Saturday, September 30, 2006

I am from freakistan!!!!!!!

Yeah Im back alright, but not with a bang though. What Ive been thru for the past two weeks will top the list of freakweeks one has ever had.

Freaked out on:

(1) a lot of B-grade hoolywood flicks on DVDs
( Trial & Error, Company man, Good Advice, You can count on me, Terms of Endearment,Where the truth lies..and they ALL suck in reverse order)

(2) on Lage Raho Munna Bhai... due to excess hype from press & public ( i reserve my comments on this movie plz)

(3) on bad Italian food at Trattoria ( supposed no.1 italian food place in Mumbai) This five star hotel actually served stale pizza crust, stale stuffing and odd as it may seem, the awfully low quantity they served was actually a "saving grace"!!! We actually had to satiate our unfilled bowels with a grilled "sendwitch" and "coketel" from a famous roadside gem of an eatery in the queen's necklace!! Lesson learned: Suburbans should stick to the ubiqutous dominos & pizza huts rather than travelling 25 Kms in search of the perfect pizza fiasco in a Five star plaza.

(4) on Navratri festivities in office, which meant a lot of sweetmeats, colorcodes & time outs!

(5) on my newly acquired vaccum cleanner ( I did!), sucking the hell out of the house!


Amidst all these, I totally lost track of my daily bread..blogging & strumming!
Back in business now. I need no sympathy!

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Quest for the ultimate Dustbuster

I have to get this out of my system.

Let me first give you the low down here.

For the past 5 months, I’ve been desperately looking to buy a replacement for my broken vacuum cleaner(VC).I am now in a miserable predicament. On one hand, I have to do all the dusting employing my own (wo)manual labour and two, I am allergic to dust, not to mention brooms, mops and other cleaning widgets. And having your decrepit house in one of the most polluted suburbs and adjacent to a mud slinging play-ground doesn’t really help.

My VC hunting began with quite a fanfare: comparing models/brand on the net, visiting all the electronic havens and malls in the neighborhood, etc. Almost every gadget-mall had its USP, no, not Selling Proposition but "Special Price" on the items. But what left me cold was despite having mammoth shop space, these so called malls had not even a little room to accomodate, say atleast 2 brands of VCs on the shelf. Most of the shops had only one brand, the prominent Indian brand, carrying Archimedes’ legacy. So much for patriotism. Of course with more& more people (read parvenu) going for LCDs, Microwaves, ACs & Dishwashers, a VC for a measly 3000 Rs may not command any shop space or retail margin.

While my broken VC was made by an reputed Indian Electronics giant, once mostly patronized by people Below Poverty Line, I looked out for more recent entrants in this segment, like the ones which promise to make your Life Good and all. And of course there is the world leader, in the name of an Ex-president of USA. There are several other third rate brands, that you can buy off the TV, use for dusting and throw into the dustbin the third day.

Basically, I looked for a VC fitting into these mimimal specs:
1. Weight – less than 5 kg
2. Suction cum Blower function (with variable-power option)
3. Wattage- 1000 or less
4. Cord -Atleast 5 Mtrs
5. Dust Bag- Permanent, washable and atleast of 3 Ltrs capacity
6. Three pin plug for safety
7. Cost upto Rs 4,000

Innocuous it may seem, but none of the VCs that are currently in the market conform to these. Then I went into research mode & checked out the sites of the three major brands I have alluded to in earlier:

The current models from the land of Taekwondo have no Blower function. I did have an old pamphlet from a shopping exhibition mentioning of a model containing all the specs I wanted. None of the local showrooms had it. When asked , the local sales manager replied that model has since been discontinued (for some Godonlyknowsit reason). He went on and segued into pitching for models from rival brand that I should go for. Some mole he was !

The lone Indian Company spearheading cleanliness revolution in homes & drinking water surprisingly has no model with a 3 pin plug and weighing less than 6 Kg with the above features. What kind of heavy machinery operates in 2 pin? I don’t want to get electrocuted and I surely I don‘t come with a warranty card!

Utterly disappointed, I came crawling back to my old VC maker and was pleasantly surprised to find 2 new models on the site , which even facilitated online purchase. Alas, the site was “outdated’ as confirmed by the local sales rep. It seems they no more manufactured/dealt with VCs as they went for greener pastures and they have a new site in place, only that the old site was not yet taken off the web. How Generous! Good ploy to snatch credit card payments online from unsuspecting customers and pay for court battles between the Corporate patriarch & his Son-in law. Bravo!

Moral of the story:
MNCs companies dump their outdated technologies on the Indian populace. Indian companies have the best technologies but don’t know how to market it to the populace!

I don't believe in employing labour for domestic service. Here I am with no vacuum cleaner in hand, and only my bare hands to bust the dust. I think I may have to carry on this till I bite the dust. Thank you for listening!

P.s: I hate mud slinging as it's me who has to do the clean-up. So I have intentionally kept away from mentioning brand/Company names and leave the guessing to your imagination!!!

