No(i)sy colleague

What do you say when you have a noisy colleague sit right next to you, who shouts whenever he is on the phone, who eats at his desk all the time, most of the time food that strongly smells, stands in the passage often and needs to be reminded to give some space for others to walk by to their desk, who stares at your monitor whenever he is out of work…
Worst of all, he uses “ok fine” so many times that it annoys you to hell coz it is just not ok and just not fine.

Pigs can’t fly.

Is this scare about the swine flu for real? Somehow my mind fails to comprehend the enormity and the reality of the scare, especially when only a handful of people have lost their lives to it. There are so many other burning issues, like droughts, famine, floods and AIDS, and we lose people by more than a dozen here, yet they have not created the sense of urgency as done by the H1N1.

I coaxed out the following reasons from my mind as to why I should continue to believe that all this paraphernalia about the swine flu is only a scare!

1. The manufacturers of Tamiflu, and the indigenous research organizations is to benefit from this.

2. How else can you make people flock to the doctors for a simple cold/cough or flu?

3. Get throat swabs etc. of people at airports, city entry exit points etc. and profile them to identify terrorist behavioral patterns.

4. Divert attention from the GDP decline, increase in prices and such  issues.

5. Discourage tourist income to other countries, and instead force people to enjoy vacations in their own country.

6. Even if the above reasons are not convincing..it is only a scare!!

General Nonsense

There are some people who can write absolute nonsense, day after day. But at the same time, this nonsense also sets you thinking, and leaves you amazed at the power of articulation this writer posesses.

One such writer I have admired is Scott Adams of the Dilbert fame. I was a fan of his daily strips long before his blog came into existence. Now, I am beginning to feel that his blog was the reason for many of the comic strips. He would have written a paragraph of nonsense, and then the idea in the nonsense crystallized into a doodle, which was later enhanced, or copy pasted by some great animation software.

There is one other Indian blogger who comes close to this. I am talking about krishashok. (http:// krishashok.wordpress.com) I am not yet elevating him to the status of Scott Adams, but how can somebody think up of so much delightful nonsense day in day out.

Most of time, these people are talking about everyday things. It is just the tangent at which they are thinking which makes you wonder that this alternative line of thought has a more constructive use than the original intended use.

The Police brush

It was a big white canvas.

Not a spot of guilt.

The first encounter was within their borders.

Documentation and I was in order.

But they dipped their brush in a pot of grease.

Wanted it coloured gold.

Cause the pages had a little crease.

Painted it with a silver speck.

So that it won’t show on the white deck.

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Still, the canvas was now jaundiced.

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But they say the cure could only be more plush,

Not just a stroke of the paint brush.

Greed overcame the Lord of this prey.

I tore my canvas and walked away.

Not a spot of guilt (on them)
Not a spot of guilt.(on ahem)

Catty About It

The following is an article that appeared in today’s news.

Once kitten, twice shy

Gardener of Malad society gets caught dumping four tiny kittens into creek; animal lover who had him booked hopes he won’t repeat it

By Anand Holla
Posted On Friday, January 23, 2009 at 02:22:52 AM

Gardener Sangappa Gawde holds a kitten after it was rescued
They are barely a month old and incapable of doing harm to anyone. But four stray kittens born to a cat at Malad’s Haridwar Housing Society were mercilessly dumped into the nearby creek. Fortunately, the tiny moggies still have eight lives to go, thanks to resident Irene Fernandes who spotted two of the society’s gardeners stuffing them into a gunny sack. Fernandes spotted the two men from her window at around 12 pm on Thursday, and rushed downstairs to find out what they were up to. One of the gardeners, Sangappa Gawde, ran towards the Malvani Creek with the sack. When he came back, Fernandes asked him what he’d done with the kittens, but he said he had no idea what she was talking about and that he’d only thrown some garbage into the creek. Fernandes then got in touch with local animal rights activist Bhavin Gathani, who rushed to the scene and informed the Bangur Nagar police about the incident. After booking Gawde under the Prevention of Cruelty Act, the police took him to the creek and asked him to show them where he had thrown the kittens. By 4 pm, the purring kittens were found unhurt and reunited with their mother. Bangur Nagar police said that the gardeners had committed the act at the behest of some society members who found the kittens to be a nuisance. “Had any of the kittens died, the accused could even be punished with five years imprisonment under the law,” warned Gathani. “If societies have a problem with strays dirtying their premises, they should approach the BMC, never take law into their own hands.” Irene’s daughter Dorin, who also helped bring the kittens back to safety, said, “Those who ordered the act will now have to appear before the court and pay a penalty of Rs 1,200. Even the police were very reluctant to help us out, but once we showed them the rulebook, they were forced to take action.” Cat’s like a good Samaritan.

It argues that the kittens are harmless, ask me about it !!
While I agree that killing them is an extreme action, and we do not have the right to take away a life, they are a menace. I can quote realms on how they get stuck on car wheels just below the bonnets, bite up wires, litter in the most unexpected of places, dirty scooter/car covers and scratch glass panes.
If you appeal to the other members of the society to stop encouraging them by feeding or petting them, they pose the argument that the cats are God’s own creatures and it is an act of salvation to take care of them.
BMC Appeals .. are they a solution? Somebody quote me an instance when the municipality has sprung into action and cleared the premises of these creatures.

All this leaves me wishing that all the cats will disappear one day, even if accidentally, under my car wheels.

What is it with ladies and their clutches?

In school and the growing up years, the little girls had “neatly folded into a square” handkerchieves always in their hands.

College goers had a file of papers or notebooks in their arms all the time..irrespective of how much of it they actually read.

Not so long ago, it was the saree pallu or the front V of the thupatta that they used to clutch or pull continuously while walking/talking/eating/..

Of late, the cell phone is the constant companion. They have to carry it with them everywhere, to the cafeteria, to the loo, to the meeting, to the bus stop and keep it clutched in their hands all the while!

I personally like a pair of free hands. (i.e ones that don’t toss the hair from left to right, and right to left ever so often)

Social N/W Sites an intrusion!

How true it is when people debate about the relevance of social networking sites. It depends all upon the user. I find them an intrusion into my time. If there are people I wish to be/ they wish to be in contact with, we will anyways. In this age of emails, landlines and cellphones and smses and the snail posts, does not require one additional medium. Why am I suddenly irked with this bright invention of some brighter engineers, after having enjoyed the benefits for quite a while now?When boredom visits like a stork, all I end up doing is browsing other peoples’ lives on Orkut/Facebook..through their photo albums, scrapbooks, profiles and the like. What do I gain from here…sometimes awestruck with people’s luck/fate, irrelevant unnecessary good-for-nothing gossip and a peek-a-boo into their recent lives. Agreed I got in touch with a lot of people whom I had lost track of somewhere on the way; but then henceforth if I want to remain in touch with someone, I would rather do it consciously than just being another e-trophy.