What would you have done?

There I was, sitting by myself in a corner with my laptop, playing those games I am addicted to. In a misguided attempt to ease myself out of the addictions, I set all my attention-seeking Tamagotchi-style games on quests which keep them off my hands for hours and hours.

With no farms to tend to and no stoves to clear, I was listless. Therefore, I decided to play Scrabble. Online of course. Surely you didn’t think I was going to play on an old fashioned board with a real human being sitting in front of me! Think of it… One would have to pick up tiles with bare hands and move them on to the board, bearing in mind that one errant finger could upset the entire board. All that stress…

Anyhow, since my regular scrabble mate (a very, very competent one at that) was asleep in another continent, I decided to play with strangers. How bad could it be, I thought. I systematically researched the available players and picked one with stats comparable to mine. As my luck dictated, just the very second that I clicked the play button, the players reshuffled and I was caught in a casual game with a beginner instead. Not just any beginner. A complete beginner – as stats showed she had played exactly one game before and lost.

I decided to proceed with this one nevertheless, and tried to pick another player I could play a decent game with. Guess what? The exact same thing happened with players changing just as I clicked, prompting yet another game with yet another beginner. This one slightly better, with a total online experience on that site of three games, out of which only two she’d lost.

Hoping fervently that these two persons had either just reset their stats, or at least had enough experience playing Scrabble in real life, I continued. That wasn’t to be. The poor kids (/ girls/ women/ males-masquerading-as-females, whatever) were so, soo, sooo naive in playing the game. Placing tiny baby words, not taking advantage of the special squares, leaving me with a wide choice of  triple-word-score spots to pick from.

In addition to that, my tiles on both boards were absolutely fantabulous. Great mix of vowels and consonants – high scoring at that; a bingo here, a bingo there. And after the first three moves on each board, I knew I was at a huge advantage. Which prompted the angel (yes, angel. I insist) in me to surface and play down to their levels – deliberately passing up the opportunity to  place high scoring words, offering the use of high score squares to them, etc.

In other words, I was patronising them through out the game. Now I can’t help but wonder if I did the right thing. As in, giving them such concessions isn’t in keeping with the spirit of a game; is it? Not to mention it was rather unfair on me, considering I was trying so hard after so long to wrangle a bit of intellectual stimulation, and ended up spelling rat, cat, mat as opposed to myotic, gizmo and evzone.

What would you have done?

(a) Been “kind” to the stranger, but petulantly whinged about it later to your unsuspecting readers

(b) Been kind to the stranger, derived your kicks out of how wonderful a person you are; stopping to admire your halo in the mirror at every possible opportunity

(c) Gone full monty with your game, availing yourself of every possible double/ triple letter/ word scores on the board, while humming a slightly off key version of Another One Bites The Dust

(d) Never gotten into a situation like this, ever. You would work on a sudoku or a cryptic crossword if you were looking for intellectual stimulation

Tell me. I want to know.

Psst psst…

I have a secret. A rather dirty little secret. Actually, make that a dirty little open secret.

I’m addicted to Facebook. Big time. Don’t get me wrong here. The addiction is not related to keeping tab on the latest super-cool things my “friends” have been up to and are bragging about. In fact, my friends seem to wish I respond or at least react to their personal updates. I’m not into that at all. It’s too open for much friendly interactions. I rarely get the urge to surface and say hello to buddies. Although, I must admit that I am often tempted to write “HOT NEWS. You’ll never guess! Abso amazing. Mailing in detail.” on somebody’s wall, just to see how curious mutual friends will get. But that’s besides the point.

The things which have caught my fancy (and are stubbornly refusing to let go of it) are games. At present, there are two games I’m into full time and one I sort of drift into and out of. All of them bloody mind-numbing, but I seem to find some sort of ridiculous pleasure in repeatedly clicking hyperlinks dressed as buttons.

Remember that list of things I said I did as a Lady of Leisure? I don’t do any of those things anymore. These days, it is a wonder if I were functional enough to make a cup of coffee without absentmindedly dropping a teabag in it. I miss good coffee. Hence, I need therapy. Sigh!

