Null Bit Me

Yep… “Fighting for Chairs” is another name of the game that people usually call “Food Courts”. I suddenly see too many of them nowadays. In malls, in big restaurants like Haldiram’s and small road-side restaurants. When road-side temporary establishments do this, I’m fine with it. But when these moneyed chains do it, it sickens me. They charge the same as everyone else or more. And they let in as many people as can enter in their obscenely huge shops with very few chairs and tables. It’s totally up to the people to fight for them or eat while balancing their food on one hand. Perhaps the only differentiating factor from the road-side vendors are that they give you air-conditioning. But then the road-side food tastes better

Lots of events seem to give me the impression that I am a little too weird. And when I see so many people happily jostling for standing space in a super over-crowded Haldiram’s, I get a little more sure that there might be something wrong with me. But I will be what I am. When it comes to dining out, it is restaurants that direct me to a proper table, or a road-side vendor. Fighting for food and tables and chairs are not for me.

Though my gut feeling says that food courts are the future… with the amount of profit these guys must make while having almost no costs in managing customers. Once you set up a food court kind of joint, it just raking in the moolah all the time I gotta learn how to cook.

[UPDATE: The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!]

I’ve subscribed to “Cricket Zone with Krish Srikkanth” recently in Bloglines. I got the link from Amit Agarwal’s blog. However, I see an interesting thing happening. The feed that is displayed on Bloglines misses random words from the post. And this happens with each post. So even though I can see most of the posts, I have to browse over to the post on the original website to read it properly!

I’m wondering if this is some new strategy being tested by Google to increase ad revenue from Blogger blogs. Well, it isn’t working that well I think. Because I’m pissed off, and I’ll unsubscribe if the next post doesn’t read properly from my feed reader.

I’ve been spending wasting some time playing Multiplayer Cricket at www.zapak.com. And I’ve realised one thing… most people are just plain arses. They quit the game when they don’t get to bat first. They quit when they are losing. They quit if they can’t score a couple of balls. They don’t reply back when you try to chat with them. They’re just a pain. The people at Zapak must find a way to throw out these guys. I don’t think I’m going to play again at that place

But a wider problem still remains. Why are people like that? Why do they have to be so selfish? I expect most people playing cricket at Zapak to be from the Indian subcontinent. Are we in this region such asses generally?

It's funny how most people who reach my blog via search engines reach via the search for "manglik". I did write a frustrated post once it once. But people seriously seem to be worried about this thing! And there's nothing out there which says anything with authority, or clears up all this confusion. Pretty hopeless case this

Adding to Sushubh's rant about ICICI direct.com, this is what I get to see today:

ok, What are doctors for?

A friend recently went to the doctor because of an upset stomach. And the doctor tells him that he needs to stop eating out and eat only "home food". I thought the doctor was supposed to cure him so that he would be able to resume his ordinary lifestyle. And it's not like he ate restaurant food everday!!

When you go to a doctor you don't pay him for prevention advice. You pay him to be cured.

Now that'll be the day when I go to my ophthalmologist and he says that I am not supposed to read anymore because my eyes are weak, … instead of prescribing me glasses.

It's such a bloody pain…

Every time I play a game, it changes my monitor resolution… and my Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk windows have shifted to the center of the screen from the rightmost corner where I place them

There really should be some play to pin these windows to where I want them. In fact this holds thru for all things on my desktop including files and shortcuts. This happens even when I do a remote login from another PC with some other monitor resolution.

Pain Pain… super pain

Yep… got Riya to work with my latest install of the IE7 beta. I was pissed off with Riya not working on IE. So I changed the “User-Agent” string in the Windows registry referring to this tweak. So there…
I haven’t found any feature not working on the IE7. Why do they have to be such a pain?

Here's an excellent description by Sushubh about how things work in India. I don't and perhaps won't have a similar tale to tell ever. Not because I don't go through this, but that these things make me so mad, it's difficult to write a coherent post then.

