10,000 not out!

I received the 10,000th hit sometime this week!!redface
I dont know whose hit was the 10,000th hit, coz I was planning to share half of my blogs worth with him/her... And to give you an estimate of my blogs worth, check out the pic below




My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?




So tht comes around, well, (2258.16/2)*41.52(Re vs $ rate) = Rs.46879.40 phew!!!

Disclaimer: Please claim your prize money at the earliest or your prize money will be donated to the "Arshat Chaudhary foundation of really poor engineers!!" This is your chance to give back to the society, believe me! Btw, dont wait for the prize money coz no ones getting nothing.. Its just Technorati's way of making you feel rich/special.twisted

To be honest, when I started out, I never thought we would make it this far...Thanks to your patience and tolerance toward bad grammar, silly spelling mistakes and absence of storylines, we made it this far...
Thank you for all your comments, they mean the world to me...They make me a better blogger..
Keep reading...
10,000 not out!SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend
Current Issues:
5 letters to the editor  

Tagged - The power of 8!

I have been TAGGED!! I have been TAGGED!! Finally after years of making blog friends and stuff, I have been Tagged. Santosh has tagged me with the number 8

Here is a list of the tags(in blue) I am supposed to write about...So here goes..

Eight things I am passionate about:

This is difficult. Since I belong to LOECT (League of extraordinarily confused twenty somethings)
1. Sitcoms
2. Advertisements (both print and TV)
3. Friends (this is a recent addition, I would like to believe)
4. Chatting (only with ppl I know)
5. Blogging (both writing and reading)
6. Nature (it amazes me)
7. Eating (anything veg and spicy would do!)
8. Cinema (no, not movies, but give me a good cinematic regional film and i am up for it!)


Eight things I want to do before I die:


1. Go on a vacation (har har har)
2. Play golf!
3. Visit Germany (They have like the best brains there)
4. Own a Mercedes or a BMW or Audi (One of these German cars)
5. Direct a movie or a sitcom (bet you didnt see that coming)
6. Own a beach house (on some lonely beach in Maharashtra). Owning a private beach would be ultimate!
7. Visit Palakad, which lies on the Tamil Nadu - Kerala border (They have like the best girls there!). Now thts a fetish!
8. ________________________ (I ll keep this blank, I wud like to dedicate this one to my loved ones, whtever they want me to do before I die...)


Eight things I say often:


1. Fuk (Mech engg are officially allowed to use tht word.. btw, I dont use it in front of non enggs-they find it explicit!! weirdos!!razz)
2. What goes around comes back around...(this is the ultimate truth!! Justin timberlake couldnt be wrong!! :P)
3. Kya faltugiri hai re..
4. Chod na be...
5. Shit yaar...
6. Sawaal! Maaf (Part of SPCE lingo.. Go here to know more)
7. Saaleeeeee
8. Life mein bahut padhai kiya hai..ab maja karneka...


Eight books I have read recently:

I think I havent read 8 books in all!! Let us see..In anti-chronological order
1. Shantaram(reading currently)
2. Forrest Gump (Last book I read)
3. Blink
4. Five Point someone
5. Catch me if you can
6. The Godfather
7. Rich dad Poor dad
8. Around the world in 80 days


Eight songs I could listen to over and over:

This is not fair! 8 songs is too less!! Here goes my list!
1. Lose yourself, Cleaning up my closet, When I am gone, and other Eminem songs
2. I’ll getcha good, A Party for two!, Tht dont impress me much (Shania Twain)
3. Summer of 69, Cloud no.9, Room Service - by Bryan Adams.
4. I ll be there for you... Friends theme (this is not by choice)
5. You are beautiful, Wisemen, high by James Blunt
6.Californacation RHCP
7. Hotel California by Eagles
8.Where is the love, Lets get retarded, Dont funk with my heart by Black eyed peas

<-Tag ENDS here->


I would like to tag Pushkar, Sukhi, Sam, Abhijit, Raghav, Bullshee

Tagged - The power of 8!SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend
Current Issues: , , , ,
10 letters to the editor  

Shaandar Hair Cutting Salon!

