not hope that she likes you. Instead, you hope that she likes your Pastor! See? Bros before Hopes! Yeah, even the Bro Code works perfectly fine here.

6. IAS

IAS (and recently MCS) bachelors are another batch of studs who have no difficulty in finding a partner. I think they are currently the reigning stud-pions in Mizoram.

Line up a couple of suitors for the hand of a girl, and the one with an IAS designation will blow every competition away for miles. They are like the Terminator of bachelors, powerful and feared. Some are humble, some are badass, and some are humbly badass. All in all, they rock!

Conclusion:

So where do we copywriters stand in the stud ladder? Well, for the fact that most people in Mizoram will not even know what I actually do for a living (the term “copywriter” does sound like somebody who spends his whole day in a government office copying files and writing them out manually into a new document right?), I guess we don’t even make it to the ladder.

...which reminds me of that animation “Shark Tale” (with the voice of Will Smith) –

Sykes: Now I have to pay Don Lino protection, so everything you owe me, you owe him!
Oscar: How do you figure that?
Sykes: Simple - the food chain!
[Pulls out chart]
Sykes: On top there's Don Lino, there's me, there's regular fish...
Oscar: And that's me!
Sykes: No. There's plankton, there's single-celled amoebas...
Oscar: And then me!
Sykes: I'm getting there, I'm getting there... There's coral, there's rocks, there's whale poop, and then there's you.
Oscar: That's messed up.

Yup, in the Stud hierarchy within Mizoram, we copywriters are so messed up. Hehe…

Maybe there’s an important lesson in this. If you want to be a stud, then be one. Remember the old saying, “Nice guys finish last”? Yup that is so true. If you want to be a nice guy, that’s well and good, but don’t regret finishing last. I wanted to be a stud when I was younger too, but later chose the nerd path. And now, I am definitely not regretting that decision at all. What matters in the end is, regardless of who you are, are you happy? Once you learn the importance of happiness and job satisfaction, being a stud suddenly becomes insignificant.

Friday cheers! :)

Chp 357. Gaming it to the next level - 1

2011-07-12T21:58:00.002+05:30

With the smart-phone gaming industry still at its nascent phase, there are indeed a lot of games (and features) I would like to see in the future. I may not have the resource to produce such games, but it won’t hurt spilling out my reviews & ideas here.

First of all, before I begin, I’d like to share something I discovered recently – For all you Androiders, if you go to the Android Market, not the mobile version but the actual site market.android.com and login with your Google account, you will see a complete list of all the apps/games you have downloaded till now!

Lolz. Yeah, all those three-letter-word related apps and other apps you have downloaded and kept hidden from friends and family… they are ALL THERE! Listed. Recorded. Archived. With complete details regarding the download date, version, file size, etc etc. haha! Not so private now huh?

Anyhoo, here is my first review, one of my recent favorite games, and how I think the developers should take it to the next level.

Contract Killer

Originally an iPhone/iPad game, this is probably one of the most awesome games I’ve played on my droid. You’re a contract killer, and your job is to take out the mob. You get orders now and then, sometimes from a rival mob, an informant, or from the cops, and you can also refill your ammunition or buy better weapons using the in-game cash/credit.

Every contract requires around 5 energy, and whether you fulfill the contract or not, you end up losing that much energy. So, as addictive as this game may be, you cannot play the entire day. You need to quit the game now and then after your energy runs out and wait for it to recharge. You can also use your credit to buy energy, but trust me, it’s not worth it.

But it’s been more than a month now since I last played this game. Why? Because if you don’t intend on spending money (real money), it is close to impossible to buy the good guns, especially the Zerstorer!

As I kept advancing, the bad guys were harder to kill, and the level kept getting more difficult, and yet, the bounty did not increase at all. Eventually, if you subtract the cost of ammunition per contract, I wasn’t getting anything at all. I even stopped buying the medikit to get more cash per contract, such that I would die during an ambush rather than buy expensive medikit, but even then, I realized it was going to take me forever to reach my target money to buy the awesome guns.

Plus there is no cash-credit converter. Some guns like the Zerstorer costs 400 credits. Yet, even if I have collected a million cash during my missions, I cannot use them to buy those special guns that can be bought only through credits. Hence I need to buy the in-game cash and the in-game credit separately with real money. A Zerstorer gun, costing 400 credits, would be around $20 (INR 900!)

And yeah, couple that with the fact that the game gets boring after some time… repetitive kills and instructions. You can easily start predicting where the boss’ goons are going to come running out from.

Hence the reason why I stopped playing this game.

----------------------------------

How I wish the game could be like this:

With such an amazing (and realistic) game as this, I wish Glu (the developer) could make it a bit more interesting. Here are some of my suggestions. I’m not talking about changing the interface of the game, like players should be able to run towards an enemy and stab him etc. I’m sticking to the original game action. My suggestions are purely about the gameplay and the kinda story that can come in etc.

1. Locations:

First of all, I want to stop using the single map selection theme.

Instead, how about making this game truly global? Give users the option to travel from one country/continent to the other.

And the user will end up losing quite a lot of energy as he travels, which is ok, as he can always recharge his energy once he lands at his new destination.

At his new destination, he will of course get new sets of orders and who to kill, and most of the targets will be region specific (example – the Yakuza in Japan, the Triad in China, Cosa Nostra in Sicily, Drug warlords in Cambodia etc etc).

2. Weapons:

The guns can also change from region to region, depending on the availability.

Hence, even if the player has managed to buy really good guns in the US, he cannot take his guns along with him when he flies to other countries (for the obvious reason). So he has to start from scratch.

He can take his cash (and credit) along from one place to the other though. And when he returns to a place he has been before, he can use his existing gun there (he probably has a safehouse where he stores his guns and ammunition).

This way, we are making everything more interesting just by introducing different characters and maps, even though the gameplay is the same as before – you get info from somebody and you take the contract.

Remember, at the end of the day, the backend logic may be the same, but if the game is coated with different characters and maps, it will definitely make the game more interesting. Take Storm8 for example. All their games like Ninjas Live, Vampires, Zombies, World War, iMobster etc are (almost) all the same. Take away the character names and tasks, and they are all quite similar, yet most of them are the top downloaded games at the Android Market and iPhone App Store. In the end, the way we package a product really counts too.

3. The Bounty:

Like I mentioned earlier, it sucks when the level gets harder and harder but the bounty remains the same. Collecting money takes too long. If the amount of bounty can increase per level, then it is worth spending more on medikits and ammunitions too. Otherwise, it is purely a waste.

4. Non-scope guns:

Seriously, there was actually no point buying non-scope guns like SMG, shotgun etc. They are not effective at all, and I usually end up wasting an entire clip of ammo before I finally manage to take down one gangster. If this can be changed a bit so that even non-scope guns have their uses (trust me, I thought they would be more useful in the Dockyard fights etc when the enemy is relatively closer to my hideout compared to the other locations, but they still take time to die there too if I use non-scope weapons).

5. Silencers:

Ah this is my dream feature for this game. There should be some guns that can be attached with a silencer/suppressor. How awesome would that be! That way, we can quietly kill off some of the boss’ men one by one, and I can be discovered only if one of the gangsters is within, say 10 meters from the dead body. Unlike currently when I fire one freaking shot (even a tranquilizer gun) and the entire mob descends upon me like a swarm of bees. The silencer should be an option during the gameplay, and I should be able to use it only 5 times. After that I need to purchase it from the store again.

Trust me, making these small changes will definitely change the game a lot, and I for one, will definitely come back to playing it.

Ending this post, here are some screenshots of the game for those of you who have not played this game yet.

Disclaimer: All images in this post are from The Droid Guy, 148 Apps and I code and code.

Chp 356. Just Completed Three Years!!!

2011-07-01T13:09:00.006+05:30

This post may not be a big deal to many of you, but to me, it is indeed a big deal. For today, I have just completed my three years of work experience! I can’t believe it’s been just three years though… lolz.

I know many of you have been working for around 10 years now. I remember all the sermons and preaching my close friends used to give me about being “so old” and yet not working or doing anything worthwhile.

Maybe I was lazy, maybe I was unqualified, maybe I was spoilt, maybe I was just too scared to work on a job I might detest later… whatever be the reason, I ended up wasting my life for almost 6 years after I graduated from college, just partying, blogging and drinking my life away.

And then, when I finally decided it was high time I started working and doing something meaningful with my life, my friends warned me about rejections… That somebody like me who’s “old” and yet without any work experience was not exactly the most suitable candidate, and that I would have to go through many interview processes…

I understood.

Since advertising had always been my passion and I knew the digital space quite well, along with JV and my sister, we decided that I should aim big and go for the best digital advertising agency in India. That way I would surely get rejected and move on to smaller agencies, yet without feeling the pangs of rejection.

I called up my friend Pawan, who told me that the number 1 digital agency in India then was Webchutney.

So I took a printout of my resume, hailed an auto, and went to Webchutney Mumbai office. It took me an hour because I was looking at a Webchutney Delhi office address! Hahaa. Finally, I reached the office and met the shocked receptionist Rihanna (who became a very close friend later) because I didn’t have any appointment with the HR.

The equally shocked HR Manisha luckily happened to be in a good mood, and interviewed me. Walk-in interviews are actually not allowed, and to fix an interview appointment, one needs to send his/her resume and an appointment will be arranged if that resume is what the agency wants. I was extremely lucky that day, hehehe. I don’t know what happened, but somehow the interview went well too, and I was called back the next day!

The next day, I met the ACD, who is now our CD (Creative Director) today. He interviewed me for an hour. Later he gave me a copy test.

I wrote my (first ever) copy test, and went home.

The next day, AGAIN, I was called to the office. This time, it was the Branch Head who wanted to meet me!

I met Poornima, who was our Mumbai Branch Head then, and finally after a long interview, I got the job! Lolz, if you think I was shocked, then you should have seen my sister’s face when I told her about the news. My FIRST job interview, NO work experience, didn’t even KNOW what being a copywriter meant, accepted in India’s LEADING digital ad agency!

Yeah, it felt like a dream.

I still remember my first project after joining Webchutney. Our ACD and Art Director were preparing for a pitch on an “Ocean Racing” campaign. I was told to get involved and help with the concept & strategy, and after listening to the brief, I came up with this –

HAHAHA… Seriously, that’s what I thought copywriters do, you know… write the copy in a stylish manner. Lolzzzz….

I have come a LONGGGGG way from there.

Much later, I asked my bosses what they saw in me when they first hired me. And it turned out - It was because of my blog! And no, it was not about any particular post. They saw the potential in me after seeing the creativity in my writing. Creative writing and thinking creatively for an ad campaign may be different, but at the end of the day, creativity is creativity.

And that’s what Webchutney did – harnessed my talent, taught me how to channel my creativity, and made me into what I am today. I will forever be indebted to Nishi and Meghana for this.

Today I am handling many leading national and International brands on my own, with my own dedicated team. And none of this would have been possible without what I have learnt during the past three years.

MY FIRST DAY @ WORK

July 1, 2008 - Exactly three years ago from today. That was when I was told to join this company.

On July 1, 2008, God probably decided to play a prank on me because maybe even HE couldn’t believe I finally started working. So on that fateful day, He sent along a mini flood.

Yup, that’s what happened on my first day. On July 1, 2008, as my sister wished me luck (like a child going to school for the first time), I braved the rain thinking it was going to be just another of those normal Monsoon rain spells.

[Google: “July 1 2011 Mumbai” and you’ll know what I’m talking about.]

