How I got left behind in the social network revolution

Response 1 : “Hahahahahaha …… You’re joking right. (Pause) You’re not joking?”
Response 2 : “How could you NOT be on facebook ? That’s impossible !”
Response 3 :”Thank God you told me this. Listen, please don’t tell anybody that you’re not on FB. And go sign in at the earliest”
Response 4: “What the **** !”

There are more responses that are along the lines of those listed above which I have omitted. Responses that I have received from friends / family / acquaintances when I tell them that I don’t check my FB account.

It seems that just about everyone has migrated from Orkut to FB and in the process quite a few of them have deleted their once beloved Orkut profiles. Farmville & Mafia Wars are what’s cool and Orkut is well so last year. Or so I am told. I did eventually create a FB profile but I realized that there was just too much happening on it every single day. I got swamped just trying to read what everyone had posted every day & in less than a week I did the smart thing & threw in the towel.

It is rather silly how people waste time on it. For example when it rains, someone has to post that its raining outside (well it cant really be raining inside now can it) to which someone will reply “Don’t forget your umbrella” to which someone else will reply “Good idea” to which the 1st person to will reply “Thanks for your suggestions” (like he/she hasn’t learnt in 20+ years that you need to carry an umbrella if it is raining). Post this a fourth person will ask “Did you get wet” and so on and so forth. Im not making this up. Im all for social networking and all but this is a bit ridiculous.

Yesterday Radio Indigo interviewed a couple of people yesterday who said that they spend at least 3 – 4 hours a day playing the FB games. Finally the RJ asked one of them wouldn’t it be better if you spend the same time growing actual plants & trees? That was funny. Then there is the whole controversy about how FB invades your privacy ( https://webmail.wipro.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.newsweek.com/id/233773 ) and (http://www.newsweek.com/id/238371).

So how long will I continue my FB hiatus ? Probably not much longer, I do realise that I am a bit out of the loop cause Im not on FB. Not world ending out of the loop but probably enough to get me to check it once in a while. Im just worried that by the time I get comfortable with FB some other social network site would have come up & everyone would’ve jumped ship to that …

Dont push that button

I think it would be a fair assumption to say that that any person (however limited his / her IQ) should be able to comprehend the following
1. Pressing the button of an elevator button will cause the button to be illuminated
2. The illumination signifies that the elevator will be coming to the floor where the person pressing the button is present
3. In case there are multiple elevators that are interconnected, then the lights on the buttons of all the elevators on the floor will light up which means that one of the elevators will move to the floor at the earliest.
4. The elevators are programmed to move from floor to floor with the least possible delay.

None of these 4 points are overtly complicated nor are they mind boggling. And yet every time I wait for the elevator at one of our multiple multi-storeyed buildings I see people pressing the already illuminated button multiple times. Apparently there is some unwritten rule that if the lift doesn’t arrive in the next 15 seconds, its time to press it again. That is unless someone else has just arrived & has pressed it in the 15 second gap despite it being lit up. Is it just me that has understood that the frequency of pressing elevator buttons has no relation to its time of arrival ?

Another thing that Ive noticed is that the buttons of the elevators in our building (unsurprisingly) conk out rather frequently. When they do, people turn to the working elevator buttons which results in the load on those poor buttons to increase which in turn leads to an even faster rate of wear out. The elevator company guys must be rather irritated with having to replace the buttons so often. Maybe I should suggest rewiring the system so that people get an electric shock if they press an already illuminated lift button. But that would be plain mean. Ill suggest a minor shock instead.

All this ranting is a bit unnecessary anyways. Ive found the perfect way to avoid getting irritated by those suffering from the Obsessive Compulsive Elevator Button Pressing Disorder. I just take the stairs.

Dirty walk !

Ever since Ive started wearing sneakers Ive stayed away from those that had too much of white on them as I have this uncanny ability to change them to a light shade of brown in the matter of a couple of weeks without really doing anything out of the ordinary. So at the point of sale (MBA word!) my sneakers would usually have a lot of blue or black or grey with a little bit of white thrown in for good measure. Add the odd football or cricket match in the ensuing weekends to the mix and the still new shoes end up with a reddish – brown colour that makes it look much older than it is. And cleaning them faithfully like so many other people never made any sense to me because however much I tried to avoid the premature ageing of my sneakers, they would find a way to get dirty in no time.

Which is why I bought a pair of Reebok sneakers recently that were a mix of white and yellow without any dark colours on it. Despite not spending too much time on the sports field these days, I thought it was but a matter of time before the shoes lost the fresh off the showroom snow white look due to the daily grind and happily picked them up. What I didn’t count on is the fact that the shoes have stubbornly refused to follow tradition and still look as if they were bought yesterday. Which is why people still ask me “New shoes?” despite having bought the pair months ago. Since I usually alternate between my other darker couple of pairs of sneakers on most days, the white Reeboks attracts even more undeserving attention than it should. So if you happen to see a guy walking down a dusty road, dragging his feet in the dirt with his every step, hop into a puddle, run through the playground chasing a football that is in the middle of a match that he is not a part of and running away from the 22 players who were part of the match before he kicked the ball into the next compound, you know who it is …….

The death of DBC

"Ladies and gentlemen. We are gathered here in memory of the DBC. As one of Bangalore's favourite sons, the DBC ..... "

Bombay has its Vada Pav, Delhi has its Chaats, Madras has its Idli / Vada / Sambar combo and Bangalore, well Bangalore has its DBC (Death By Chocolate). For those of you who just did a 'A DB-what?' , it is the specialty of the Bangalore based ice cream retail chain called Cornerhouse. For years the DBC has been Bangalore's favourite dessert, something that everyone who visits / stays / works in Bangalore has told everyone else about. In fact I still remember the day when my then new batch mate dropped his jaw when I told him that I had visited Bangalore a couple of times but had never heard of DBC. And so after 2 years of continuous DBC hype (while I was studying in Manipal), fate deemed that I would end up working (being employed is a more appropriate term, not that it matters ....) in an IT company in Bangalore. So on one of my first weekends here I headed out to fall victim to the heavenly and ironically sinful DBC. What I got was a large bowl filled with a few scoops of ice cream, a load of chocolate sauce, a brownie and some cashew nuts. "This is DBC?!" I asked my friends incredulously. Credit where credit is due - it is tasty and filling but undeserving of all the hype for sure. Almost like growing up idolising Sachin Tendulkar and finally bumping into him in the neighbourhood gully playing street cricket with kids and watching them flummox him with their crude bowling.

A couple of years have passed since my memorable initiation into the DBC-eaters club. Our team had planned to head out for dinner that was to be followed by a round of desserts at Cornerhouse. It was deja vu all over again as a colleague of mine - Mr X who had never sampled DBC or anything else at Cornerhouse was being fed the hype by another colleague - Mr Y and I had a sneaking suspicion that events were going to play out the same way as they had in my case. I warned him about the brand building that DBC lovers do and to keep an open mind going into the evening. Eventually the team split into 2 and the next morning while discussing the events of the dinner it turned out that Mx X wasn’t impressed by the DBC and that Mr Y (remember him as the pro DBC-er) had got one as a take away and gone home to discover that there was hardly any ice cream and that they had resorted to peanuts instead of the regular cashew nuts. Which is how the DBC fan club lost yet another one of its members. The numbers are dwindling and while it might be premature to herald the demise of the once mighty DBC, it is but inevitable.

" ...May the soul of the DBC rest in peace. Amen"