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Toy story II

Flashback
It seems not so long ago, say 15 -20 yrs ago, I would spend nights dreaming about a funky gadgets like a remote controlled helicopter, walkie talkie that works, remote controlled butterfly, gravity defying car that can climb walls, tread upside down on ceilings, or may be my own personal robot, which can respond to my speech, may be can do a few body movements.

Well then, I did scout all neighbourhood toy stores, so that even If I chance upon anything close, I could sulk my way into getting parents to buy them. Not easy,but atleast the toy existed for me to aspire to buy it.But the best any shop had to offer was the imported remote controlled car that came with a reasonably expensive price tag, mostly stacked amidst the innumerable funskool board games.

Back to present.
Why toys all of a sudden you might wonder?. The youngest of my little cousin brother is now well into his college years. It has been a while since toys made their appearance at home. A chance visit to Heera Panna (Mumbai's very own grey market for gadgets) and a few toys shops we strolled by had some very interesting gadgets to offer at throwaway prices. Check the roster

• RC controlled helicopter (upto 30ft) - Rs 1500
• Walkie talkie (upto 250ft) - Rs 300
• RC controlled butterfly - Rs 3000
• Robot with speech recognition - Rs 4000

For a moment, I was so tempted to relive my childhood again, only If I count time travel back a couple of decades- just me & little backpack full of toys.

Common TV Games 2010

It is one of those days of the month, when you feel the TV remote is worth fighting for. May be just only  to watch rhythmic gymnastics or synchronised swimming. Ok. both are telecast on DD Urdu, which we don't have a subscription to. Fine at least when you want to savor the patriotic fervour, while watching Ashwini ponnapa (of earrings & nose rings, thanks wife for bringing that to my notice) & Jwala Gutta (Thanks again for Azhar connection) win gold. Gosh! where was I?. Yeh, savoring the patriotic fervour of seeing Indian sporting greats getting the better of or  at least giving a tough fight to Aus & English school games champions. and finally at prime time 10 pm - 11 pm, when nothing else to show, watch Cooks islands beat Isle of Man in a thrilling game of lawn bowls. Man, 5% of the population participating in the games. some GDP (%) growth, what with all the free food, free flights .etc. 

Well, interesting as it may seem to me. But wife for company, TV remote possession mostly ranged between 35% in first half to 45% in the second half of the evening. Very little I can do, when you are up against the big boss of the house, I meant the serial of course. C'mon the game of lawn bowls moves on faster than big boss. Especially, when Swetha Tewari & Sara khan spend a whole hour trying to feed a sulking Seema Parihar to drink a cup of tea specially made for her. Wah! Sisterhood at its best. Helpless me finally found support only from shiv sena aligned cable operators, who blacked out colors channel, just in the nick of time. But I am sure an army of housewives would have gheraoed them and ensured the channel is restored by now.

KBC on sony is a fresh new window of opportunity. May be just to divide loyalties between channels. you remember divide & rule. British East India, yeh just like that. But I am not sure it is going to work.

Atleast closing ceremony comes with shared interest. No obstacles expected. what with a host of celebrities performing just like in the repeat telecast of film fare awards on Sundays. Very interesting :)

Till the Sodexho comes home

It is well known, Shopping to women mean more than just buying. Various studies have shown the percentage of disposable income spent by men vs women on shopping. The number of km that women on an average weekend traverse in shopping malls in search of a good bargain. Well, ubiquitous it may seem with all women. 

I have an interesting observation to share. A coffee table discussion with colleagues at office, lead me to believe my recent experience is not so unique after all. Well, the experience is about my monthly sodexho coupons.

Come beginning of new month. Wife is very eager to know, when the SODEXHO coupons are coming. Joy of affirmation is accompanied by dreams weekend of shopping, as you know you don't pay money for what you buy. Its an altogether different story, that sodexho is still part of the CTC. But at a subconscious level to wife, sodexho is not money. Its a steal, a great bargain and subsequently great joy.It appeals to certain  instincts that delve deep in the psyche of women.   

The monthly grocery shopping can always wait till sodexho comes home.

Thoughts of the day

1) Good bye Sania, Welcome Saina! - An Indian at World no 3 in a popular sport involving skill & stamina, hats off!!. Just in case you forgot, Sania is currently ranked some 112 and going down. Hoping she just takes shaoib malik along with her as well. You know where, DOWN :).

2) Soccer widows call for boycott of samsung products - Move over WAGs (wives & girlfriends), the latest jargon from the world of football. "Soccer Widows" - the bored & frustrated wife to whom her 24 x 7 football crazy husband is as good as dead. A good way to take revenge is boycotting the main sponsor of FIFA 2010 world cup. Hehe! I am sure many husbands & wives reading this out there would agree :)

3) Look Hu is supporting the nuclear deal - This is what a surprised indian journalist uttered on finding out Hu Jintao, chinese premier is supporting India's nuclear deal with US.

Drama in real life!