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Movies, more movies!!

Im taking a long overdue vacation right now and as usual I'm catching up on lot of movies I wanted to watch for a long time. Here are some of them with my * ratings.

Recent Flicks:
1. Just my Luck:**1/2( Lindsay Lohan as banal as ever)
2. Sentinel: *** ( Thumbs up to Kiefer)
3. Matador:***1/2 ( Pierce Brosnan has tried really hard to shed his Bond image)
4. Dukes of Hazzard: :()-----(pukes)
5. RV: ** ( Robin williams is a sorry state of affairs)
6. Rumor Has it: * ( Kevin Costner has lost it)

Not so recent flicks:
1. Libertine: Sorry, I could not rate it as I failed to get past first 20 mins, But I can sure make it out to be any average Johnny Depp movie, with less of bloody disembowelment scenes and more of venereal/nudity.
2. Kate & Leopold: ***1/2 .please watch it if you like to watch verbal confrontations between victorian english and american slang ( Hugh Jackman vs others)
3.Corky Romano: **, but, Chris Kattan is cut out for such movies.
4.A Bronx Tale:* Frankly speaking,I've been wanting to lay my hand on this DVD for a long time.. one due to my mad passion for mafia movies in general, and two.. watching the dealy duo-Robert De Nero & Chazz Palminteri in action. The lonestar I've given goes to Chazz. Hope that sums it all up as far as this movie is concerned:(


Sure it doesnt look like a perfect vacation..but there are more movies to come. So, I keep my fingers crossed !X!
(Frankie Four Fingers)

Monday, September 04, 2006

Of schizophrenics, shrinks & celluloid!

More and more people I know refer to Hallucinations, Schizophrenia and Multiple Personality Disorder(MPD) to some phenomena as trivial as common cold. I also get a feeling that many of my near & dear ones suffer from it( I have to talk to my therapist on that one!). Off late, all the filmwoods -(B)(K)(H)ollywood have been churning out movies with the same protagonist potraying both Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde ( I wonder if he ever gets double the pay package?)

Some MPD Hollywood movies I watched include, Hide & Seek(2005), Me Myself & Irene and Batman forever while in Hindi I am told Aparichit(2006), Dewangee(2004) head the list. Now when I come to think of it, Mr AB might have pioneered pseudo-MPD roles in Shahenshah!

The point is, potrayal of mental disorders is now the newest, experimental , bold and one of the *different* roles that every actor wants to attempt or every director wants to depict. Diseases hitherto unheard of by the common movie watching rif-raff are being brought into celluloid and the common vocabulary..MPD, Alzheimer's disease, Short term memory loss, spastics, etc.

Critics are ever tired of pointing out the cavalier manner in which medical ailments are dealt with in Mainstream Hindi cinema. Suddenly, Hindi film directors are dealing with serious ailments and dealing with them seriously!. Gone, are those days when a heroine lost and regained her sight within 13 reels, or a disease as serious as cancer was detected by looking at an X-Ray. In an industry where heroes are mostly immortal and are occasionally even known to return from the dead films are now dealing with delicate medical issues with much more maturity and seriouosness.

In a lighter vein:
1) A guy walks into the psychiatrist's and says "Doctor, doctor, you've got tohelp me! I keep thinking that I'm a deck of cards!" The shrink says "Sit over there and I'll deal with you later."
2)"I'm treating a patient with a split personality," boasted a psychiatrist, "and Medicare pays for both of them!"
3)Patient: Doctor, I keep thinking I'm a dustbin.Psychiatrist: Don't talk such rubbish.
4)Patient: Doctor, I keep thinking I'm a curtain.Psychiatrist: Pull yourself together!
5)Two psychiatrists meet on the street. One says to the other,"You know, I thought I'd been completely analyzed, but yesterdayI experienced the most remarkable Freudian Slip."The friend nods and waits to hear more...The first psychiatrist continues, "I was having dinner with mymother, and I meant to say, 'Please pass the butter', but insteadI said, 'You miserable bitch, you've ruined my life!!!".
6)Patient: Doctor, I can't stop stealing things.Psychiatrist: Take these pills. They should help you.Patient: But what if they don't?Psychiatrist: Pick up a Rolls for me.
7)A man who thought he was John the Baptist was disturbing the neighborhood, sofor public safety, he was committed. He was put in a room with another crazyand immediately began his routine, "I am John The Baptist! Jesus Christ hassent me!" The other guy looks at him and declares, "I did *not*!"
8)What is the best thing about schizophrenia?You're never alone.
9)A man calls the psychiatrist at a mental hospital and asks who's in room 24."Nobody" comes the reply."Good" says the man, "I must have escaped."
10)What is the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist?If you say to a psychiatrist "I hate my mother", the shrink will ask "Why doyou say that?" while a psychologist will say "Thank you for sharing that with us."
--
Ok, gotta go!!
Me too!