Moving

After that rant, a rather decent place to live was found. This is the moving weekend. We are at that point in the moving process where stuff is strewn around both the old and new flats. Lots and lots of stuff. I’m amazed how all the stuff fit in neatly – alright, alright! Scratch neatly out – in the old flat at all. To think we entered this country with a mere 23 + 7 kgs each…

Some very eminent bloggers have written about how they re-discovered all the things they never remembered they even possessed. I was amused by their eloquent exaggeration. Now, I realise, they weren’t exaggerating!

There are so many things I don’t know the origin of, I tell you. For instance, while clearing a draw, I found a tiny zip-lock cover with bluish-green sequins. I can only guess they were given as a spare along with an apparel with similar sequins. However, try as I might, I’m unable to remember having bought such a garment (or shoes or bag).

Lets take another example. Hair serums and sprays and bands and clips. Man! I had actually been wanting to buy some of those things that I found in my draw. Quite a nice thrill to find them. I even found a tiny nut and a bolt that had been missing from one of my pairs of sun-glasses.

On a tangentially related note, it would be nice if someone can remind me exactly why I buy all those (pretty) bracelets when all the jewellery I wear are earrings, and perhaps an occasional necklace.

Moving on to the kitchen, how many types of sweetening agents do you think one family of two would need? I had five types of sugars alone – white, caster, icing, molasses, low cal substitute. That doesn’t include honey, golden syrup, dark brown jaggery and light brown jaggery.

Then there is this cartload of wires I discovered in draws and shelves all over the house. In this era of electronics, one really doesn’t dare throw away any wire with a USB lead on one end, I guess.

Phone chargers. Sum-total of 3 phones, but about 5 chargers. Do they breed in those dingy draws or what?

I haven’t dared to go near the broom closet yet. There are about 14 shoe boxes. Then, other small cartons that some other gadgets came in. I wonder what each of those boxes will yield.

I also wonder whether there would be enough space in the new flat. I know, I know! I ought to throw things I haven’t used for a while (or even ever) away. But what if I find that skirt with blue-green sequins in some corner?

Passport Patrol

Have you caught these reality shows on telly where they give a fly-on-the-wall view of what goes on in immigration and customs of different countries? For most part I find the shows quite entertaining.

Cracking down on smugglers, illegal immigrants, people abusing their visa conditions… The baddies’ ingenuity in bending, or breaking the rules outright, is fascinating. And the border force’s diligence, in identifying and catching out such people and groups, is equally stirring.

Australia and New Zealand apparently have the strictest immigration laws. The rule I found a bit weird is this – if you bring food, you have to declare it. Pickles, Maggi noodles or tuvar dal doesn’t matter. I don’t know the exact duty conditions, but if you dare to bring food, then you face repercussions. I find that super strange. Yet, their country. Their rules. So, that really wasn’t on my mind enough to invoke an opinion.

Now this afternoon, that changed. The opinion part, I mean. In today’s show, I saw a set of people arrive in New Zealand after a long haul flight. (Qantas, if I remember right) Most of those people brought with them apples that they were given on the flight shortly before they landed. They didn’t pack it in their bags; hence these apples were undeclared.

And guess what? They were not allowed to simply bin the uneaten apple once they disembarked. All these passengers were fined 200 New Zealand Dollars each for having brought the offending apples from the aircraft to their precious piece of land! Some of the poor passengers protested loudly at the absurdity; some even started crying in their frustration. The officials just said “Rules are rules”, and insisted on fines. Isn’t that way too over the top? I think this is a classic case of Zero Tolerance Gone Mad.

If you want to know what happened to those shiny red apples, the camera panned into a waste bin with scores of apples. And the voice over said that this is a regular occurrence in NZ immigration – passengers bring in uneaten food from the flights; the perfectly good food is thrown away; the passengers are fined since “Rules are rules”.

I can understand that hazards are posed by food with bugs; the harm it can cause to crops and all that. Sure, be vigilant. But how is 200 NZ Dollars fine for an apple fair? Also, how do these people stand such blatant waste of food? It is plain wrong. I still am very, very annoyed. Shouldn’t somebody, somewhere do something about this?

Wired Wrong

I realize that there is something strange about me. My South-Indian community just might disown me when they find out. I’m taking that risk in order to be truthful here.