Just after I left my apartment, my sister switched on the TV to see news channels everywhere warning people to stay indoors! Most of the roads in Mumbai were completely flooded, and there were landslides here and there! She called me immediately, but my phone was tightly wrapped in a polythene bag deep inside my bag.

I on the other hand, was preoccupied, battling the rain and thinking about my first day at work. All autos refused to ply and most vehicles were off the road, so I walked. I kept walking towards my new office, not noticing that the water level kept rising higher and higher… first I was avoiding the puddle… next my feet were completely submerged…. soon the water came up to my ankles…. then my knees… by the time I reached SV Road, the water was up to my waist!!!

Yet, I was determined because it was my first day at work and I didn’t want to screw it up.

I held my umbrella up along with my bag, which reminded me of those Vietnam war movies where the GIs would patrol through waist-high water in the jungle while holding their guns above the water.

And the thing about Mumbai floods is, you MUST follow the person right in front of you. Coz you’ll never know if there is a pothole or a manhole ahead when the muddy water is up to your waist. So this is one incident where herd mentality is a really positive thing. Lolz.

FINALLY, after nearly 3 hours of struggling through the water, I reached my new office. Very few people turned up that day, and the HR told me I didn’t have to come!

Hehehe… well, in the end, my first day at work was indeed a very memorable day, and I will never forget what I went through that day.

Cheers.

[I may update this post later with a video]

Chp 355. Social Media - A word of Caution

2011-06-17T19:14:00.004+05:30

Yes, sometimes people tweet stupid things or bitch about their boss on their facebook profiles, eventually leading to serious consequences. But what about those who carelessly use an official account by mistake, thinking it is their personal account?

Yesterday, a well renowned PR agency lost its biggest account after a very unwise tweet from its official account -

PR agency loses biggest account with a single tweet

The PR Agency, Redner Group, was immediately fired by the client, popular game publisher 2K (of Duke Nukem Forever, Civilization V and BioShock fame).

We have also seen the recent case with Chrysler, when an employee from their social media agency on record, New Media Strategies, tweeted from the official Chrysler account by mistake instead of his personal account, "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive." Again, the employee was immediately fired, and Chrysler severed all ties with the media agency.

Chrysler Dumps Social Media Firm After Twitter Obscenity

Red Cross too has committed such mistakes, when an employee with access to their official twitter account, used that account by mistake instead of his own personal account and tweeted something not very "Red Cross-y" :)

Red Cross Twitter Faux Pas

And remember the U.S. Secret Service agent who tweeted, "Had to monitor Fox for a story. Can't. Deal. With. The. Blathering." and then realized he tweeted using the official Secret Service twitter id @SecretService and not his personal id, but by then, it was too late... lolz. Was he fired? Nobody knows, after all, it is the Secret Service. But I can bet my ass he was definitely transferred to Alaska. :D

If you guys have noticed yesterday too, there was a very strange tweet (lksdfghdfkg) from Hindustan Times twitter account @HTTweets. Of course they apologized and deleted the tweet immediately but people noticed it and it went viral like crazy. People tweeted:

Shahid Kapoor: Today's guest editor for Hindustan Times. RT @htTweets lksdfghdfkg

BREAKING: Sharad Pawar to Hindustan Times RT @htTweets: lksdfghdfkg

People at Hindustan Times are having sex on the keyboard. RT @htTweets lksdfghdfkg

We don't let our clients embarrass themselves like this RT @htTweets lksdfghdfkg

Things like this do happen a lot.

Even some time ago when GupShup was popular, I used to maintain a gupshup account courtesy a Mizo community site I run, with almost 1000 Mizos subscribed to our site’s news+posts updates. Once I sent a very embarrassing update by mistake while I was replying to another GupShup account... I didn't put the @ properly at the beginning of my reply, and so that sms instead went to the mobile phones of all those who were subscribed to our site's gupshup updates!

VERY embarrassing, especially since the gupshup account I was trying to reply to was sex related... ahem... and some of the honorary members and visitors of our site include the Chief Minister of Mizoram, Pastors, IAS officers, professors etc.. :(

What I'm trying to say is... in today's age of social media, many of us have access to twitter and facebook accounts of our clients, where the face of their company is actually represented by somebody who's not even a part of that company.

A few seconds of careless or hasty tweet can lead to a lifetime of regret, so we need to be extra careful when using our twitter and facebook accounts. Always check that it is YOUR personal account you are currently using, and not the brand's official account.

This is especially important for those of us who love trying out new apps and twitter/facebook clients on our mobile phones. Take extra caution as you may not be familiar with the settings of the new app, and end up using a client's account by mistake.

Posting stupid tweets on your account that can get you into trouble later (like Congressman Wiener) - well, that is your problem. But mistaking corporate accounts for your personal account - that can indeed be avoided if you're careful enough.

Cheers.

Chp 354. End of a Season

2011-06-10T11:26:00.004+05:30

Create a TV show and end the last episode of the season abruptly with a lot of suspense and drama – that is the age-old formula film-makers use to guarantee that viewers look forward to the next upcoming season.

Most of the popular TV shows have completed their one-year season last month and are currently taking a break. The new seasons usually start around July/Aug/Sept. A few shows are still currently running, like Game Of Thrones, which is like THE BEST TV SHOW EVER MADE so far. Ned Stark rocks. Khal Drogo rocks. Everybody in that freaking show rocks.

Ok, coming back to this topic now, the last episode of many TV shows this season saw a lot of the usual suspense and “must-definitely-watch-next-season to-find-out-what-happened-next” experience. Here are some of my favorite shows and how the season ended.

Warning: SPOILERS ALERT!

NCIS – Season 8.

Starting off with Naval Crime Investigative Service, one of my favorite TV shows that has been around for eight years now! Remember how season 2 ended with a shocker – Kate was killed, and then season 5 ended with an even bigger shocker – Director Shepherd was killed. Well, after that, the ending of season 6 (Ziva was held captive by a terrorist cell in Somalia) and season 7 (Gibbs was held captive by a drug cartel heiress in Mexico) could not be shocking enough.

And how did season 8 end? Utter disappointment! After all the buildup about the mysterious P2P (Port-to-Port) killer and how they were always one step behind him, the way he was finally (and easily) killed in the last episode of season 8 was such a letdown and disappointment it actually made me nauseous. Seriously?

And in the closing scene, when the new SECNAV secretary Senator somebody assigned Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo a secret task to spy on an NCIS agent who’s a traitor, it was obvious who they were talking about – Special Agent E.J.Barrett of course! Duh, what was that tiny capsule she extracted from her dead team member’s hand in the morgue? They didn’t have to show that morgue scene if they wanted to build more suspense around who this traitor could be. Dayymmmm…

NCIS Los Angeles – Season 2.

This is one of the few spinoffs I enjoy, unlike the many spinoffs of Law & Order and CSI. NCIS LA is completely different from the original NCIS in terms of characters, methodology, humor and plotlines. And there’s also the occasional crossover of characters such as Director Vance and Abby from NCIS who appear regularly in NCIS LA. I love NCIS LA mainly because of the two main characters – LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell.

The end of season 1 was about Callen, where he was about to discover more information about his obscure past, and maybe even a long lost sister. Well, the end of this season was also about, surprise surprise – the true identity of Callen again. But one shocker that took me by surprise at the closing scene was - Hetty turned out to be a member of the dreaded Comescu crime family! Whoah!

The Big Bang Theory – Season 4.

My FAVORITE comedy show that is currently running – oh how I LOVEEE this show! I can relate so much to the characters of this show as they are all extreme nerds and technogeeks. As fittingly described by Priya, sister of Rajesh and girlfriend of Leonard – they are nothing but boys trapped in the bodies of men. Lolzzz.

The last episodes of Season 1, 2 and 3 didn’t shock me that much – I mean, comon, we all saw what was coming up, that Penny and Leonard would eventually hook up. But the ending of season 4? Boy oh boy, I can’t wait for season 5 to start – Howard felt insecure because of Bernadette’s Ph.D, Leonard and Priya could be breaking up after Priya’s conservative Indian family in Delhi learnt about their relationship, AND – Penny and Rajesh ended up in bed together!!!! This is the shitz!

Criminal Minds – Season 8.

MY ALL TIME FAVORITE SHOW till now, across every genre. I WORSHIP this show. For six years, I haven’t missed a single episode. This TV show was what made me stop watching CSI and Law & Order: SVU. There was even a time when I actually used to analyze all my friends too, profiling them… lolz.

When Season 2 ended four years ago with Gideon leaving the BAU, I was as devastated as Dr. Spencer Reid was. Now season 8 just got over, and on its last episode, Hotchner called a team meeting early in the morning. The last time this happened was when Gideon left. However, I don’t think anybody’s leaving the show and the last episode ended normally with no suspense at all, except the last gunfight scene, I honestly thought Rossi was going to get shot by that psycho bitch because of the dramatic background music etc, but good ol Derek saved him just in time.

And oh, JJ’s coming back to the BAU! Wooohoooo!!!

Two and a Half Men – Season 9.

I love Uncle Charlie Harper. Sometimes I wish I was him. After eight years, Jake is definitely not the cute little “half man” anymore, but the show hasn’t lost its appeal. But then Uncle Charlie has certainly lost it. Much as I admire Charlie Sheen and support him on twitter with the hashtags #winning and #tigerblood, it sucks to say farewell to such a great run just because of… you know…

Bye bye, Two and a Half Men. I hear they are still going to shoot the new season, and Ashton Kutcher (it was almost Hugh Grant) is going to replace Charlie Sheen as Charlie Harper. Whoever it may be, trust me, the show will never be the same without good ol drunken and womanizing don’t-give-a-shit Charlie Sheen. I don’t think Ashton will ever be able to fill those shoes… tsk tsk…

House MD – Season 7.

All I can say is WTFFFFF! I just heard from Tarana, who is our Vice President of New Initiatives division, and a hardcore House fan like me, that Lisa Edelstein (Dr. Lisa Cuddy) has left the show and will not be returning for Season 8. Damn!!!!

Apparently, FOX has asked three of the senior doctors (Wilson, Cuddy and Eric) to take a paycut. Robert Sean Leonard (Dr. Wilson) and Omar Epps (Dr. Eric Foreman) signed the new contract but Lisa refused and walked out. I can’t imagine how the show will be without her. She had been there right from the very beginning, being taunted, irritated and wooed by Dr. House every step of the way. Damn, another great loss… :(

The Walking Dead – Season 1.

AWESOME show! I am a huge fan of Zombies [Zombie Movie marathon], especially the slow moving ones in many George Romero zombie flicks. I hate the fast moving superhuman zombie types... very lame! And so when a TV show about slow zombies with a huge budget, a renowned director and star-studded casts was released, nothing could make me happier.

The Walking Dead is like any other zombie movie – it takes place during a zombie apocalypse. The difference is, it is a TV serial. There are only 6 episodes in season 1, and season 2 will start in October this year. Season 1 didn’t end in any suspense or surprise, and the survivors kept looking for more survivors in the closing scene after they managed to escape just in time from the self-destructing lab. But I am dying to see season 2. Zombies rock!!!

Sons of Anarchy – Season 3.

SoA FTW!!! Except for the fact that the main hero Jax (Charlie Hunnman) sometimes seem to be a bit out of place with the rest of the motorcycle gang, it is still one of the best shows around. The endings of both Season 1 and 2 had an immense “pull factor” that make you long for the next season to come out. First there was the murder of Donna by Tigs when Clay thought Opie was selling them out, and then Jax’s son was kidnapped by the IRA.