The name says it all! Its situated among one of the many boulevards that Mulund boasts of.. This street near my place is full of such shops which some small time traders have set up. There are kutchis, Shettys, Guptas and Yadavs among others who have made this street what it is today.. Among all these shops is Shaandar Hair cutting salon

I have been going there since I can remember.. My dad used to take me there.. I always hated my long locks being cut.. I dunno why, but it felt bad...very bad...like... like someone died.. Maybe it was coz of the tajis* you get the next day at school, or maybe its coz your teacher wanted you to cut your hair short and threatened to tie you a pony tail if you didnt.. Somehow not doing what the grownups want you to do always seemed cool to me (i still find it cool!) By tht logic, cutting your hair was so UNcool..

tajis*- the ritual(?) tht involves slapping the back of the head of the guy whos got a fresh cut. Kids usually stop tht once they get into the 5th grade..Well, most kids do..


So the point is tht my dad used to take me to Shaandar Hair cutting salon every 4-5th Sunday.. I had to come up with like really silly excuses for not having my locks cut and my dad had to come up with like really silly anecdotes to get my dark long locks cut- "You look like a monkey with your falling on your face like tht" (Little did he know tht a few years down the line someone with the very same credentials will rock Bollywood.. yeah SRK! mrgreen)

I have no idea why we went to Shandaar.. Maybe coz it was nearest from home about 5 mins walk and we still took our kinetic..Yeah lazy we were!

So we would get into Mr.Yadav's(tht was his name if I rem correctly) salon. Mr.Yadav is this big paan chewing guy who has the mother of all beer bellies...His teeth were stained but tht didnt seem to embarass him coz he laughed heartily at any silly thing tht his "boys" said in their Bihari accent..

Shaandar cutting was a small place, you walked 6-7 steps inside and you would hit the wall & I am talking first grader steps. Once inside, it felt like a really cool place to be in with the blue coloured plastered walls,mirrors mirrors on the walls, hindi magzines like "sulekha" or something, radio playing songs from the 60s.. Now I, like any other self respecting rap loving, eminem worshiping fan didnt like those songs, but there is something about tht place, you wanna sing along Rajesh Khanna when he goes "mere sapno ki rani kab aayigi tu..chalii aaaa tuu chaliii aaaa..."

Tht place had a weird smell.. The smell of henna, V-John shaving cream, pan parag (or whtever tht is tht he used to chew), Raj ratan red coloured hair oil, pan parag (did i mention tht already?). And thn all these smells amalgamated together to give your olfactory lobe a high of a lifetime..

Mr. Yadav's modus operandi was simple.. Get the sicssors and get snapping.. "Sab Barik kar dena"("Cut it all short"), was all my dad had to say.. and Yadav uncle would dutifully cut my hair short, real short.. But thankfully my hair grew at a rapid pace and there I was again after 6 sundays!

Then I got into the 7th grade, the grade when suddenly your appearence becomes important coz of tht girl you been eyeing and she probably likes you for your cool locks.. You cut your hair and all tht remains of you is, well, uncool.. And they call us "shallow"!

I started going to Shaandar solo, I noticed he had taken dad's "Sab Barik kar dena" very seriously.. It was time I made a few modifications to this statement..
"Uncle, Kaan ke upar ke barik kar dena, baki lamba rakhna"
(Cut the hair around the ears short, and dont touch the others..)
He didnt seem to like this new "kaan ke upar..." thingy. I got this feeling that he loved the "Sab barik kar dena" thing.. That maybe coz he got more freedom to snap his scissors tht way..

"Arre garmi ke din hai, barik karva lo"(Its summer time, u better get a short crop), Yadav uncle used to say mid-January!!!
He kept cuttin my hair the way he wanted, which was real short, and I didnt like it too much... I just kept waiting for a better salon to come up near my place.

I stopped going to Shandaar once I got into engg. Another place had come up near my house. This place had an AC, and it didnt smell, it had english mags, it had lesser mirrors...And yes, no pan parag. The guy who worked there was all cool and stuff with highlights in his hair and used to speak broken english. V-John cream was replaced by Gillette foam gel, Hair gel had taken the place of Raj-Ratan oil, cable TV instead of the radio... In one word, this place was COOL..



The other day, the place where I go usually, was closed and I needed a haircut, so I decided to go to Shaandar..
The place still smelt weird. And yes, there was paan parag around.