Here goes. I like cold food. Not just any cold food. Cold South-Indian food! My folks just MUST have piping hot rasam everyday. And I, just don’t care for it. Vatha-kozhambu which is about room temperature appeals to me much more than when its hot. Chilled, spicy potato roast with chilled pumpkin thogayal is a combination to die for. I love to eat cup after cup of chilled tadka dal. Or dal makhni for that matter.

Alright. The last two weren’t exactly South-Indian. Yet, isn’t this weird? Something is very wrong indeed.

Sarvam

This is not exactly a movie review. I happened to watch this movie over the weekend. And I quite did like it. In fact, so totally loved it in parts, that I am unable to resist the urge to talk about it here.

Of course, as seems to be the pre-requisite for any Tamil movie, it has its own share of flaws in the logic department, and gaps in the storyline. If you are willing to suspend your disbelief, you could enjoy the show. That is not so difficult either, trust me – nothing as ridiculous as  jumping off buildings onto moving trains half a kilometer away.

And in the first half, this movie is sweet, but not at all in a way that would invoke one’s gag-reflex. Predictable here and there, yet that only put a smile on my lips in anticipation. Who knew Arya could look nearly as romantic as Surya in Gajini? This is truly the first movie in which I thought Trisha looked fresh, pretty and did a good job of playing part.

The screenplay and dialogues were for most part light-hearted. One huge plus point is, there are no traditional comedians in the movie, spewing out their crass, oh-so-last-decade double-entendres. The leads handled the comedy with such perfect timing that there were several laugh-out-loud moments.

Beyond everything else, what I absolutely loved about this one was the camera work, and the colours it captured. It was visually enthralling. The songs were rather nicely done, with innovation thrown in for good measure. In the non-song parts, everything was neat and clean and rich-looking. Sanitised is the word.

Some might say that it is a bit removed from reality, but so what? I like my movies to be funny, upbeat and visually appealing. Call me escapist, but the truth is I do not care to spend money or time to watch people slumming it on screen.

I sort of hate it if there is a pointless death like in Dead Poet’s Society. I’m a weird sort who refused to watch Titanic until my brother forced me to watch it on Star Movies a few years after it was released. Even then, once the ship hit the iceberg I went to sleep! Good guys (or gals) in movies should not die; recently I have revised that to add the following clause – unless the story depends heavily on it.

Guess I’ll never ever make it into the Oscar committee. Sigh! I’ll have to live with that.

Cultural Baggage

Until very recently – and by that, I mean about a year-ish – I never took to convertibles. Now, I’ve turned normal and savvy and posh. As in, I think convertibles are alright. When I see one zipping past, I can make the appropriate sounds, and do the motions like swivel my head around until I can’t see it anymore and all that.

However before this, I didn’t find them even remotely cool. They seemed quite graceless, on the contrary. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about at all. And it just dawned on me that my former indifference, or even aversion, to these beauties stemmed from cultural baggage!

Fond as my memories are of the South Indian wedding ceremonies I attended through the years, I’ll have to blame the Jaanavaasa car for this prejudice of mine. Jaanavaasam is this function typically performed on the evening before the wedding. I’m a bit fuzzy on the details of the significance. Never mind that.

The matter of the chapter is that this Jaanavaasam starts with the groom and some random children being stuffed into an open-top car. This open-top car is invariably

• a very old, fire-engine red Herald, with a nose longer than that rascal Pinocchio’s and coir-stuffed rexin seats (like in autos)
• the bonnet and sides of which are decorated with several unravelling strands of fragrant jasmine, fluffy chrysanthemums, vibrant orange kanakambaram, purple vaadamalli, and some other flowers of various colours and shades (Sadly though, due to the heat, they are all mostly wilting)
• crawling at a pace of about 3 kmph amidst people who walk around the car, cheering (or jeering, who can tell!) the groom
• blocking traffic on the roads completely, since the entourage additionally includes
  • a performing band (or a traditional naadaswaram party or both, depending on the level of sophistication of the families) moving in front of the car
  • lots & lots of middle-aged, slow-moving adults screaming to be heard over the ‘music’
  • children, who didn’t have the luck to be stuffed in the car, darting about
• driven by this poor man who has to strike the precarious balance between making sure the engine doesn’t stall, and not running over people’s toes, and not getting yelled for he increasing his speed to 3.1 kmph

Therefore, I guess, the word convertible never brought to my mind ‘fast’ or ‘cool’ or ‘exciting’ or ‘wind in hair’. It was sheer torture of the din and the lack of space that swamped over all other picturisations. Also, who would be mad enough to want a convertible in hot, humid Madras?