However, season 3 had a very “happy ending” with no suspense, except for the last scene when Tara found John Teller’s letters in Jax’s bag and read them, in which JT claimed that he would soon be killed by Clay and Gemma. But then, we have always known that this show was based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet so it’s no surprise that Clay and Gemma killed Jax’s old man.

Spartacus – Season 1.

Yeah BLOODY EFFF! We all loved ROME a few years ago, but unfortunately it was a limited serial. Spartacus too is quite like that TV show – lots of blood, gore and sex. This is the story of Spartacus, the gladiator-slave who rebelled against Rome and led a bloody revolution.

Season 1 (Blood and Sand) ended with the gladiators finally rebelling against their master Batiatus, slaughtering him and all his guests and guards in the last episode. However, season 2 could not be shot because the main hero Andy Whitfield was unfortunately diagnosed with cancer. While waiting for his medical result, the producers made a short 6 episodes serial called Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, which is a prequel to Season 1. However, Andy’s cancer intensified so they are now shooting season 2 without him. He has been replaced by Liam McIntyre. I wonder how good season 2 will be with this new Spartacus.

Modern Family – Season 2.

Ah, nothing much to say. This isn’t one of those TV shows that need to have a dramatic season ending. Every episode is hilarious as hell, and I am completely addicted to this show. In the last episode of Season 2, DO NOT MISS Luke’s “edit” of the tape they have made for Jay’s birthday - It’s awesomely hilarious (and cute). I’m so looking forward to season 3.

Castle – Season 3.

Everybody loves Richard Castle… or at least every wannabe writer loves Richard Castle. He’s silly yet adorable, charming, respected by his “homies”, and follows around a kickass hot detective. The endings of Season 1 and 2 were quite lame, and it was always about the on-off chemistry between Castle and Beckett.

But the ending of Season 3? Oh boy oh boy oh boy… The best ending so far! I read that some time ago that a main character will die in the last episode, and I always thought it would be either Ryan or Esposito. Man I was so wrong. What a twist! Captain Montgomery turned out to be the mysterious third dirty cop indirectly responsible for the murder of Beckett’s mom many years ago! And then the captain died while saving Beckett and atoning for his sins of past. In the closing scene, during the captain’s funeral service, as Beckett was delivering her eulogy, *bang* a sniper gets her! As she lay in Castle’s arms dying, Castle finally says the words – I love you. Scene fades out, season ends. Mannnn I can’t wait for season 4 to begin!

Covert Affairs – Season 1.

Ok this is one of those oddly timed TV shows because season 1 got over last September unlike most shows whose seasons got over last month. Season 2 has just started but I haven’t seen any episode yet. I like this show because it’s about espionage and CIA, and Piper Perabo is the main character.

Season 1 ended with Anne Walker’s mysterious boyfriend, rogue CIA agent Ben Mercer, getting shot at the back during an operation in Sri Lanka with Anne and Jai. Did he survive? I don’t know.

The show is star-studded, with not just Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly) but a whole bunch of famous TV actors like Kari Matchel (ER), Anne Dudek (Mad Men, House), Peter Gallagher (The OC, Californication), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Heroes), Christopher Gorham (Ugly Betty), Emmanuelle Vaugier (Two and a Half men, Smallville) and Eion Bailey (Band of Brothers). Don’t miss this show, if not for the story, then at least for the cast :)

Mad Men – Season 4.

Ah the GOD of TV shows, because it is about my profession - Advertising. Don Draper rocks. Everybody in the ad industry wants to be Don Draper. When faced with a tough brief, we ask ourselves, “What would Don Draper do?”

Season 4 ended well for all those who love Don and hate his ex wife Betty (it’s funny how we label Betty as the bad guy when in fact it was Don who was doing all the cheating while they were married!) – Betty’s marriage with Henry isn’t going too well, and Don proposes to his secretary Megan and later breaks up with Faye. Faye quits. Joan is pregnant with Roger’s child, and doesn’t know how to tell her husband who is stationed in Korea (or is it Vietnam?). Meanwhile, it looks like Peggy is planning to quit the company too! I hope not. I love her. And overall, Don’s Anti-tobacco campaign seems to be going quite well.

Let’s see what new challenges and drama the new season will bring. Apparently it is running late and we’ll have to wait for some more time before the first episode season 5 rolls out. Hurry up please!

---------------------------------------

That’s all for now. How many of these shows are you crazy about too?

There are still quite a number of TV shows whose final episodes I haven’t watched yet, like Nikita, Fringe, Dexter, etc. Comon, I don’t spend all my time watching TV shows. I have a life too, you know.

Chp 353. The June Pledge

2011-06-01T12:47:00.001+05:30

Hello June! Today is my cousin Dr. Mash’s birthday. Tomorrow is my sister’s birthday. Day after tomorrow, I have a Facebook wedding invitation from a Facebook friend I’ve never seen before in my life. Life is indeed full of events.

This June, I too have my own special event.

Before I say anything further, let me just say it was the CEO of my company who inspired me to do this. He, along with our VP of Technology swore to get in shape and pose in their underwear by December 31, 2011. The name of their site is called Underwear model or bust. Great initiative. Go check it out.

So coming back to this post, this June, I have decided not to touch a single drop of alcohol. That means “drink” for all you smartasses out there. I call this The June Pledge.

Studies have shown that in today’s world where people are connected with different strangers and share even the most intimate or frivolous details about their personal lives, it is indeed easier to fulfill a promise when announced online, like this.

What is so special about The June Pledge, you may ask. Nothing. In fact I made it up.

I can come up with reasons like, hey, its June Pledge because June was named after the Roman Goddess Juno, and we all know how much the Romans like to drink from Asterix & Obelix comics. But then sometimes, not having a reason can be the greatest reason to do something too.

Cutting down on alcohol is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. But with such a hectic life in the ad industry, I find the sweet beckoning of an Old Monk rum at the end of a tiring day too tempting to pass. If you’ve seen Mad Men, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

But of course, that’s no excuse for my vice.

Even though alcohol has never interfered with my work or social life, at the end of the day, it is my health that takes a hammering, especially when I’m pushing past the 30 year boundary. So, this June, yes this ENTIRE month, I’ll be abstaining from anything that leads to the slightest intoxication. And please feel free to join me in this quest by taking the same pledge.

If you have the habit of drinking every night, then do take this pledge. If you want to make a change in your life, take this pledge. If you want to break away from the bondage of alcohol and stop being a slave to it, take this pledge. If you are a social drinker, then this pledge may not be for you. But you’re always welcome to join me nevertheless. The more the merrier.

I’m not being preachy or trying to act as if I’m better than anyone. I’m so not. And I’m not even asking you to quit drinking for good. All I’m saying is, give this one month dry period a shot. See if you can last one month without alcohol, beer included. After that, it’s up to you. But trust me, this one month will make a lot of difference in your life.

I will not bore any of you regarding this Pledge on my blog again. If you want to join me or read my “private journal” for the next one month about this, do catch me at mizohican.posterous.com

If you want to join me in this pledge, please enter your name below or in the comment section:

Being the techno-geek that I am, my phone is filled with alcohol related apps. You can find them easily on the android market.

App name: Drinking Games - Has a huge database of simple, silly and yet extremely fun drinking game list. I’ve done a lot of them with friends in our most inebriated state, and it will make you ROFL throughout the night.

App name: DrunkBlocker - You can set a time duration using this app when you start drinking, and once you’re drunk and the app is activated, you cannot make any calls or send smses during that duration. Very useful *grin*

App name: Drunk Tracker - It tracks and records your movement via gps, so that the next morning you can see where all you’ve been the previous night during your drunken stupor. Lolz a very useful app, but drains battery life due to gps.

App name: AlcoMeter - Based on your weight and sex, it calculates your blood alcohol level. All you have to do is enter the drink you’re having and how frequent you are drinking.

App name: AlcoDroid - Similar to the app mentioned above, but I prefer this one. Better interface, and it records your entire history from the time you’ve installed this app. Also has a huge list of different types of alcohol with their alcohol content (% vol.)

App name: Today’s Reason to Drink - lolz this is my favorite. It has 365 reasons why you should drink (so you don’t feel guilty about drinking every day, haha!) Like, today, June 1 – The reason why you should drink is because today is National Go Barefoot Day! lolz. It also has a link telling you more about this event, and also a recipe for a cocktail called “Barefoot on the Beach”.

I guess these are the five apps I will not be using this month.

Alright – 30 days dry period, here I come! And do join me!

Chp 352. Goodbye illusionaire

2011-05-30T15:12:00.001+05:30

After eight years of blogging, it is with a heavy heart that I bid my blogging name “illusionaire” adieu. For the sake of consistency and to avoid any further confusion, my blog name will now be just Mizohican, the same as my blog url.

I started my blog as illusionaire back in 2004 with mizohican as my url. As I have described here in this post The story behind your (online) name:

illusionaire: This was a name I coined from the words illusion and legionnaire – hence illusionaire – A “Dream trooper”, a warrior well-versed in the mystic arts of illusion and black magic. I’ve always been fascinated by phantasmagoria and the supernatural, and I used to have a large collection of comics with fantasy-based themes. I wanted my writings to deliver just that. Hence, illusionaire.

I was happy being illusionaire. It was not a common name, and it gave me a new identity.

But we all know how unpredictable the internet is. Things that were popular before, soon became passé in no time. New technology pops up every day, and we have to constantly keep up with what’s going on around us.

Likewise, many popular social networking sites and community platforms came up, and the url you have chosen for those sites usually becomes the name of your site too. Twitter, posterous, tumblr, facebook, last.fm, foursquare, youtube, skype, mashable etc etc… I am known as Mizohican in all those sites, simply because my url is also Mizohican.

Hence that is why, after much consideration, I will no longer use the name “illusionaire” on my blog and will be just Mizohican from here on.

Now I have just two online identities –
* Sandman – for all Mizo specific sites
* Mizohican – for the rest.

Having a consistent online name is important. You don’t want to be called by different names at different sites if you want to be recognized or make an impact. At the same time, having a unique name is very important too. You don’t want to share that same “nick” with other people. Both illusionaire and Mizohican are very unique. “Sandman” is not, but then, I use this only at Mizo centric discussion forums.

I never use my name “Kima” online because it is a very common Mizo name. There must be at least a thousand Kimas who are regularly online.

With a name like “Mizohican” I can go to any new sites (like “Quora” recently) and I have no issue registering a new account because the username “Mizohican” will always be available.

So without further ado, goodbye illusionaire.

Chp 351. Osama news and the internet

2011-05-04T00:35:00.001+05:30

10 years ago when the World Trade Center came crashing down, I was in college. My roomie Thomas Joy’s dad called us up immediately to tell us about the shocking news. Those days, mobile phones were still a luxury and we even had to pay for incoming calls.

10 years later, many of us here in India woke up, checked our mobile phones as usual without leaving our beds yet, only to find our twitter timeline flooded with breaking news about the death of Osama Bin Laden, the man behind the attack on WTC.

Technology sure has changed a lot during these past 10 years. And it is now so advanced that a man in Pakistan, an IT consultant called Shoaib Athar, was actually live-tweeting the entire attack without anybody else (including him!) knowing it was Osama that was being attacked!

Well of course President Obama and his small team of suit clad bureaucrats would have known about the attack, after all they planned it. But the rest of the world was oblivious of this attack until much later. And Shoaib dude was just sitting there, tweeting about the incident and not knowing the significance of his tweet or that it would make him an overnight celebrity.

Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).