Sushubh highlighted his experiences with the electricity distribution system. You should expect the same with almost any other government organization in India. I do my best to keep things simple (like keeping a recurring reminder in Outlook and cellphone reminding me to pay various bills) and make sure that I avoid having to deal with these people ever. But then that is why I don't have a ration card or a voter identity card and I won't get the address of my passport changed. It's just too much work. And because of all this, I never have sufficient address proof to do anything. Like open a PPF account in a SBI branch! Shit, I wanted to give them money and they wouldn't take it. They required 3-4 documents. (Luckily I had the house lease document in my name… roomies who have stayed with me in the past have always suffered because they did not even have that.) So when I took those documents, the guy refused to look at them because it had just turned 12:00 noon and it was time to close! I went back another day, and the guy wants me to get the lease document notarized. So I ask friends where to get this thing done. So I spend another day to get the lease document notarized which is nothing but some bloody government official signing it. When I take this back to the guy at the bank, he refuses to accept it because the notarization is not on the original lease document! Now, I have a company lease. The original lease document stays with the landlord. Even my company has a copy. I have a copy. Why am I supposed to have the original lease document. I am just a tenant!! And this guy never told me this when he had rejected the application the first time when the lease was not notarized!!

So, the first question is, why is everything so bloody complicated?

And the second is, if they are and have to be, why isn't everything documented properly someplace?

Every organization does clerical work mostly. If it is clerical and repetitive, it can be automated. If it can be automated, it must follow a certian set of rules with a certain set of preconditions. It's just like a state diagram. This guy at the bank must have refused umpteen applications because of these rules. But he won't be proactive to put up a notice with all the essential details. Neither will he give proper feedback to his superiors about how to improve the system.

His ability to age and not die is the only criteria for his promotions at work.

Bloody asshole. I never got that PPF account done. I'll maybe give it a try next year at some other bank. But I won't be surprised if it doesn't work out again.

Ok, that was my latest tiff with the system. Man, am I glad I got that out

Didn't I start off by saying that I'll never be able to write about my tiffs with the system?? Well, I guess I can after some time has passed…. this happened about two months back.

Now that I am at it, I think the thing that I have dreaded the most and have suffered the most is dealing with the administration of the educational system. I guess most readers of blogs are adults and must have forgotten whatever they've had to endure. Well, maybe you've not seen the last of those employees in the college office or the university office….

I'll start of with this question: Imagine that you have lost your marksheets. Yep, you are stupid. But you know what? They got stolen. Or maybe there was a fire at your house. Or you lost them while travelling. And you expect to qualify at some prestigious MBA institute next month. Or you've got a great job offer and they want to verify your credentials. Or you're applying for studies abroad. What will you do? …. Oh, to add to the problem, lets say you don't live in that city. Or that you gave your Class 10 from the Maharashtra state board and your Class 12 from CBSE and you currently stay in Bangalore. And you've lost both your marksheets….. shit. I am terrified of that ever happening to me.

My graduation involved two university exams – the first one was in the second year and the second was in the final year. The university misspelled my name in the admit card for the first exam. I had to run everywhere to get that corrected, being redirected from one desk to another and most of the times empty desks. They misspelled it again in my marksheet for the first exam. I got that corrected. And they misspelled it again in the final marksheet — the same incorrect spelling every time, and they wouldn't update their records. And to top it all, when I was getting the corrected final marksheet the guy had the gall to tell me that that I spell my name incorrectly, and that it should be spelt the way they had spelt it!!! Fuck You… I really wish I could.

Sometimes, I get the feeling that it is my fault that I did not stay within a square kilometre all my life. It's my fault that I dared to study in multiple places. It's my fault that I went to work at another place. It's my fault that my parents did not name me Amit or something that perhaps cannot be distorted or misspelt. And it's my fault that I cannot buy houses everyplace I stay to have an address proof ready. It's my bloody fault to want to invest my money in SBI. Bah!

Ooh… I feel a lot better already Hey.. you're still here?!! Wow

ok guys… polyphonic tunes are ok. But current Hindi film songs are not!
I am sick of people getting calls when their cellphone loudly breaks into a song that I like or don’t like.
See… even if I like it, I like it through my eaphones… I just DON’T want you to advertise your favourite songs like that.
It’s worse than those blaring loudspeakers during the festive season.
Assholes, each and everyone of you who do that

How many web accounts do you have? Not just email accounts… but all those websites that forced you to register just so that you could check it out? I must have hundreds .

Unfortunately some of this info gets googled I seriously wonder why? I’ll admit I never read the Terms & Conditions page… and I wonder of they make me agree to this sort of thing… and so if you know the usual username that I use everywhere (and you all know why I’d like a common username everywhere), it’s very easy to google and find out what links am I storing in http://del.icio.us or http://digg.com or other profile info like birthdates, personal websites etc. etc.