Avid bollywood followers would remember, not so long ago, there was supposedly funny film with an outrageous storyline called AAGE SE RIGHT. Basically it was about a policeman's search for a lost GUN with a Bajrangbali sticker on it.  Who on earth could have imagined such a stupid idea for a movie!

But all this drama has been relived in the last week. Cops from UP in pursuit of a gang of thugs, chase running across the state. Finally caught, they recover little else from the thugs but a GUN. After using 3rd degree methods of torture, the thugs confess that the GUN belongs to one Rakhee in Mumbai. UP Cops sensing a golden opportunity announce that the gun belongs to Rakhee Sawant. May be just for an opportunity to interrogate their favourite leading lady, using may be first or second degree methods :D

Soon the news is out in the media, Paparazzi in their hero honda splendour chase our beauty queen all the way from wadala to goregaon. finally cornering her in the traffic jam.

Rakhee proclaims in her typical style that "she herself is a gun and whats the need for another one. Despite the many threats she had recieved so far, she has lived bravely all these days". Now thats a spectacular statement, making its way directly into BREAKING news on INDIA TV.

Among those watching TV, that afternoon was one yesteryear actress going by name Rakhee Gulzar. long forgotten by the media, she decides do something more spectacular. She files a complaint that the gun belongs not to Rakhee Sawant but Rakhee Gulzar and she had lost that along with Rs 7 lac cash. Our poor cops, feign ignorance about any cash recovery. One being asked to show the gun license, she claimed its a toy gun presented to her by Salman khan's dad (salim khan).  Now the twist had to be there, atleast to ensure Salman's guest appearance if  not a full movie role.

Even as this Rakhee vs Rakhee issue is being played out on media. I wonder what is going to be the next twist in the tale :)

Watch the story LIVE as it unfolds :D

The world this week for microbes in my small intestine

The battlelines are clearly drawn.  First it was the gram positive bacteria setting up bunkers on the northern flank, a couple of rounds of cephalosporins shells every morning & evening were fired for 5 straight days, to inflict lethal damage. So devastating were the daisy cutters, that they nearly wiped out the entire civization of the bacillus kind. Well! these included some lacto bacillus who succumbed to the friendly fire. 

This has definitely disrupted the microbial eco system. The lesser species of fungus found abundant resources in the main guts and arteries running across the body. No longer they needed to scavenge in the nooks & corners of the body, left out of bacterial occupation. Rearing their ugly heads, they have turned out the unforseen menace. Cephalosporins were not saints themselves, the world had long forgetten that they are also fungi, trained as foot soldiers to fight the mightly bacteria, by one Alexander Fleming one century ago. 

Now my body faces an internal civil war, between the fungi and patriotic antibodies. The anti bodies are fighting a losing battle against the sea of fungi. Now I have no choice but to hit the fungi, using who else bacteria. Probiotic bacteria  infiltrated the fungi in large numbers, devouring the unsuspecting fungi within a matter of few days. With such a good appetite developed and little fungi left, it is just  a matter of time, before they turn gram positive and become the unwanted pest.

As the battle continues, my small intestine survives one more day to tell the story as it unfolds ...

Matheran of many seasons

June 15th is one big day, I am really looking forward to. Well, that's approximately, when Mumbai and surrounding areas receive the first showers of the season. With showers, come flooded roads, broken umbrellas and stinky train compartments. But with it also comes transformation, its green green everywhere.

Best place to witness this transformation is Matheran. How can such a beautiful place be so easily accesible to residents of Mumbai, with a local train available once every hour to ferry you to this wonderland in mere 90 minutes for as little as Rs. 27. I think residents of big cities need to work harder and spend a lot more time & money to deserve this.

What excites me so much even today- after more than 7 odd trips in the last 3 years visiting the same place. Even if the destination if same, the routes can be different. Trust me, there are 10 different trekking routes to reach the hill top, each promising a unique adventure, I have tried only 2 thus far. 

Matheran looks completely different in different times of the year.

Matheran in April  is mostly, about the whiteness of the dried grassy slopes mixed with the black and brown shades of the rockly base.

Matheran in July is when , everything turns green, waterfalls and misty skies add a spectacular feeling to this wonderful ambience

Matheran in October - post rains, the flowers bloom. Yellow blooms intermingling with grassy slopes, along with the azure blue sky, Matheran has a charm of its own.

I am very excited this time around, its not the route, its not the season, its not the flowers, it is just that I have special someone to accompany me to this favourite place of mine.

Come rains, Come quickly!

The Last One

To the one who never was,

Adieu!

Around the world in 21 days

Due respects to Jules Verne & Jackie Chan, forget 88 days, 21 days were no less Challenging. Especially when key highlights on flight journey were comparison between  the turbulence on atlantic and the pacific. Well, add to that jet lag in san francisco and a severe tan in Langkawi & Singapore, it would make one hell of a journey around the world.

Well, its good to wind up with the complaints, before I go on and on and on about these most exciting past 3 weeks of my life.