Go away helicopter – before I take out my giant swatter :-/

When he realized from others that the incident he was tweeting about was the attack on Osama, he tweeted immediately –

Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it!

His followers went up from around 200 to 100,000 in just one day, and he was bombarded with calls and requests from journalists all over the world. Watch video about him here [in English] or read it here [in Mizo].

As for me, I am a complete TV series junkie, and some of my favorite shows are about the CIA, black ops and covert operations (NCIS, Covert Affairs, 24, Alias, The Agency etc.) so maybe it’s because of all that that I couldn’t help thinking how Obama would have reacted on reading Shoaib’s tweets while the rest of the world didn’t know about this clandestine attack. I mean, comon, the CIA obviously listens to “chatters” for certain keywords, and I’m sure “Osama” or “Abbottabad” were high on the list of words they were keeping a tab on that day.

Imagine some of the analysts and advisers in the “Situation Room” telling Obama about Shoaib’s tweets before the attack started… would it have gone like this?

@ReallyVirtual: Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).

@BarackObama: @ReallyVirtual hehehe… if only you knew, dude :D Watch the fireworks in a few minutes. SEALS #FTW #Winning

The internet has so revolutionalize the way we get information that within a few hours, many netizens have already reviewed the location of Osama’s hideout on Google Maps!

And some of the reviews are really funny –

- Heat sources are undeniable. This place is blazing!
- Cold and drafty at night, walls full of holes.
- Located in cozy, quiet neighborhood. Interrupted only occasionally by machine gun fire.

And of course Foursquare wasn’t far behind. Somebody has already made a picture of this (Would love to give credit but don’t know who made this).

And the reviews on Foursquare are equally hilarious too –

- Crappy food and no beer
- Shhh! Don't tell anyone we're here!
- Hey you looking for Osama? He's over there, and there, and a bit over there!

According to mashable.com, various statistics reports on that day alone are –

- News sites saw 4 million page views per minute
- Search for “Bin Laden” went up by 98,550% on Yahoo search alone.
- 13,000+ uploads on YouTube within the first few hours.
- Pic of Obama & his staff at the Situation Room saw 600K views in 1hr.
- 442,000 likes on Facebook page “Osama is dead” within a few hours.
- 12.4 million tweets/hr on twitter immediately after the news broke out.

And here is the kicker. Mashable conducted its own poll regarding how people heard about Osama Bin Laden’s death, and from the 20,000+ people who took part in the poll, 31% said they heard the news on Twitter, while 20% said Facebook. 17% said they saw it on television and 12% heard it from phone calls. Clearly twitter is leading the frontline when it comes to breaking news.

As I have said before, things are definitely different from 10 years ago. The internet has changed everything about the way we receive information. Another clear proof of this is – just take a look at the numerous number of viruses and malwares floating around on Facebook and other popular destination, all masked as something that is related to the Osama killing. Lolz.

Just. Don’t. Click. On. Any. Of. Those. Links.

Chp 350. Great musical tribute to Zika

2011-04-25T23:21:00.002+05:30

I blogged a few months ago about ZIKA, a hornbill, who was shot. As I mentioned before, ZIKA was special to many people and touched many hearts. I even compiled a short video I took of the bird just before leaving Mizoram this Jan.

Recently (on my birthday! ) Scavenger Project, one of the more prominent rock bands of Mizoram, along with various artists from other renowned Mizo bands, released a song tribute to ZIKA.

The song was of course met with a lot of harsh criticism from the Mizo online community, with many people posting negative comments about the music video. Some of the main reasons for their contention being –

1. It was a tribute to ZIKA, so the song should be in Mizo, not English.
2. The lyrics are very lame and the song sounds like a nursery rhyme.
3. Spending so much money (& energy) over a dead bird is stupid.
4. Artists of such caliber shouldn’t have sung for such a lame tribute.
5. The music too totally sucks and the artists are just fame-whores.

I for one disagree with all the points. But then, that is what we love doing I guess – criticize people, as long as it is not us standing in front of the firing squad. That’s considered “normal” today. Of course some of those who criticized the artists said all that intentionally without actually meaning it, which again I guess is “normal” psychological behavior.

I will not put forth an argument about why I find the criticisms to be unfair. In fact, I do understand the sentiments of some critics, especially if they don’t know who ZIKA was or have never interacted with him personally. And it would be plain silly of me to criticize a criticism. lolz. (Yeah I think it is a growing trend among many writers and columnists today - When other writers write a review of a book or article, some of these writers actually write a review of that particular review! Hehehe!)

All I wanna say is a big THANK YOU to Zolife, Scavenger Project and all the artists who took part in this notable project. To me, this song means a lot, and I love you guys for rekindling fond memories of ZIKA. And hey, even if you hate this song, that’s ok. Haterz gonna hate and nobody can change that.

For those of you who haven’t heard of this song, here is the music video. Do check it out, I’m sure you’ll like it.

Nice, right?

Chp 349. Meh Birthday

2011-04-21T00:26:00.002+05:30

Aha. So I’ve finally did it. Crossed the 30 year milestone, considered by many as the halfway mark of Life (since most retire at 60). Today I start the second chapter of my life. 31, here I come. Be gentle with me please, this is my first time.

31. Not much to say. And I will not bore you with the same. Keeping it really plain and simple, I have decided – I’m gonna do something different today… something I’ve never done before… and yet something that is really simple… and of course something related to digital (online).

And it struck me – I’m gonna livestream myself (at work) the whole day today!

Haha. After all, hey, it’s my freaking birthday. I can do whatever I want without you judging me.

Lolz. Yeah, I’m gonna be here live on an embedded video the whole day today. Who the fuck would wanna see an old fart the whole day, you may ask. True. Nobody would. But at least I’m doing something different, haha.

And some of you can finally see the man behind this blog, even if you are watching for just a few seconds. Not the young “Mohican warrior lookalike” anymore. Just a fat old man with balding hairline and triple chin. If you wanna wish me, I have activated guest chat at my uStream channel, so that I can say thank you back personally on the video. Hey, if you ask me to dance, I may even do so right there on the spot. Or if you want me to sing, I can. Or request any song. Hell, I’ll even strip for you if you want me to. Lolz.

So that is what I’ll be doing today. Boring, you may say. Well, sometimes that’s life.

My Live Stream:

Live video by Ustream

Live chat with me for any request:

Anonymous chatting (without registering at uStream) has been enabled, thanks to a hack I found at UnitedTechGuys. But your name will not show, so do mention who you are if you want to talk to me during the live video session. Mucho gracias.

Ps. There may be around 10-15 seconds lag…

Pps. This live video stream will be reactivated again today when I come to office, prolly around 10am IST, hopefully with a hangover.

Chp 348. Corruption: Not right = Wrong?

2011-04-15T13:06:00.005+05:30

Tata Tea’s social awareness and anti-corruption campaign Jaago-Re is not just a great initiative and amazing campaign, it also fills me with immense pride to be one of the many admen who have worked on this project.

It’s not every day that we get to work for a cause we are passionate about (AND get paid for it, Lolz). As is evident from the recent Anna Hazare incident, corruption is something all of us detest, but still, it runs rampant in our country, like a horde of barbaric Vikings pillaging a defenseless village and leaving behind nothing but trails of destructions and ruins.

And corruption can come in different forms. The Grim Reaper wears a hooded black cloak and carries a scythe, but sometimes I’m sure he goes around dressed in Armani suit carrying the latest Android phone. But he is still Death, nonetheless.

Today I saw something that made me wonder about the other forms of “corruption” I’m sure many of you may have witnessed before too. The question I want to ask you is, “Yes, I know what the cops are doing is not right, but is it wrong?”

Every day I pass two busy junctions near my house. Since the two junctions are on service lanes and not the main road, there is usually just one traffic cop handling both junctions. And when there is a deadlock (car coming from West turns South. Car coming from East turns North, blocking first car. Car travelling from South to North blocks second car, but cannot move forward because it is blocked by first car. And all three cars cannot reverse because many vehicles are behind them, honking their horns), the entire service lane can even be jammed for hours.

Yesterday there was no such deadlock. There was a traffic cop in one of the two junctions, dutifully manning the junction. At the other junction, there was an auto-driver! He too was manning the junction, making sure no such deadlock occurred.

I was impressed! That was extremely altruistic of the auto-driver to spend his morning (especially during rush hour) making sure there was no traffic jam, I thought.

This morning, again there was another auto-driver doing the same selfless work! A traffic cop was manning the second junction while this auto-driver was commanding the first junction. I became curious, so I asked my auto-driver how these “civilians” could sacrifice their time (and money) doing the work of a traffic police.

My auto-driver laughed.

That was when he told me about them. It was never about service to society. My auto-driver said that those people were being “punished”. It seems, sometimes when cops catch errant auto-drivers (probably for jumping a red light or not wearing uniforms), instead of fining them or confiscating their license, sometimes the traffic cops make them do some work, like the ones I saw today and yesterday!

So basically, the traffic cops became judge, jury and executioner right there on the spot. They had no rights (or power) to do that, but then again, because of that, many of us reached office in time. At the end of the day, I know it is still like bribery. Instead of paying the cops cash, you are giving them something else so that you don’t get caught. Does this make the act any less serious? Does it make you feel less guilty?

This reminded me of an incident back in B’lore around 6 years ago.

A bunch of my friends were partying and things got a little out of hand. They even got into a fight and created quite a ruckus. It was around 3 in the morning so the neighbors complained.

A police jeep (Hoysala) and a police van soon busted the party.

As they were transported in the police van, my friends sobered up real fast, and they all behaved very politely with the cops. And so, instead of taking them to the police station (or even asking for a bribe), the cops stopped the jeep and van, and made the guys clean the van! Lolzzz.

And so, at the break of dawn, my friends were busy filling water in a bucket from a roadside pump and scrubbing the police van thoroughly while the cops were sitting nearby having tea. After an hour of intense cleaning, the cops told them to stop and let them go. No charges. Just a warning not to create trouble again. My friends were more than happy to walk free, and didn’t mind cleaning the police van at all.

Again – right or wrong? I know your conscience says wrong but… yes, there is that feeble “but” too, right? Hard to explain, I guess.

3 years ago, back in Delhi, I lost my phone and my mobile service provider was not willing to give me a duplicate sim card without an FIR report from the cops. So around 8 months ago, I lost my mobile phone again. This time I went straight to the police station (with a Maharashtrian friend) to file a report.

My friend said the cops would take time to process my request as there were many people at the police station. So we approached one senior looking cop and told him about my problem, and that I needed a letter from the police.

I was praying the cop would not ask me for a bribe. He didn’t. But instead he did something else. He told me he would write the letter of course, but… he pulled out his drawer, shook his head, and said he didn’t have any sheet of paper! And so my friend and I went to the stationary shop on the other side, bought one set of A4 size paper and gave it to the cop. He took one sheet, wrote his statement, sealed it, signed it and we were good to go. He kept the remaining 199 papers with him.

Was that a bribe? Well, technically speaking, he didn’t demand money and I didn’t give him money either. But deep inside, I still know it was not right. It’s just that, the guilt felt less heavy.

At this point, I’m sure some of us try to convince ourselves that “not right” necessarily does not mean “wrong” sometimes. Am I right or wrong?

Chp 347. 10 must have apps for GoaFest 2011

2011-04-07T15:11:00.000+05:30

Ah. GoaFest. It’s that time of the year again when hundreds of Indian ad agencies’ who’s who and wannabes mingle and vie for a coveted Abby’s, be it gold, silver or bronze. The Emmy’s of Indian Advertising.