Mr.Yadav wrapped a white cloth around my collar

"Kaisa hai?", Mr. Yadav asked.
The mother of all beer bellies had become even bigger, like when you felt there can be no one bigger than "undertaker" and then "Khali" walks in.. The teeth were stainier than ever.. He looked old, half the hair had gone grey, he looked weary too. The condition of the salon wasnt too good either, it looked like a whitewash would help.. Sumhow I got the feeling tht business wasnt too good..

I was taken back by Mr.Yadav's "Kaisa hai?". For two reasons- First, he still remembered me! Its been 3 years since I have been here.. Second, he asked "Kaisa hai?" insted of "Kaise hain?"(which imparts more respect). But this guy knew me since I was 3 feet above the ground, so I guess it was ok..

"Theek hoon.."

"Aaj kal aate nahi aap"
I realised he shifted to a more respectful form of addressing. Sumhow I didnt like it very much. I have been used to being called "tu" by this guy and then all of a sudden he shifts to "aap". It makes you realise tht on the outside you are a grown man to the world.

"er..er.. Bahar rehta hoon aajkal"
How could I come up with a lie tht unconvincing..

"Sahab(refering to my dad) aate hain kabhi-kabhi "

"hmm.."

"Aap bhi aaya karo.."

"hmm..aaonga.."

"Ab toh dadhi banvane bhi aa sakte ho!!! HA HA HA HA"
Stained teeth still didnt embarass him

"hmm..aaonga.."

"Kaisa katun baal? Kaan ke upar ke barik kar deneka, baki lamba rakhne ka na?"

He still remembered how I wanted my hair!!



"Nahi uncle, Sab barik kar do....."

I still remembered how he wanted my hair!!






Update:(May 01)
There is this blog one of my schoolmate has, he has written bout a similar post on haircuts, and the way it is written is dramatically similar to mine.. Now I found it scary, see if it scares you too, it was written way back in Jan or something. Here is the link



Shaandar Hair Cutting Salon!SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend
Current Issues: ,
12 letters to the editor  

Life in Cartoon motion..

"You watch cartoons?! You are supposed to be 21 and all grownup and working?!"

"Hey! dont call it a cartoon!Its NOT a cartoon! Its..its..a way of life.. an art form...Its Life in cartoon motion!"





Its been 4 years since I have been addicted to The Simpsons..More so in the last months tht I have been working..I dont know why I appreciate it more now, it could be because it brings a lil insanity to my perfectly sane lifestyle...Everyday at 6 in the evening, I watch the most awesome yellow coloured family perform their antics..Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and the little
ones name I forget, but she doesnt do nothing apart from suck stuff, so shes not important..


It must have taken a genius to sketch the characters, I mean apart from the 5 main characters, everyone else is so well crafted, Moe(the bartender), Apu(the Indian), Nelson(the school bully), Principal skinner, Mr. Burns(the rich old guy), Krusty the clown... I mean, just so much thought and energy has gone into each character, like for eg, one of my fav characters - Apu(yeah, coz hes an Indian). Now they had an entire episode on apu's background..like hes an engg from Calcutta tech (theres no such institute btw razz) and how he comes to the US for his MS, overstays his Visa, and becomes an illegal immigrant..



There are so many episodes i have loved,like "I didn't do it" episode which is also the first Simpsons episode I saw almost 4 years ago,then there is the Springfield idol contest,but my fav is the one in which "Homer comes to India"...Homer is made head of Operations,India(Mr. Burns' outsourcing plan)... He accepts the offer coz he thinks India and Indiana are the same!!

Homer Simpson grunting the famous quote


D'oH! Here he meets Kavi, Apu's brother(Apu had described him as medium height, dark hair, dark brown eyes!Wow! tht would help!wink) Kavi operates a Call centre, for Australia, US, Jamaica all at the same time razz

Well anyways, Homer does well enough here, coz he comes up with all these silly anecdotes from a managemnt book Marge gave it to him..But once he gets absolute power, it corrupts him absolutely.. The Indians start worshiping him.. Mr.Burns get a wiff of this and he comes rushing
to India..

Burns:Hes not god!

One Indian : Ofcourse we know hes not god..