I don’t know exactly when or why or how I realised that convertibles were actually covetable. It just happened. I’m now wondering what other niceties I’m missing out on unconsciously.

So, does cultural baggage affect you? I’d love to hear. Do drop me a line, or more.

Document Review

A few days ago, He-Who-Does-Not-Want-To-Be-Named-Here came up to me with a request. He wanted me to take a look at an official document he was reviewing, which was meant to be sent out to a client. He asked me to merely assess whether he was within his rights to throw his hands up in the air and wail in despair. (He is somewhat pacifistic. Under similar circumstances, I’d be raging to call a firing squad against the offenders)

I went. I saw. I screamed. What a load of tosh it was! I know the following lines will make me sound about a hundred and twenty years old. Yet, they must be said: in my days, people were just NOT allowed to send out such pointless nonsense. We used to strive to get the words, grammar and content right. And crisp. I am not saying it was all top notch. However it was never this terrible either. We had a sense of pride and satisfaction about a job done well.

Quest for Rentals

Here in England, I live in this upscale, well-maintained apartment complex, in a good sized two double-bedroom apartment, with one bath and one en-suite. The problem is that it is on the wrong side of the tracks – the approach has this slightly decrepit feel about it.

One gets used to it. Especially the corner shop to which you can run, for all emergency supplies from fresh milk to karelas. Yup! One of those ubiquitous shops from our own sub-continent run by illustrious 3rd/ 4th generation Brit-Asians. It is all rather convenient.

All the same, with impending visits from both sets of parents, I have this strong urge to move into
(a) a house with some more shelves and storage – every inch of storage in my apartment has been filled with clothes, accessories, shoes, makeup, sports equipment and such paraphernalia. Not to mention stuff lovingly (and not so lovingly) left behind by friends who went back to India.
(b) a house where it is not verboten to fit a little dish for receiving Indian channels on telly.
(c) a house with a little garden to which the parents can retire for some fresh air, were they bored with the aforementioned Indian channels.
(d) most importantly, a “foreign” neighbourhood, instead of this one which could pass for a dilapidated town in the Northern part of India.

Oh! Joy…

I’m being told that I’ve never looked this happy ever before. Not even when I got great results at the hair salons, it seems. I’ve been wearing a smile, even in my sleep I hear, for a good 24 hours straight. And counting.

If you want my view, I feel good. Make that great. Or grand. Or ecstatic. Or over the moon. I’ve been going over what happened 24 hours ago and been grinning like a monkey. So, what happened, you ask.

Here’s what happened. I went shopping and hauled home my bestest loot, till date. Three pairs of gorgeous looking, fantastic shoes. The list reads thus.
* Buff pseudo-patent pumps – 1 no(s)
* Auburn crocodile pumps – 1 no(s)
* Venetian red sexy slingbacks – 1 no(s)

All of them with just around 3″ heels, soft insole, and what more! They all accommodate my rather large forefeet quite well and make my feet look rather dainty. (Daintier than they would look otherwise anyway) They cost about one-third what they would normally cost, which is awesome given the brand and the comfort.

It is just too good to be true, I tell you. This has never happened before. Even if I went to buy just one pair of shoes, there would be so many obstacles – would look great on the rack, but would make my ankles look fat when worn. Or would look fantastic but would cause extreme chafing in about two minutes. Or the colours would be terrible. Or they would be too expensive.

Yesterday, everything clicked. Not once. Not twice. Three full times! Hence the state of ecstasy, monkey grin et al. Now, I have one more pair of shoes than my big shoe stand can handle. Sigh! Never mind that. For now, I’ll just focus on the continuing feeling of joy rather than on the practicalities of storage.

Tra-la-la-laa-lah…