Advertising is not just about creativity. It’s about innovation. And this is uber important especially for those in digital ad agencies. Last year’s GoaFest saw a fair amount of people using Foursquare and other mobile applications during the award ceremony. But sadly, GPRS coverage at the venue (Cavelossim) was extremely bad, which in itself was an irony – It’s like going to a nudist colony that prohibits members from removing their clothes.

This year, GoaFest will be held at Zuri White Sands. It’s around 4-5 km away from the nearest beach (I checked on Google Map) unlike other years when the function was held right next to a beach. So hopefully there will be better gprs coverage this time (No 3G yet in Goa).

As we all know, mobile innovations have increased by multifold during the past one year, mainly thanks to Android’s astounding growth. Hence here are our top 10 apps that will prove to be most useful during the upcoming GoaFest 2011. Although the apps are mainly Android specific, most of them are available for other OS too.

Here’s our list:

1. FourSquare

Yeah I know. You’re grinning. Ok we know 4sq was a big hype and never made it big here in India due to so many reasons and bugs – sometimes you can check-in at a place or become a mayor without even being there. I should know. I became the Mayor of GoaFest 2010 last year even before I landed in Goa. But still, it is better than Facebook Places (so far) and it looks like it is still the only popular GPS based social network app us tech nerds can play around with. And who knows? Maybe you can finally earn your “Player Please!” badge if you check in with three other women from your friend list at the award ceremony!

2. Google Maps / Latitude / Hotpot

Alright, Latitude promised to be the 4sq killer, but still needs time to catch on. Google Maps is useful, especially if you use it to search for the venue of GoaFest 2011. All those mouth-watering ads we see about 3D google maps and street view are not available here in India yet, so the best we can do is check-in where we are allowed to. At least we will know where our colleagues are in the midst of hundreds of admen (and adwomen) at the venue.

3. Twitter

Twitter apps. I will not get into which mobile phone twitter app is the best because everyone thinks what they’re using is the best. Just make sure you have at least one of the popular twitter apps installed on your handset, and set an alert notification for #GoaFest. Because that is what everyone at the venue will be tweeting about. Last year I was invited to participate at a TweetUp, during the award ceremony! This year too, I am sure there will be such an event, so if you are an active twitterati, make sure you don’t miss the hashtag #GoaFest.

4. Twitpic/Twitvid

An easy to use app that uploads your pictures and videos via twitter. Need I say more?

5. PicPlz

Here’s an amazing app that will upload any pic you take directly to your twitter, facebook, flickr, tumblr, posterous, dropbox and foursquare accounts all at once! [hat tip: giddyja] The best part about this app is its geo-tagging feature. Hence if you take any pic at any location and sync with your foursquare account, it will not just upload the pic on your foursquare destination but check you in there automatically too!

6. Phone tracker/security

Last year, a friend of mine lost his phone during GoaFest. Not surprising considering the amount of alcohol he drank. Make sure you have one of those phone tracker apps installed. McAfee WaveSecure (Free 7 day trial) lets you track your phone via GPS, informs your friends if it is switched off or sim removed, remotely locks your phone and erases sensitive data etc. MobileDefense informs you when somebody who “has” your mobile has inserted his sim – you can know that person’s network, battery life remaining, etc. and even send him a message like “B@stard, I know you have my phone!” You can also make your phone play a loud irritating sound remotely, in case you have dropped it somewhere near the beach after dark.

7. Ustream

This little app is amazing. It lets you broadcast live events on your ustream channel directly from your phone. You can embed that live stream video anywhere – Facebook, Blog, etc. Only downside is, it works well with wifi and 3G. Since there is no 3G at the venue, our only hope is that the organizers give us free wifi. After that, you can video live stream anything you want from your phone.

8. Shazam

Another useful app for GoaFest. What is an advertising award ceremony without the wild after-party till the break of dawn? Dance till you can drink no more is our philosophy. And with the DJs churning out various hit numbers on the dance floor, you can easily note down the artist and track name using this wonderful app. Plus it can prove useful if you are trying to impress that cute client servicing chick from a competing agency with your knowledge on music.

9. Drunk apps

Make sure you have installed at least one of those drunk apps that prevents you from posting inebriated tweets and status updates on facebook, so that you don’t regret it the next morning amidst a pounding hangover. Yeah, GoaFest means lots of free booze. At the same time, be careful about what you say online once you start Bboying on the dance floor for the first time in your life. Other apps like AlcoMeter, DrunkMeter, AlcoDroid etc. measure your blood alcohol level. DrunkBlocker prevents you from dialing once you’re drunk. Another good app is the DrunkTracker that tracks all your movement using GPS and records them so that the next day you can know where all you went in your drunken stupor.

10. Google Translate (Russian)

Last but not the least, make sure you have a shortcut to “translate.google.com” on your mobile browser, whether you are using Opera Mini, Dolphin browser etc. And put the default settings to “Russian to English”. Or download a Russian-English dictionary app from the Android Market. You’ll never know when you need it. Trust me.

--------------------------

Compiled by Kima (Samsung Galaxy S I-90000) and Vishnu Menon (HTC), @ Webchuntney.

Disclaimer: All these apps drain your battery life really fast.

Chp 346. Mumbai: Hike in liquor prices!

2011-04-06T14:09:00.002+05:30

This morning, I woke up in such a good mood – I’ll be leaving for GoaFest 2011 tomorrow, which means beaches, fenny, a well deserved break, Ad fests, nominations for The Abby’s, creative awards, beaches, shacks, fenny, beaches, all-night parties, etc..

And then I read this morning’s paper and became depressed immediately. Borderline Personality Disorder? Blame it on the news.

Party pooper: Liquor prices to go up by 40-60% in Mumbai

Talk of high spirits — beer and hard liquor will cost 40-60% more in Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra. The alcoholic beverage industry is reworking costs steeply following the excise duty increase in the latest state budget.

The price rise will be steeper for popular or regular priced brands. A nip (180 ml pack) of Bagpiper and Officer's Choice whisky will move up from Rs 65 to Rs 105, jumping over 60%. McDowell's No. 1 whisky is expected to see an at least 50% hike with nips moving up from Rs 100 to Rs 150. A quart (750 ml pack) of Royal Stag whisky will jump from Rs 425 to Rs 615, while Blender's Pride will soar from Rs 650 to Rs 870.

Totally sucks.

It’s not like I’m an alcoholic and I will die if there’s no alcohol. I don’t drink to get drunk (errmmm…) But we work hard, from 9 in the morning to usually 1-2 in the morning almost every day. That’s like 16 hours a day. And after five such days of continuous hard work, it is indeed good to relax during the weekend with a bottle of sweet intoxicant… keeps my mind refreshed and my engines running for the next upcoming week.

Call me an old fart, but that’s how I spend my weekends now – Away from the digital world. No emails. No Facebook. No blogs. Just me and my sweet bottle of rum, watching a complete season of the latest something, either alone or with my ahemz. Complete relaxation.

And of course, being in Mumbai, there’s always the occasional party for some occasion or the other. Birthdays. Promos. Reunions. Farewells. Kitty parties.

Considering all that, and clubbing it with the high cost of living in Mumbai, life is definitely not going to be easy with such steep rise in liquor price. Vijay Rekhi, MD of United Spirits Ltd. whose Signature whisky jumped from Rs 650 to well over Rs 850 admitted that this is the biggest price hike he has seen in his career.

I’m a BLASINK – Bachelor Living Alone, Single Income, No Kids. With this 40-60% increase, my social life will definitely hit a sink hole.

I guess my lifestyle is definitely going to change in the next few weeks/months. With the only two options – either consume less of my regular brand, or shift to a cheaper brand, seem to be my main dilemma now. Well, at least thinking about Mizoram makes this pain less hurtful. The costs of illicit liquor and smuggled booze in Mizoram are still way more expensive than any other places in India.

This steep rise in liquor price is definitely going to affect the common man. But the worst affected will not be the consumers, but rather the small liquor business owners. I wonder how this will change the economy in the long run.

As for now, I’m training my thoughts on Goa. Letting this unhappy news slip by. Reach Goa. Have as much fun as possible. Drink, drink, drink. Cheap liquor. Cheap liquor. Cheap liquor. How I wish I’m a camel so that I can store some of the cheap booze in my body and re-consume them much later in Mumbai.

Ah…

Chp 345. April Fooled!

2011-04-01T00:05:00.001+05:30

Every time you see an ad about a really good offer, the first thing that comes to your mind is, “Damn, this is too good to be true.” Because you know very damn well there’s always a hidden clause somewhere. The dreaded disclaimer. Always.

For example: An apparel shop that advertises – Buy 2, Get 5 Free! Good offer? Well, if you go to such a shop, you’ll discover that either the two items you have to buy (in order to get 5 free) are extremely expensive, or they are cheap but none of them fit you properly (factory defects).

Or a merchant that offers you Rs. 2000 gift voucher - Only drawback is you have to spend that within the next 2 days at the same store, and that too on selected items only. Or a free pitcher of beer coupon on your next visit, which sadly can be utilized only during the time of a day and week when no one, including you, would be visiting the pub. The list is endless.

I’ve written earlier about how a lot of showrooms and brands give huge discounts at this time of the year, and that one of the main reasons for such discounts is not because of their “end of season clearance” but rather because this is the end of the financial year, hence many of us do not have that much moolah due to tax and investments.

You’ll be really lucky if you can find a deal that gratifies you, you know, that feeling you get when, after shopping the entire day you reach home dead tired dying for a foot rub and you look at all the branded plastic bags lying on your bed and you think of all the money and energy you’ve just spent, but even then you have this large satisfying grin all across your face and you sigh “oh that was one hell of a an amazing shopping session! The deals I got were fantabulous!!! Now lemme put on my new “Ursula” Jimmy Choo spring collection and show off in front of my friends.”

Anyway I stopped being a victim of such discounts a long time ago, but last Saturday I was once again suckered into it.

An early April Fools Day for me.

So last Saturday, me and my *ahemz* decided to check out this full page “Big Bazaar” advertisement we saw on TOI.

Cool right?

I mean, how great was this campaign? Instead of offering just discounts, they were offering great deals - You could sell them your old newspapers, books, clothes electronics etc. and that too at attractive rates! Awesome!

Living in a city like Mumbai, newspapers (and “bottles”) accumulate faster in your house than “performers” running out through the back door when cops raid a dance bar. And I sell my old newspapers at 7 bucks per kg, while Big Bazaar was offering me 30 bucks per kg!

And that’s not all. The other exchange rates:

Old utensils – Rs. 150 per kg
Old shoes – Rs. 100 per kg
Old luggage – Rs. 100 per kg
Old clothes – Rs. 200 per kg
Old electronics – Up to Rs. 10,000 (depending on the quality)

FTW! Not only were we getting amazing exchange rates, we could get rid of all the junk that we didn’t need. Of course the catch was that we had to spend whatever money we received from our “sale” at Big Bazaar itself, which we really didn’t mind. Big Bazaar had a lot of household items we needed, especially when it was almost as if we were paying nothing.

And so, last Sunday we went to Big Bazaar with four heavy bags full of “stuff”.

Oh what fools we were…

Initially, everything went fine. I was a little bit embarrassed carrying all those heavy bags through a Sunday crowd in a renowned Mall (felt a bit cheap, hihihi).

But there were others there too, and an attendant started weighing our things. She noted down all our items category-wise along with their respective weights. I grew a little bit suspicious when she didn’t even bother to check the quality of some of the old clothes we sold, but I quickly brushed the thought aside.

