What do Indian software engineers and porters at railway stations have in common?
When they meet each other, the first question they ask is “What platform do you work on?”
Heard in passing…
Etc.
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Jan 272005
Serves you right…
Life
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Jan 272005
My parents and I had been to a puja at a friends place, and they had catered food from an Indian restaurant called Madras Café. That reminded me of something.
Lavanya, Manoj and I had been there a while back. It had opened up about a year ago, and over time, the food had gone from above-average to bad, and I heard they had lost their chef. So we hadn’t been there in a while. But it was the only South Indian fare in town and sometimes you have this overwhelming urge to eat dosas.
We go in, and a waiter we hadn’t seen before seats us. He brings us water, and I ask him if he was new. He tells us he runs the place with his brother. Then we order Sambar Vadas with a little bit of trepidation, because on three past visits, the sambar had tasted stale.
So imagine our surprise when the Vadas were actually quite delicious. I was so pleased, that when the waiter came next to fill water I start up a conversation with him:
“The vadas are good today. The sambar has a different flavor.”
“Thank you. Must be the new chef we got.”
“Oh ok, that explains it. The old chef sucked big time, his sambar was atrocious. I’m glad you got rid of him.”
“I was the old chef.”
We hurriedly finished our food, and havent been there since. Plus, they opened a new restaurant called India South nearby. Oh, and whenever we go there, Lavanya does most of the talking.
Jan 262005
An old Jhumpa Lahiri short story that appeared in the New Yorker, that I dug out from my bookmarks. Not a bad read. She writes well, but the whole “Travails of a Bengali Family in the US” routine is starting to become a little boring.
Did I hear that right?
Etc.
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Jan 262005
If you thought this was funny, here are some more jokes for you…
Look here. Yeah, you’re right, a picture, like in one of them comics. Isnt that hilarious? Why, there are so many such funny pictures like this, it’ like an entire collection of comics.
After you are done, you should go to this blog and write to the advertisers, so that they can sponsor more such hilariously funny clips. And while you are at it, condemn the radio station for being such spoilsports and suspending Miss Jones.
And then rot in hell.
PS : Music For America has some excerpts.
Update : They just suspended the radio show indefinitely.
Sprint and McDonalds suspend their ads, from hiphopmusic.com , which I found through Navin’s blog. Nice.
Jan 242005
Finally, the Straight Dope on a question that I lost so much sleep over. Apparently, whether you walk or run, it’s the amount of time you do it that counts.
Now that I know this, I am gonna start working out tomorrow. Yup. Seriously. Meanwhile, if you get one of these , please send me an email right away. I know a guy who used to be the personal banker of your rich uncle in Nigeria that wants to get in touch with you.
More Conceit
Movies
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Jan 232005
This can be hard to believe, but you have to trust me (and this source)
Ajith Kumar’s next movie is called God Father to be directed by K.S.Ravikumar. No, don’t start laughing yet. Funny as it may sound, that’s not the joke. Supposedly this movie is based on the real GodFather. And Ajith Kumar is studying Al Pacino’s “body language and mannerism” so that he can act just like him. Bwahahaha.
This’s got to be the funniest thing that happened this week. Remember K. Balachander? The ultimate talent scout who introduced both Kamalhassan and Rajinikanth to tamil cinema. Visu’s sole competitor for the honor of having every movie of his feel like a stage drama. The guy that introduced numerous novel concepts to Tamil cinema … Like using a hand to tear days off a calendar to signify the passage of time. Or using rapid shots of an assortment of news magazines to signify (you got it) the passage of time. Yeah, that guy.
So he watches the latest big blockbuster in Tamil — a sensitive movie called Kadhal that has won rave reviews. Impressed, he praises the director. And then tells the heroine Sandhya, “You are the next Saritha.” Saritha? Ok. Whatever.
Later he talks to the press and deplores the state of Tamil movies today. Says movies are becoming vulgar. And then follows up with the punch line for his joke: “I will make a movie like Maro Charitra to rescue Tamil cinema from the depths to which it has sunk.” I laughed hard, then read the comment again, and laughed hard again. If you dont get the joke, go watch Kalki. Or Duet. Or any of his 90 other movies.
Since then, the movie has been announced
Cardkeys of the Future
Uncategorized
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Jan 232005
I love the Science and Technology content that the Economist offers, culling neat ideas from all over the world, and explaining them lucidly. Here’s one I thought was especially smart.
Cardkey readers are ubiquitous at almost every office building in America, and the cost of running wires when you want to add an extra card key reader can be prohibitive. December’s technology page has this stunnigly simple idea to make card key based systems cheaper: Just make the cards part of the network. A cool application of the idea of decentralized networking.
Read more at Economist.com Technology Quarterly
Jan 232005
Ok, a horny dude checks out some Latino websites, and comes across a video of someone bathing. When replaying the video for the 19th time, he realizes with a gasp that the girl in the video bears more than a passing resemblance to Trisha, a popular Tamil actress. So horny dude forwards said video to his equally horny friends. Friends forward some more, and in all the frenzy the Trisha look-alike video gets magically transformed into the Stolen Trisha Bathing video. One of the friends was very kind by nature, and so he posts the video on some website, and soon the video is the most popular Tamil movie of all time, beating Padayappa hands down. Hmm… maybe not, but almost. Wait, please read the whole blog before you go googling for the video.
Now since Trisha doesn’t watch Indian movies, she had no idea all this was happening. Until some loser that does watch Indian movies brings this “Indian” movie to her mom’s attention. Livid mom goes to the media, and over a two-week period, makes a series of statements that provided an immense amount of publicity to the movie in question. And some comic relief to people who wanted a break after repeatedly watching the same two-minute clip. Among other things, she claimed (with a hint of pride) that the girl couldn’t be Trisha, because she was strewing her clothes around in the bathroom I don’t know about you, but that increased my respect for Trisha.
Finally, Trisha threatens to complain to the police, and collections skyrocket some more. In fact, this is the highest grosser of all Trisha movies. As in all of her other movies, Trisha didn’t act in this one either.
Now the newspapers and magazines join (birthday) suit. Almost every newspaper worth its salt carried the story, although the respected ones used small typeface to maintain their reputation. (No, the Hindu is not worth its salt.) Finally, a tech-savvy editor figured out how to make screenshots and published them in his magazine, only to get arrested. One of the “investigative” journals went on to claim that the movie was shot in Hyderabad using a micro-camera and that a member of (who else?) the mafia did it. Wow! Sure, the original horny dude could have been Telugu, but to call him the mafia is a bit of exaggeration I wish I had thought of first. Link here.
Last I heard, the police were using “body-structure experts” to figure out if the girl is indeed Trisha. As a side note, have you ever wondered what the coolest job in the world was?
PS: Someone got a link to the video? You can only gather so much from grainy screenshots.
PPS: No, I don’t have the grainy screenshots anymore.