Second Indian: But we want him to stay here coz he told us about weekends off and coffee breaks and maternity leaves!

Burns: What? Simpson, you are fired..(To the Indians) All of you are fired too..

Indians: whoa! hurray! 3 months pay in advance! Retirement bonus!

hahahhaahhahah...

You should have been there mate...you should have been there...
The episode ends with a dance routine - bollywood style.. the song -"Pal bhar ke liye koi hame pyar kar le.. " Heres the link








But Simpsons is not all stupidity, sometimes it makes a lotta sense, esp when they express their love(in a weird way though) towards each other.. Like there is episode when Bart bugs lisa, and she calls for a restraining order against him.. But then she remembers how Bart had made her laugh when she lost her pet and some other mushy stuff tht we men shudnt talk about.. But you get the point dont you?



There is a little bit of Simpsons in every family, just a bit.. There is a bit of Nelson, moe, apu, skinner in our lives.. We keep meeting these characters, we just dont recognise them coz they sobre up once they get into 3-D..
But if life was a cartoon, I am sure we could appreciate the
Homer in us..Afterall, all of us need a little D'oH in life!
This is life.. Life in cartoon motion...




The Simpsons on Star World

6pm India
Life in Cartoon motion..SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend
Current Issues: , , , , ,
2 letters to the editor  

The difference is - German Engineering!

Audi
Mercedes
Siemens
BMW
Blaupunkt

See the trend? All the above mentioned companies apart from being among the best in the business are also German...

I have always had this fascination about German Engineering, so much so that I wanted to do my Masters(yeah in engg!!) from Germany! But that was long ago, just around the time I had entered engineering.. After 4 yrs of hardcore(and theres absolutely nothing sexual about tht) engineering, I was damn to tired to get involved in Automobile Engineering in an alien country... But the point is, Germany always amazed me..
I mean, imagine, a country with a population of 8 crore, being the third strongest economy in the world..The number of Scientist this country has produced..The fact that someone from this country actually thought that they can win over the world if they wanted to!!.... But most importantly, the engineering brains that this country has are what finite element analysis is made up of!!

There is this joke about German enggs tht I am fond of..
The Russians send the first man in space in April '61...
JFK, the US president at time was really miffed at this. He called his chief engineer and asked him, - "How in the world did the Russians get their man in space before we did!"
To this the chief engg replied - "I am sorry sir, but their German engineers are better than ours!!"
Hahahaha... wait till I tell this to my boss...

Talking bout my boss, hes the Head of Tech transfer, so effectively hes the one who's responsible for the entire factory. Now he is one of the representatives of his country for me.. So when I talk about Germans, a lot of my observations will be based on him... Ofcourse there are other Germans who come here in really good suits and really bad English.. Sometimes when they don't know a word, I suspect they throw in the the German equivalent.. Every other of their sentences starts with "nicht" or some word sounds like that... The shrug accompanied by-"I dont know!" is native to all Germans mrgreen ... And may I add, apart from the guys who are a part of management, the others have a terrible sense of fashion!! I mean, Paris is just a stones throw away ppl!!

*One of the things I have noticed bout these guys is that they are extremely polite.. And these guys are supposed to be gas-chamber-suffocating types!!
*They don't change jobs that often! The guy whom I am talking about has been working in the company from like ages!! He worked for Audi for a few years before moving to this company though...
*They are extremely patriotic .. They have a simple policy- everything German is quality! Everything German is good.. German cars, German electronics, German beer, German cellphones !! It took us a lot of cajoling to make them allow the usage of Indian spares in the factory...
*One more thing I admire about them is their dedication towards work.. So someone who works 36 hours a week(yeah! try believing that!!) back in Germany, does 48 hour weeks(Like the rest of us) here!
*Somehow quality inspection takes 3 hrs when our German boss does it.. Somehow 25 yrs of service for a transformer isn't good enough for him..
*Somehow he can run around the factory all day when there is a crisis(Hes 52!).. A bolt not fitting in? Crisis... Too much copper/iron dust on the shopfloor? Crisis..! Nut not tightened correctly?..You guessed it right! Crisis!!!

There are times when something gets messed up real bad and I look at him and he seems to say to himself - Why the f*** am I here!.... No, not angry, just despair..
Sometimes ..well, things don't get messed up and he seems to say to himself.. "Man! They did it, didn't they!"