Finally she gave us a receipt and we went inside Big Bazaar.

We submitted our receipt to another employee and she sat in front of her big computer while we waited in great anticipation. She kept referring to her notes here and there, and finally gave us our coupons. The total amount of items we sold was worth a whooping Rs. 3000! Bingo, Jack Pot!

Right then, it really felt good. Right then, I started believing in all those discounts offers again.

But sadly… our joys were short-lived.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out, there was indeed a clause. A fucking clause.

In the midst of our excitement, we failed to notice one very simple (and small) line in the newspaper ad: “Shop for 4-10 times the value of exchange coupons to avail the discounts.”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrggghhhhhhhhhh!

On the coupons (worth Rs. 3000) that we received, the disclaimer was printed there more clearly. We had to freaking shop for a certain amount in order to use the coupons. For example, if an item costs Rs. 40, I could use Rs. 10 from my coupons and pay the rest using cash. Hence for a 40 bucks item, I just had to spend 30 bucks + 10 bucks from the coupons.

Hence in order to spend the Rs. 3000 coupon we got, we had to buy goods worth Rs. 12,000 from Big Bazaar. From the Rs. 12,000 total cost, we had to pay only Rs. 9000 and the remaining Rs. 3000 could be paid by the coupons value.

And this was only for categories where we had to spend 4 times the amount (fruits, sweets, toiletries etc). For new electronic items, we had to spend 10 times the freaking coupon value. Hence if I wanted to buy electronics and utilize my Rs. 3000 coupon, we had to buy electronics worth Rs. 30,000 and pay only 27,000 while the remaining 3000 could be covered by the coupons.

What a screwed up deal! It was then that we realized, it was much more profitable (for us) had we sold the newspapers for Rs. 7 per kg to our regular scrap dealer. At least his 7 bucks meant 7 bucks. No strings attached.

Yeah yeah, Big Bazaar, you got me this time. BB 1 – Kima 0.

But I will never forget this moment, BB. Nevaaaa! Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Anybody wants extra Big Bazaar coupons? They will expire this coming Sunday only. Feel free to ask me.

Chp 344. Why I don’t like cricket - II

2011-03-28T20:26:00.002+05:30

India’s QF match was amazing. We won a thriller against Australia and there were celebrations all over India. Well done India! I’m so looking forward to Wednesday’s “Finals before the Finals” match against Pakistan. Comon Indiaaaaa!

Ok now on to part 2 of why I don’t like cricket

Like I said before, I will cheer for my country during the World Cup, but other than that I do not watch cricket anymore.

I did pour out a lot of emotions on my previous post. I’m sorry if that sounded harsh to some [which even evoked a response post], but that’s just the way I feel. I see things as they are and I don’t try to justify it with counter-reasoning or fervent mediocrity.

The next (and final) point is purely about the way we get to see the game, and not about the game or the fans.

Reason #2 – Why I don’t like cricket - Advertisements Over-Dose!

Like I mentioned in my previous post, my main game was basketball. School and College basketball captain, University team member, played for various successful clubs in Mizoram and Tamilnadu, and even managed to qualify for an International level club tournament (where we got hammered by Mercantile Bank, Sri Lanka).

I was addicted to NBA back then. Never used to miss the Playoffs on TV as it usually took place during my summer vacations. I was a hardcore Jazz fan during the Jazz-Bulls rivalry of ’97, ’98. I hated the Bulls. Don’t get me wrong, Jordan was God, and the others like Pippen, Rodman, Kukoc, Longley were all good too. But John Stockton was my idol. I loved the Jazz team combo of Stockton, Malone, Hornacek, Ostertag, and Anderson. Simple yet effective, whereas the Bulls were more of a stylish one-man show.

I could relate myself to Stockton really well because he did none of the fancy superman stuff that Jordan did (which was awesome, but didn’t help me in my career at all as I’d never be able to do those stuff). Stockton was down to earth simple, yet lead the league when it came to assists and steals. I learnt a lot from him as I too was a play maker (ball-controller). Maybe that was why all my NBA idols those days were all point guards –Stockton, Allen Iverson, Gary Payton, Damon Stoudamire, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Avery Johnson, Penny Hardaway, Tim Hardaway etc. Short guys who could dribble, pass, steal, assist and shoot over big guys.

After the Bulls era came the Lakers and Spurs, and the Finals started becoming boring because whoever won the Western conference (either Lakers or Spurs) would usually go on to win the conference Finals.

But the main reason why I stopped watching the NBA playoffs was because I discovered football. I became an ardent fan of Arsenal during the early 2000s, and it struck me – watching football was wayyyyyy more exciting and interesting than basketball because of one very simple reason – lack of advertisements!

With football, I get 45 minutes + another 45 minutes of pure uninterrupted continuous joy. No advertisements except during half time.

With basketball, especially towards the end when there is just one minute left and the score is almost tied, expect the game to drag on for at least another 10 minutes or so with either coach calling a time out every 5 seconds, followed by yet another bombardment of advertisements.

That’s the same case with cricket. Too many advertisements. A couple of ads after every freaking over. And that’s not all - If an important wicket is taken during a match, instead of a slow motion replay or commentary from the experts – advertisements fill our TV screens. By the time the ad is over, the excitement about that wicket has all but fizzled down.

Imagine the same thing happening for football! An ad appearing every time the ball goes out or there is an injury or even during a substitution! Dayymmm. That would be the end of football for me.

You might find it a bit ironic that I am bitching about ads so much, considering I work in an ad agency. Well, a prostitute who sells her body for money does it for the money, and not because she enjoys having sex with different strangers. I roll out ads because it is my line of work, but watching football is my passion, and I wouldn’t like any ads interfering with my pleasure - my moment of solace.

Making ads is fun. Watching them while you’re in the middle of something else? Not so much fun. For the more mature audience out there, I’m sure you wouldn’t wanna be interrupted every 3-4 minutes during sex, would ya? Same thing with cricket - Why the interruption?

In cricket, just imagine a complete innings taking place without a single ad! After every over, instead of ads, imagine if they show replays of important shots or wickets, or stats of the players, strategy etc. by an expert commentary panel. Wouldn’t that be freaking awesome?

But then again, that will never happen. Cricket is an Advertising Heaven. That’s the reason why the media gives it so much attention – because of its huge potential as a cash cow. By giving the game more prominence compared to any other sports, more people are hooked to this game, ergo more money churning in. If you think this game is for the common man, do you even know how many tickets are actually available this World Cup for the common man? And the few tickets available are being sold in the black market at prices as high as 50,000 bucks! Yes, the perfect venue to mint cash while you are I lose out obliviously, like sheep to the slaughter.

One may argue with the chicken and egg theory – what came first - The cricket fan or the media buzz? But at the end of the day, what we get are ads after ads interrupting us incessantly during an exciting innings or over. It’s like hitting a speed breaker every time your adrenalin is just about to take off. But like it or not, that is what we get – more ads, less cricket. And nothing we say or do will stop certain people from getting richer even at the cost of our entertainment. Clearly at the end of this World Cup, the team that wins will not be the only winner.

Chp 343. Why I don’t like cricket - I

2011-03-22T18:27:00.002+05:30

Well if you’re thinking this is just a rant by somebody who is crazy about football and doesn't understand the game of cricket, you’re mistaken. I was never born with a grudge against cricket – my dislike for the game grew through the years.

Here are the main reasons why I don’t like cricket -

1. The association of cricket with patriotism

Many of my friends do not know this, but back in school (Tamilnadu) I used to play cricket and was even a pretty good fast bowler! Surprised? Yeah its confession time I guess. Today I act like I do not understand the game at all, and even irritate my colleagues with moronic questions like “Which team is batting first? Ok. And which team is batting second?”

I stopped playing cricket in college as I concentrated on my main game – basketball. From school BB captain to college BB captain, I’ve never known a more satisfying pleasure than sweating it out on court every evening and converting a fade-away 3-pointer with a swiiiish. After college, I moved to Hyderabad where my good friend Pawan would come over during the cricket Asia Cup (2004) and we would cheer our asses out for our national team.

But it was there that I started meeting certain type of people who associated cricket with jingoism – the fanatics. Sure, when India is playing, I will cheer for my country. But why the eff should I watch a boring test match? And how does watching India play a test match make anyone more “Indian” than the other???

At first, I thought that was just the mentality of some people, but as I started traveling more around India, from Lucknow to Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, back to B’lore etc, this disturbing cricket fever (or should I say plague) has infected far more people than I feared. If you ever say you don’t like to watch cricket, expect people to stare at you in disbelief, some even going to the extent of calling you a traitor! And most of them even assume cricket is our National Sport! Lolz.

Sure our Indian cricket team has won more laurels than other Indian sports (if we don’t count the 8 Olympic gold and 1 World Cup title won by our hockey team of past), but nobody has the right to force anybody to like any sports. And I have never even hated this game in the first place – it was such people with their more-patriotic-than-thou bullshit attitude who kept spewing out their fucked-up ideology at me that made me dislike this game today.

Now, if India plays, I just lock myself up in my room and watch the game on my own, cheering for every six and four we hit or every wicket we take. But I will not become one of those obnoxious blockheads who are quick to judge anybody as unpatriotic just because the game of cricket doesn’t appeal to them.

If you don’t believe me, try writing a blog post about cricket and criticize it, maybe even calling it a stupid game – you will see lots of angry abusive comments about how you have no right to say such horrible things about cricket and your country, even though you have not mentioned India anywhere in your post, and that you should be lynched or thrown out of India for such a blasphemous post.

Such is the fanaticism. And such is the reason why I distance myself from this game today. It’s not the game. It’s the people. And the media just loves adding fuel to this fire, don’t they?

When our Indian football team plays against other countries in the AFC, or when our hockey team plays in international matches (there’s the upcoming Sultan Azlan Shah cup tournament in Malaysia), or when Paes, Mirza, Somdev etc play a tennis match, I never accuse any of my friends who don’t follow such tournaments of “betraying India”, because interest in a particular sports has nothing to do with patriotism.

Yet, many people believe you either love cricket or you don’t love India. Just cricket, cricket, cricket. No other sports. Even when India is not playing! - WTF, I’ve been asked why I wasn’t watching the Bangladesh – South Africa match because every Indian should be watching it! I’ve faced similar questions last year during the IPL tournament too when my loyalty to India was questioned because I’d rather watch an EPL match than an IPL match. For fuck’s sake, an IPL team consists of many foreigners. Where’s the patriotism in that?

If you and I join this unruly crowd of delusional cricket lovers not interested in any other sports, then the day when India will not excel in any other sports approaches closer and closer. No viewers = No buzz = No sponsors = No tournament = No players. The death of all the dreams and hopes of every other Indian sportsperson whose only fault is because he or she was excelling in some sports other than cricket.

Now what is so patriotic about THAT?

I’m not saying stop watching cricket this World Cup. If India plays, I wish them all the best and will definitely be there cheering for my country. But if somebody shows no interest in the game, don’t assume it’s because that person doesn’t love this country – he or she just finds the game boring. Simple as that. I love physical sports but chess bores me to death. If there’s a World Cup for chess and India is playing in the “Finals” against, say, Russia, I will definitely NOT be watching the “match”. Doesn’t mean I’m unpatriotic. I’m just bored.

Why can’t some of you see it this way?

[To be continued - Reason #2. Advertisements and over-exposure]

Chp 342. Whatever happened to… Alizée?