Now, I am NOT actually cribbing about these websites making this info googlable. My grouse is that I did not get to choose what info I want to be googlable. I might want to share my Digg profile data with other Digg users, but maybe not the entire world!

Granted that putting in so many checks on which data should be googlable (that does seem more like a word than yahooable, doesn’t it ) might be asking too much. But ATLEAST… PLEASE LET ME DELETE MY ACCOUNT from the site itself and without having to send emails to the administrators!! I’ve been wanting to delete some user accounts that have been lying unused for so long… and I’ve been searching and searching, but there are no “Delete Account” links. Very few sites actually give this option.

Some sites do allow you to delete your account. But they seem to still keep the info on their servers!! One example is www.kinja.com. I deleted my account ages ago, but it still shows up on Google

If a Manglik (stuff to do with astrology and match-making etc. etc.) marries a non-Manglik, the non-Manglik will die.This seems to be a well-known thing amongst most people I know.

Can this thing be really true? Why is it not valid for people from other countries who don’t know these concepts??

I want to know people who have actually married across this Manglik divide… this thing just defies all logic and reasoning… it’s just maddening.

I know parent who won’t let their children marry people they love by scaring them into submission using this…. whatever…Damn.

[UPDATE: www.Aryabhatt.com allows you to do a free horoscope matching. I don't know how accurate it is though.]

After being gaga over Performancing for Firefox when it was working flawlessly, something stopped working. And I could not use it anymore and had to move over to Zoundry
What happened was that on clicking on the icon in the lower right corner of my Firefox status bar, the lower pane for blogging would open, but the Categories list would not appear. The Categories tab kept saying “Loading categories…”. I tried publishing without setting the category, but even that would not work I tried the same thing at home which is a different machine on a different network, but had the same problem. So the problem was most probably not with Performancing, but maybe with the WordPress.com site or something that I was doing wrong at both places.
Just now, I finally got it working! The problem wasn’t in WordPress.com. So… yep. It was me doing something specific at both the browsers so that it wouldn’t work. I use the Master Password feature in Firefox. And I think it stored the username& password that I configured Performancing with. The next time I opened the browser, I dismissed the master password prompt box. After all I wasn’t doing anything and hadn’t even started to blog! So why should I enter a password to open a blog editor? And so the categories list never was populated. And I could not publish
As far as I recall, why I did not submit my master password was because switching on Performancing prompted me to submit my master password 4 times!! I got suspicious and then dismissed it. I’ve checked it again now. I open a new session of the browser, start Performancing, and I am prompted for my master password 4 times This is not good…

[UPDATE: The problem has already been discussed at http://performancing.com/node/523]

And this just has to be one of the best things to happen in recent times…. and it’s been a long time coming.

I really wonder how many countries resort to interviewing 3-4 year olds for admissions in schools!! And then they interview the parents too! And then they judge you… they expect you to be able to afford all the tution fees that they demand, but you better not be working long hours to be able to pay for that! I’ve heard admissions being rejected to kids because both their parents need to work long hours….

… ok, I boil whenever I think of the education system in India… and then I can’t think right. I got extremely wicked thoughts coming in my mind

I’m sure all of us know people who go around saying Hello and Good Morning to everyone everyday. I don’t have anything against that, even thought personally I wouldn’t want to do that. Just think what would happen if everyone went around saying Hello and wishing everyone else Good Morning everyday after they came to work…. the first guy says nothing. The second guy wishes him (1 wish). The third guy wishes the first two (2 wishes). The fourth… and u get the drift. 1+2+3+…..+(n-1) = n(n-1)/2. For a 50 people workplace that means 1225 hellos!! When would any work get done??!

Anyways, I still don’t have any complaints against people being friendly. What I have against them is when they follow it up with a “How are you?”. I usually give a plastic smile and a nod. But that is so rude. I hate doing it, but I seriously wonder if anything else is expected? I really don’t know what to answer with. I am damned if I start telling the guy about my problems or what I am feeling. That is for this blog And I am sure the guy does not expect any answer… or does he?? Why can’t they just say a Hello and move on with their lives and work?

Come to think of it, this sort of thing happens with elders too. Ever met some old acquaintance of your mom, and she says “How are you?”, giving a big smile. And I want to say, “I’m not well. I’m having to put up with you when I could have been with my friends” and give a huge smile in return!