May be it was destined. I travelled little else around the world until 3 weeks ago,except the one off ethiopia trip last year. But something happened 3 weeks ago. Yay! I got married. Now I know it was destiny's way of ensuring, no evil foriegn lady's eye was set on this cute indian boy, until he is bethrothed to his designated Indian bride . Okie, the cute bit is debatable, lets leave it for another discussion :).

Another important debate, how is a honeymoon meant to be spent?.  just lazing around gazing at the sea, trees and each other? or should it be like ... scan the map, rent a bike, select & choose the most quirkiest of destinations and VROOM you go exploring the unknown .. columbus here I come.  No prizes for guessing, which one I would have chosen.

Stop - 1 Langkawi : blue sea and white sand are not works of art using adobe photoshop, as I had thought earlier. I swear on the tribal gods of the andaman sea, they are really blue (turqouise or aquamarine I am not sure) and white respectively.

Stop 1.1 : must check out place - Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai beach and islands, we even went kayaking around the little rocky islands jetting out of the sea. worth a dekko :). much of the island is on a lagoon, so the depth of water even 1 km off coast will be little less than 3 feet. 

"So fear not the DROWNING, go do the KAYAKING"

Stop 1.2:  DON movie climax on a hanging bridge. ofcourse, its the new one with shahrukh and priyanka chopra. The cable car and sky bridge are one of their kind.

Lunch break : Malay language is 60% sanskrit, 20% tamil and i guess another 20% chinese(madarin). Lang-KAWI meaning - Lang - eagle in chinese and KAWI is brown in sanskrit. so communication is never an issue, except when you want to make it clear that you  want PURE vegetarian food. Nasi Lemak which is rice mixed with coconut and steamed in a plaintain leaf, is the author's recommendation. but please dont try any of the side dishes, even vegetables are usually cooked in fish oil, too much of chinese influence i suppose.

Stop 2: Singapuraaaaaaaa! Hitech Maaan!  The Ticket vending machines take the first prize, escalators get the second and Sim Lim Square mall third prize - for selling china made electronic gadgets for prices cheaper than an average lunch or dinner.The city is soo tourist friendly, you can't help but put in good word about ordinary places. Sentosa is the expensive cousin of disney land. Have money. Splurge!. Jurong bird park was simply mind blowing, for once somebody got the idea that birds can be far more interesting than animals, especially when there are zoos everywhere, even in afghanisthan.

Stop 3: Hong kong - biggest airport I have seen till date. 80 departure/ arrival gates and an entire island dedicated to the airport ??? huh.  Now I know, where all the 600 odd aircrafts in china operate out of. (compared to 200 odd aircrafts in india). Every 5 minutes a flight takes off to beijing and every 3 minutes China Airlines operates a flight to somewhere. In the meanwhile, the billion odd chinese with similar looking faces and the same pale white complexion are seen humming the ichypichy mandarin as they swarm in and out like worker ants to and from the departure gates. But to their credit, these chinese are all so well dressed compared to the indians, even the poor ones don't look so poor. A wise man once said, Give them a billion Mao suits, they will all look alike and neat :). Well Gandhiji should have thought of a similar high volume bottom of the pyramid strategy for his khadi suits. I guess all his plans faded away with his rhetoric. I still feel a cringe in my stomach, believe me its got nothing to do with china's success story vis a vis India, it is just the hours spent on layover in hong kong. It is just the hunger that I felt, when I didnt find anything vegetarian at all. not even sandwiches & burgers at even starbucks, burger king or ne other ones.

Stop 4: San francisco. The land of many promises. the gold in the 19th century for the europeans, cheap labour for chinese in the early 20th century and IT jobs in silicon valley for Indians more recently. Right from immigration to the hotel desk, the coldness and mean streak that most americans wear with such pride, was the biggest let down for me. Hospitality! where art thou ???. California and New york are more expensive than the average american city, so lets not get into the usual discussion of taxes, insurance and rupee converted savings here. What is nice then ?. it is how even small tit bits of their short history, say 200 years, these americans preserve with such effort.

Suddenly, the old & rusted tram ride up and down the hill is the most important on the TODO list even charging a huge premium. You make a world famous bridge, out of your regular hanging bridge by painting it red instead of the pale grey. Golden gate bridge. Take a Bow. 

But still, there is no taking away credit for the tallest trees in the world at Muir Woods, they would not have grown anywhere else in the world. A ride on the downtown public transportation  is good learning experience about the american way of life - african americans, chinese, whites, indians & pakis, each with their own cultural metaphors so evident in their 5 minute journey period. But all together they say in unison, we are AMEARICAANS with that twang, which I can never imitate well. Ohh yeh, the beggars, many more than you would find in a typical market place in India. Each with their own unique begging call  varying from an eminem like rap song to a street musician playing mostly jazz with sax and guitar, not the regular pop & rock mind you.

Another 20 hours later, I am back to Home, Sweet, Home in aamchi mumbai, only the second place I call home, ofcourse after Bangalore. It has not be long since I am back in Mumbai. spent a couple of hours reliving the last 3 weeks and another 1 hour penning them down.

Cheers.