2011-03-08T23:20:00.002+05:30

Last night, completely out of the blue, I thought of Alizée! Remember Alizée? That cute young French chick so many of us had a crush on almost ten years ago? What the hell happened to her?

Flashback circa 2003. Some juniors from our college hostel campus managed to download the music video (live performance version) of Alizée’s J’en ai marre, and that immediately spread like wildfire in the hostel with everybody carrying their large IDE hard disks to various hostel blocks to copy the file, and every time we had to shut down and open up our CPU cabinet and attach the IDE cable and power cable, while rearranging the jumper if necessary, and doing the same thing again once we had transferred the file… ah those golden years. Lolz.

But it was worth it!

So I googled today and here is one of her songs we all loved those days – J’en ai marre. It’s in French. I studied French as a second language for six years in school. So I didn’t understand anything.

What’s so special about her? I dunno… She’s not the Megan Fox hot kind. She’s extremely cute and pretty, and yet has a slight charm of sexiness in her which she teasingly flaunts, but not very obviously. I think she was famous during the same era as the girl band M2M and in the same cuteness category, but they definitely didn’t come under “sexy” like her.

Trust me, I wasn’t into this kinda music. I was a death-metal loving hardcore grunger with tattoos all over my arm and ready to rebel about anything. I even made a “Kill Boyband” website on geocities those days. But one look at her (music video) and I was completely smitten. That doesn’t happen much, you know.

Her cover of Madonna’s La Isla Bonita isn’t bad either –

Here are the other music videos of J’en ai marre.

[French version]

[English version]

Listening to the English version, you suddenly realize, this song is not exactly “innocent” as you thought it was… bubbles and water, legs up for hours… I’m fed up… lolz!

Today I spent some time on Google researching about her, and looks like she is pretty much still around! But then her next two albums didn’t make much of a ripple at all in the music industry. Her two new albums Psychédélices [2007] and Une Enfant Du Siècle [2010] didn’t get as many hits as her pre-2003 days on last.fm, or on the global chart position. In fact she’s been written off by many critics as a cutie desperately trying to be sexy. Too bad…

I’m not interested in knowing how her two new albums sound like. I’m just posting this frivolous post to talk about a crush I once had.

Chp 341. Carling Cup Final

2011-02-27T17:19:00.005+05:30

Testing "Cover It Live".

Carling Cup Final
Arsenal vs Birmingham
Venue: Wembley

Ok today is the day - The much awaited Carling Cup Final. Ever since "The Invincibles" days of longest unbeaten run record and total domination of the EPL, Arsenal has been going without a trophy for 6 years now. So many times we have come sooo close to winning a trophy, but eventually lose out in the end. This Carling Cup will be our first silverware in 6 years if we win tonight.

The AMSC (Arsenal Mumbai Supporters Club) are screening the match at Big Daddy's, Khar. 300 bucks entry, which includes two beer or two redbulls, and one starter.

Red + White jersey compulsory.

Apart from knowing a few members of the AMSC, I am going with Shruti, our new Art Director, and Nirav and his wife. All of us are hardcore Arsenal fans.

Fabregas and Theo will not be playing due to injury, but we have pretty good hope about winning. More than 150 gooners have already confirmed to show up at the AMSC screening, and that is excluding those who confirmed via emails and phones, so my friends and I are planning to reach the venue at least an hour early so that we'll have a good place to sit, lolz. But then again, I'm sure we'll be at our feet most of the time.

Meanwhile, I am just trying out this "Coveritlive" feature, embedded below. It may not even work, but in case it does, I'll try to update as much as I can from the venue. I don't even know how long I am allowed to cover the event. Anyway, let's see...

Cheers!

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=96908a7664" &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Carling Cup Final&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Chp 340. Testing Blogger Android App

2011-02-21T13:06:00.004+05:30

Hello world...Update: Nice! Not bad at all. Editing post is also quite easy!Update 2: Ok linebreaks not happening. The Android editor is not WYSIWYG editor... :(

Update 3: Ok linebreaks and para happening only if I enter the HTML codes directly... Sad :(

Update 4: Testing image upload... ok no feature to upload pic in existing post. If I want to upload a pic, looks like it will become a new (separate) post...

Update 5: Testing comment... working well. simple and direct.

Conclusion- Overall, this app may be good for micro-bloggers or those blogging from a place abt breaking news etc... but definitely not recommended as a substitute for normal web version of blogger.

Even if I am going to blog from my phone, I'll still use the built-in Android browser or Opera browser to access and creat/edit a blog post rather using this Blogger-Android app. Sorry Blogger.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.2

Chp 339. Practical Facebook relationship statuses

2011-02-18T12:57:00.011+05:30

Today, Facebook launched two new relationship status options - “In a domestic partnership” and “In a civil union” so as to make the world’s largest social networking site more LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender) friendly.

Mashable: Facebook Adds LGBT-Friendly Relationship Status Options

These two new options should be rolled out to residents of other countries soon. In countries where same-sex marriages are already legal, these options will not appear. A Facebook rep told us in an e-mail, “This has been a highly requested feature from users. We want to provide options for people to genuinely and authentically reflect their relationships on Facebook.”

Facebook already has the following relationship statuses:

Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It’s complicated
In an open relationship
Widowed
Separated
Divorced

Nowadays, it is no longer considered strange or awkward to shout out to the whole wide world whether we are in a committed relationship or have just broken up with somebody. Just yesterday alone, a man was arrested because he changed his Facebook relationship status! [Link] That’s the crazy world we live in today.

So if Facebook is trying to make the site more practical and provide options for people to genuinely and authentically reflect their relationships, I was thinking, why not add a few more relationship statuses, you know, stuff that actually happen in real life.

Here is my list of 20 Facebook relationship statuses that are totally practical today. Feel free to add yours at the comment section. I’ll include them in this post later.

Married, but ready to mingle.

Sugar daddy to …

Sugar momma of …

in a one-night-stand relationship

is currently cheating on …

is sleeping around with everybody. MYOFB.

in a Ménage-à-trois relationship with … and …

in a complicated love triangle with … and …

secretly fantasizes about …

is currently leading on …

is currently stalking …

is currently being stalked by …

answers …'s booty calls.

Open to wife/husband swapping.

concubine of … along with … and … and … and [limit: 300 people]

is faking a relationship

charges 1000 bucks for a good relationship, hourly.

virgin.

virgin, but not by choice.

in a relationship with my right hand.

Your turn :)

-----------------------------

Live-in
Friends with benefits

[Puia Hmar via Facebook]

Born-again virgin
Single parent
Just playing around

[Aduhi via blogger]

Cheating on my right hand with my left hand

[Samuel via Facebook]

Cheated on by … currently rebounding on …

[Stephanie via Twitter]

Chp 338. The night every Arsenal fan will remember!

2011-02-17T12:05:00.008+05:30

Stayed up till 4am this morning. Back in office by 9am. Tired. Sleepy. Drained. Emotionally spent. Was it worth it? Of course it bloody was! Arsenal came back from a goal down to win 2-1, and played one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever seen!

Champions League "Round of 16" 1st leg. Arsenal versus Barcelona. Everybody laughed at us. Mocked us. Pitied us.

“Barcelona’s the defending champion,” they said.

“How are you going to beat Barca?” they asked.

“Will you have the guts to watch the match live?” they mocked.

“Remember last year when Messi scored 4 goals?” they taunted.

“Barca were recently on a 16 games winning spree, has lost only 1 match and drawn 2 at La Liga so far, and currently on top of the table of Spanish league”, they reminded.

“They thrashed Real Madrid 5-0!” they concluded.

Bookies placed the odds at 29-0 or something like that for Barcelona to win, I remember reading somewhere.

Barcelona-Lite, they called us. Rubbing salt into an injury that wasn’t even there yet.

Well, what can I say. A big fuck you to all who didn’t believe in us! We played amazing last night, and emerged the clear victor.

Of course it was just the first leg, I know, I know. But this result definitely sends a clear message to all our critics. DO NOT TAKE US LIGHTLY. We are the mighty Gunners. We will load our cannons and fire up your Arse. We, the mighty Arse.

Sure, last year too when we faced Barcelona at the Quarter Finals for the first leg at Emirates, the score was 2-2. And this year, it is 2-1. How different was it, you may ask?

Well for one thing, it was an entirely different game. Last year, Barca were up 2-0 during the first leg. They dominated the game and we were lucky they didn’t score more. With around 20 mins left, Walcott fired one home to make the score 2-1. And then Puyol got a red card so Barca was one man down. We scored a penalty and eventually the score was 2-2.

But last night, things were completely different. Arsenal totally dominated the second half! Oh the passes, the one-touch game, the combination, the execution, they were all perfect! And it’s not like Barca played badly. No, they played their usual beautiful game. Arsenal just happened to trump that and played better. I would have definitely enjoyed watching the match even if I was not an Arsenal fan.

Jack Wilshere was definitely my man of the match. The youngster is the next Fabregas, trust me. Szczesny too played a pivot role in this grand victory. Hats off to him as well. Kudos to Kos for making sure Messi doesn’t make a mess this time.

But what made this victory even sweeter for me was that, I can now show our “Mumbai Mirror” newspaper the big middle finger!

Yeah, for those of us Arsenal fans in Mumbai, nothing was more insulting than the newspaper mocking Arsenal on Wednesday.

And they even got the fucking Arsenal lineup wrong!

Former Barca striker Ibrahimovic is playing for Arsenal? The same dude who scored twice against Arsenal in the first leg last year? Hah, Mumbai Mirror, you really really should be more careful with your source.

This morning as I picked up a copy of Mumbai Mirror, I laughed at it. A deep condescending evil laughter. MUAH HA HA HA. In your face, Mumbai Mirror.

Looks like Barcelona will now be called “Arsenal Lite”. Bwahahaha!

Chp 337. Cheap Valentine

2011-02-14T15:46:00.001+05:30

During my carefree and unemployed days, I used to love this time of the year – Jan, Feb, March. Not only is there a Valentine’s Day in between, but these three months are also filled with “End of Season SALE” at various showrooms and malls.

Now that I am finally working, I suddenly hate this time of the year.

Yeah, it’s only when you actually start earning and stop depending on your folk’s money that you realize this time of the year sucks. Uberly.

With the financial year coming to an end, you are either making desperate attempt to invest more in mutual funds, life insurance etc. or running around in the last minute to get your rent receipts or medical bills in order etc. or trying to build up a certain amount of savings that you can’t touch or getting a large chunk of your salary deducted due to tax because you didn’t invest enough etc. etc. Whatever be the case, you end up with hardly anything in your wallet.

And yes, every year since I started working, the same story repeats itself. Ah sometimes I miss the bliss and freedom of not getting paid…

Now you know why all these brands and outlets have humongous SALES and offers during this time of the year - Because they know most people will be extremely tight on their budget. Hah. End of Season Sale, my ass.

Seeing such ridiculous sales does not even humor me anymore. Like for example, this offer I saw at a Mall yesterday. Five years ago, I would be laughing at such a sign. Today, it is no longer funny.

Ok, I confess it does bring a small smile… but it’s not as funny as it used to be.

And it’s not just the malls and shops that are filled with such offers and discounts. Even our newspapers are blatantly covered with them. TV commercials and sms campaigns bombard you incessantly about Valentine’s Day specials. Seeing all these ads makes me dislike Valentine’s Day even more.

I don’t hate this day because of the Ads. After all, I do work in the advertising industry and it would be really ironic of me to do so. Lolz. No I hate this day because of the timing – why the hell does Valentine’s Day have to fall bang in the middle of tax season? Why not April to December when the cash flow is so much smoother then?