There is this middle aged colleague whos really cool, and always positive, he has 10 years of work ex and we(the young ones) look up to him.Lets call him GS sir.
All the guys in my dept. have been to Germany..Sir has been there more than a couple of times..But he does not contribute much to the conversation, its only the new foreign-returns who do the talking... And most of them are starry eyed about the buildings, transport, the facilities, the engineering, the cars, the people... They talk about the places they have seen and the Mercedes and BMWs they travelled in... And how fast their trains are.. and how when a train is late by 3 mins its considered a breach of quality ...& How a crater on the road is a national crisis .. " All the young ones(like me) gather around them, listening to their stories and wondering why we cant have smooth roads and trains that are on time...
"Apne yahan sab chalta hai re",they say...Somehow "chalta hai" is our ideology. "We are like this only!!" Garib desh ki yehi problem hai...

Garib desh?

The young ones look at each other feeling bad, feeling helpless.. Garib desh?

Sir says nothing.. He just looks outside the window.. and keeps looking there...
Comeon say something...someone..anyone.. Comeon sir, say something to get our young, inexperienced spirits up!

"Aaayega", sir said....

"Aaayega... Apna bhi time aayega.. Abhi toh humne sirf shuruvat kiy hai....Kuch din theherjaao... Yeh Garib desh, ek din sab ko dikha dega...Apna bhi time aayega..."

Apna bhi time aayega.. Yeah..

The difference is - German Engineering!SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend
Current Issues: , , , , , ,
11 letters to the editor  

You know you are from Mumbai when....

http://www.ilga.org/news-upload/marine-drive-mumbai.jpg
You know you are from Mumbai when.....

arrow Stock market quotes are the only other thing besides cricket which you follow passionately.

arrow You take fashion seriously.

arrow You spend more time travelling than you send at home.

arrow 9:47 fast, means something to you.

arrow u think tht delhi copied INDIA GATE frm mumbai's GATEWAY OF INDIA...

arrow You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

arrow You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

arrow Amitabh Bachans house is a landmark

arrow When there's no place to breathe in the trains but there's place to play cards and sing bhajans!

arrow You refer to the city as Mumbai and not Bombay .

arrow You say that Pani Puri is waayy better than Gol Gappa's even when they're the same thing

arrow Every three months you look at your street and say "Why're the digging the road again?"

arrow You actually pay for your rickshaws by the meter.

arrow You know what the term "video coach" stands for in the local trains...

arrow"Gheun Tak" is your life ideology.

arrow You aren't surprised when somebody throws a water balloon at you while you're walking on the streets during March.

arrow you can only smile forgivingly about the size of any other city in the world.

arrow Every time you speak Hindi in front of a Delhitite they have the WTF expression on their face.

arrow When while giving directions you say "Right MARO aur wahan pe ek bridge GIREGA"

arrow You have hung on to dear life at the local door.

arrow When you think everyone who lives to the south(Mumbai) of you is a snob and to the north of you sucks

arrow when u c movie names like "shootout at Lokhandwala" & 'Ek chalis ki last local" & don't have to ask what the name means

arrow you consider the local train "empty" when you find a spot for your two feet to stand on.

arrow when "chalta hai" is the most commonly used word

arrow Everything to the north of Mumbai is UP-Bihar and everything below is Madras

arrow if someone calls u "aap"-- u start laughing on their faces...

arrow when you call the BEST bus, BST, even though BEST is painted on every single public transport bus operational in Bombay

arrow It takes longer to get off from your house to the station than from one end of Mumbai to another by train.

arrow Being truly alone makes you nervous.

arrow Crorepati, Lakhpati, Hazarpati, Chillarpati all travel in local Trains daily-together!.

arrow You have learnt how to stand in a queue

arrow u treat mumbai as a country itself

arrow when you actually see random people coming to help you when u have a problem

arrow u want to get into the train already that is already in motion & u have 5 hands taking u in..

arrow You are back to work next day after the city is bombed - Truly the spirit of Mumbai

arrow When you allow complete strangers to spend the night in your house because its raining outside and half the city is submerged...
You know you are from Mumbai when....SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend
Current Issues:
11 letters to the editor