Café au lait

Perhaps there is no other beverage equivalent to a hot cup of steaming madras filter coffee (pronounced in most homes here as kaapi). I haven’t tried marijuana yet, and am not planning to.

An average madrasi wakes up listening to MS subbalakshmi’s Suprabharatham and sits to read the morning daily with a hot cup of coffee by his side. It feels like your sleepy senses are hit by a base ball bat with every sip of this divine drink.

Among other uses, coffee has certain medicinal values as well. It is the best download accelerator ever invented by man. The tenth minute after drinking a cuppa coffee, you’d find yourself in Mother Nature’s lap answering her call promptly. Many people believe that this property of coffee is the reason behind naming the programming language JAVA (JAVA in Hebrew means coffee). Haven’t you heard people saying that JAVA scares the shit out of them?

Although not proven, coffee increases your will power and determination. There are references to prove that the Iron man of India, Sardar vallabhai patel, drank two cups of it every day. Patel was once arguing in the court when the news of the sudden demise of his wife reached him. He maintained his cool and continued with the case. An ordinary soul wouldn’t have been able to contain the excitement and joy and must have started celebrating thereby attracting the contempt of the court.

Instant coffee is another variety which can be used alternately for hair dyeing. Prolonged consumption of it turns your hair white. Jokes apart, we must restrict ourselves to not more than two cups of coffee per day. The ‘cups’ you get in coffee day or other such places fall under a differenet category called bathtubs. A cup is strictly any vessel that can hold not more than 250 ml of liquid and doesn’t pose a threat for anyone to trip and fall into it.

Testimonials – Let’s mean them

Online communities such as Orkut lets you find friends. You’ll love these portals more if your ‘here for:’ section says ‘women (dating)’. Most women post their photos posing sideways to the camera. Incidentally, this is the same crowd that complains that men don’t look at their eyes while speaking.

Among innumerable ways of winning a women’s heart, such as buying jewellery by burning one’s pocket to the other cost effective ways such as writing poems which involves using a lot of grey cells, Testimonials seem to be a better option. It also saves you from entering the elite club of ‘worst pick up lines’. Tell a woman that she’s got a beautiful smile and she’ll respond to you, or at least you can expect a scrap in return.

But what does one mean by a thousand watt smile? I didn’t know that you could measure the wattage of a smile. I know that a woman’s smile is powerful, but didn’t quite think it had a S.I unit.

A testimonial is expressing admiration or appreciation of a person. It has to be earned, not gifted. I find every third person a ‘genius’, every second ‘a really cool guy’, and almost everyone ‘smart, talented and lively’ - no wonder India is churning out entrepreneurs in a hurry.

Mr. ‘cool guy’, in reality could be a person who would pee in his pants when the exam results come out, and the ‘lively’ character could be someone who would brush his teeth once a week to save himself from the tiring exercise of brushing everyday. What can I say about those ‘...I am sure he’ll be a rocket scientist in life’? Let’s hope to see such bright young men as the future presidents of India like kalam.
Most of us become generous while writing somebody’s testimonial – it’s after all a bunch of words isn’t it?

Hard pressed for time

Once a person is gainfully employed, he/she has to forget about personal life for sometime. But ‘sometime’ can extend up to well over a few years, and in some cases up to the age of 58. Things that were once taken for granted during college days, such as jogging along the shores of marina, reading newspaper after lunch and falling asleep, hanging out with friends, chatting for long hours over phone have all come under ‘things to do’ in the personal reminder.

Working for long hours should not be a problem to a bachelor, but I find my seniors (who’re married) working for the same number of hours. Of course, one’s wanting to go early largely depends on his/her spouse back home. They probably find work more interesting. There’s one more problem in being a programmer...err don’t call them problems, they’re issues. Programming is like women, elusive when you go behind but when you stop caring, comes back to give you a nudge.

Weekend is a paradox; because the weeks don’t end (but hey! Do you find a school of fish carry books along?). I find myself working for some dead line or the other. Dead lines give you turbulent sleeps, perhaps that’s why they are called so. Never mind, we Indians carry a lot of burden on our shoulders at young ages, may be that’s why India’s hope for an Olympic gold lies in weight lifting.