Did the evil old Emperor Claudius foresee all this when he killed Saint Valentine many years ago and said, “Years from now, young lovers will celebrate their love to commemorate his death, but this will also be the time when they’ll have to file for income tax return, submit investment proof etc hence making it difficult for them to buy expensive gifts. This will be the worst mental torture I can bestow upon them. Therefore as a super badass villain, I have just fulfilled my ultimate goal! Bwahahahaa!”

Maybe. Maybe not.

But when you see (or make) such ads shouting out to people that there’s only one way to prove your genuine love and that is by buying her a diamond ring, it kinda makes you cringe as you dig deep into your pocket.

And hell, it’s not just expensive gifts like diamond rings, pearl necklaces and Swiss watches. Today’s TOI frontpage talks about cosmetic surgery as the ideal Valentine’s Day gift!

Well I may be giving my girl a gift. Or I may not. That’s personal. But one thing’s for sure – I am definitely going to include one of those free coupons too, you know, the ones that say “This coupon entitles you to one free hug from me” or “This coupon guarantees that I will be at your beck and call any time of the day from 16 Feb to 25 Feb, 2011” types.

Sweet. Romantic. And cheap

Here’s one such coupon my girl showed me yesterday. As she showed me the ad, she did a slight “ahem” with her throat.

Quickly reading it, I turned the page doing a slight “ahem” with my throat too. She punched me.

But yeah I have to admit – I love this Ad.

At first I thought it was a public service message. And then I saw it was an ad for Nicorette - that TV Ad where the cigarette packet is stuck to the dad’s hand as he tried to throw it in a dustbin. Yeah, very clichéd idea *yawn*. But this new campaign (Quit India – Movement for a Tobacco Free India) is amazing and I just love it.

Upon further investigation, here is their website | Facebook | Twitter links. Follow them. I wonder which Agency made this. And why had there been no louder buzz regarding this campaign??? I really am contemplating about quitting… one day…

Maybe I’ll update my blog with those free coupons I was talking about earlier (free foot massage etc). But for a free coupon, this Nicorette campaign “I quit smoking for the one I love” Valentine’s Day coupon is freaking awesome. I love it! I think this coupon is way better and more precious than all the D’damas and De Beers gifts a guy can give to his girl.

Ladies, what do you think?

Chp 336. RIP - Zika

2011-02-07T22:55:00.003+05:30

Just heard the shocking news this morning from my sister – Zika, a hornbill that had become a family to so many people, was brutally murdered on February 1st, 2010. The news of his death became public this morning, casting a dark shadow over my locality.

Zika was not just another hornbill. He was extremely smart, friendly and not at all intimidated by humans. He frequented my locality (Chaltlang) a lot and everybody called out his name whenever they saw him, right from the smallest children to the oldest grandpa. In fact, many people who visited my locality would hope to see if they were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Zika in action.

He was extremely popular because, after all, you don’t see any hornbills in the city, and even if you do, they’ll fly away immediately due to their natural instinct. Zika on the other hand, would directly approach you, look at you questioningly as if he’s trying to cheer you up in case you were feeling down, or just give you company because he thought you’re lonely. That is Zika.

He would fly from house to house, and everywhere he flew, people would feed him or chat with him. He would listen to you attentively, and at the same time he loved the attention he was getting from everyone.

He would watch people play football and sometimes even try to take part in the game whenever the ball was kicked in the air. He would greet school children going to school and sometimes even looked like he was trying to help them cross the busy dawrkawn road. And sometimes he would just sit at Chaltlang (dawrkawn) bus stand, greeting people who got down from the bus, as if say, “Welcome to Chaltlang”. Yes, and sometimes he would actually travel with the people inside buses or taxis!

He was truly the people’s bird.

Here is a video I took of him just barely a month ago. I did a little editing on the video and sound. I can’t believe he is no more…

According to report from The Aizawl Post newspaper, around a week ago, Zika flew to Zemabawk, a neighboring locality. He usually doesn’t venture that far from Chaltlang but this time, I guess he wanted to explore the area a bit more.

When people from Zemabawk locality saw him, the community leaders immediately announced on public loudspeakers that the bird was not to be harmed in anyway.

But then, when Zika didn’t come home to his owner’s house, Pu Zairema Sailo from Laipuitlang locality, for almost a week, they started having a bad feeling. Zika always return home and was not the type to ~~run~~ fly away from home or spend the night someplace else.

So when the owner started looking for him, they eventually discovered that two people from Zemabawk who apparently did not hear the announcement on the public loudspeaker saw him… and killed him.

As of today, the two culprits are booked and face possible imprisonment of 3-7 years as the hornbill is under Schedule animal 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act.

I really don’t wanna talk about how he died. It’s too painful. I feel sad to know we’re going to miss such an iconic bird. And I feel sorry for my two nieces and so many other children of my locality who have looked up to this bird as their role model and hero – A mascot of hope.

RIP Zika.

Chp 335. Advertising and stereotypes - where do we draw the line?

2011-01-28T11:03:00.004+05:30

These past few days, I’ve been watching a lot of TV. And every time the new Frito Lay’s cricket World Cup ad comes on TV, I cringe a bit. I find it quite irritating and always end up changing the channel whenever this ad comes on.

I know this is trivial. You can just consider this post a rant if you want. It may not even be racism, but it is offensive nonetheless. I can’t believe an agency like JWT would stoop this low to produce such cheap humor.

0:15 minute of the ad is what I find tasteless.

I mean… where’s the humor? That the guy who’s supposed to be a Nepali was so stupid that he didn’t even know Nepal’s not playing in the cricket World Cup?

Anyway, here is the gist of the campaign - Frito-Lay India Pvt. Ltd. has just launched their new commercial this month entitled “Kaun jeetega World Cup”. Six new flavours were launched - India, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Australia, England and South Africa.

Australia’s Herb ‘n’ Lime
South Africa’s Peri Peri Sauce
Sri Lanka’s Sweet Onion Sauce
England’s Grilled Cheese
West Indies’ Hot & Sweet Chilli
India’s Magic Masala

Pepsico launches six new Lay's flavours for the ICC World Cup

"We are the global snacks partner with the ICC World Cup in 2011. That's why we are building on this relationship. As a global snacks partner, we are leveraging the association to give consumer experiences and build our brand image," Pepsico Foods India Marketing Director Vidur Vyas told reporters.

The TVC script followed the usual routine without straying from the branding - Cast your brand ambassadors together, introduce the six new flavors, add elements of surprise, play the patriotic card, and so on and so forth. I have no issue with the ad, except for the one part mentioned above.

So everybody started shouting the names of different countries they support for the World Cup (which you realize later is actually the names of the flavors). And then one guy shouted Nepal, to which another person from the crowd slapped him and told him Nepal is not playing in the World Cup, in a very condescending tone.

I noticed it right then the dissimilarity in flow. The guy who shouted Nepal had mongoloid features, hence anybody would immediately assume he’s a Nepali. So I guess people of different nationalities were rooting for their respective countries. But the others who shouted England, etc do not look like people from such places at all. In fact they were all Indians.

In advertising, to make it easier and simple for people to understand, we usually feature stereotypes in our ads. This is definitely the part of my job I am not that proud of. When we do that, we are treading on very thin ice, especially when it comes to cultural identification in such a diverse country as India.

So many questions came up from the above incident alone. Why couldn’t it be somebody with an “Indian face” who shouted “Nepal”? Why did it have to be Nepal? Why couldn’t it be foreigners who were cheering for England etc?

And the most important question of all – why include that part in the first place? What did it achieve? It humiliated the guy and made him look stupid so that we could all laugh at him? The same way we always laugh at people with mongoloid features and call them watchmen, kanchha, momo? Humiliating people of Mongoloid origin is not something new even today.

And here’s one of the biggest misconceptions about Nepal. So many of them do not have mongoloid features at all. Nepal is a beautiful country, rich in culture and diversity. You will not be able to differentiate between many of them and “typical Indians” who are of the Aryan-Dravidian stock. But in many of the North Eastern states like Mizoram, Nagaland etc, the majority are of the Mongoloid stock. They are all Indians, but ironically, they’re the ones called Nepalis by others. If you’re from the NE, you would have definitely heard your fair share of crude “watchman jokes”.

See, I am not trying to stir up a worm’s nest or open a can of hornets here… whateva. I’m not going on a protest or hunger strike protesting this ad. I’m just trying to see it from a different perspective here, the way someone who is not from Nepal or the North East would see it. But if you’re from those places and you see this ad, those are the first thoughts that come flashing through your head. Not a very pleasant sight indeed.

Working in an ad agency, I know we have to do a lot of stuff we don’t particularly enjoy doing. For example, suppose you strongly believe that people should not be discriminated based on their skin color, and then comes along a cosmetic brand with pockets full of money. No matter which concept you give, the client will still want a concept that talks about how “being fair” is more beautiful than being dark-skinned.

Even if you refuse to touch the account due to your strong beliefs and principles, there will always be many others who are willing to take over and leave you behind in this dog-eat-dog world. One thing I have learnt from working in an agency – it is not for the meek at heart.

Don Draper from Mad Men puts this across beautifully. Season 4 Episode 9 – One of their main clients is Filmore Auto Parts. America at that time was still recovering from its dark history of discrimination. When Peggy and the others handling the account learnt that Filmore Auto Parts does not hire colored people, they approached their Creative Director Don Draper asking him why they are doing business with a racist company.

Don Draper replied, “Our job is to make men like Fillmore Auto, not Fillmore Auto like colored people.”

Deep!

Likewise, maybe it’s not JWT’s fault that the ad came out like this. Maybe it was the client who insisted on using that person to ridicule. Maybe it was just an innocent mistake – that they wanted to ridicule somebody but unfortunately that person happened to be somebody who had already been ridiculed almost every day of his life.

As an agency, where exactly do we draw the line when it comes to stereotypes? Yesterday it was about people with darker complexion and Sardarjis. Today it is about people with small eyes. Tomorrow… who knows? Of course if you ask the people involved, it usually leads nowhere -

Ask the ad agency why they are using such stereotypes and they will probably reply, “Look boss, I too want to change the mindset of the people and move away from all this stereotype bull$hit, but it is the client who wants it like this and there’s nothing we can do. If we don’t do it, he doesn’t pay us. It’s as simple as that. I’m sorry.”

Ask the client why he insists on this, and he will probably say, “You know how that hurts me too. But from our marketing research, that’s what people want to see. How can I show something that does not appeal to the people. If they don’t like it, they don’t buy my product. It’s as simple as that. I’m sorry.”

Ask the people why they want to see that, and they will probably reply, “Hey don’t blame us for having such a biased perception about people. It’s because of all those damn advertising agencies that keep feeding us with such nonsense.”

Ah… see? It leads to a three-way “chicken or egg” rhetorical circle, with no one knowing who lit the first spark. I’m just wondering how much further we will go before all this blows over. Rather than play the blame game, maybe it’s high time we draw a line somewhere. I don’t know how, I don’t know where.

Anyway, racial discrimination or not, this ad still makes me pretty uncomfortable and it is my prerogative to change the channels whenever this ad comes on. This action seems to be the only solution for now.

I’m ending this post with two beautiful music videos I came across yesterday –

One is called North East Star. It’s like the North East India version of an “Incredible India” ad. Awesome it is.

The other is called “Silent National Anthem” by Mudra. This is freaking amazing! Kudos Mudra. (Plus it sure feels good as hell to know one of my friends was one of the main brains behind this idea!)

Have a great weekend.