White Noise

Confessions of a Human Brain

Here I come

Posted by Joe on July 8, 2009

You can see lot of people having their status as California, here I come, or Ooty, here I come, or even Blog world, here I come.

In fact, even in my first blog post, I have boasted that “World, here I come”.
reflecting back and thinking about it, I can’t help myself wonder, what the hell these retards think about themselves? (Including myself :D )

I think “here I come” phrase comes out of superiority complex of some kind.
They think that particular location definitely misses something if their holy presence is not there.

Other than “home, here I come”, I dont think here I come can match in any other location. ‘cos other than your home sweet home, I am sure the world will go on as it has for the past 4 billion years.

So my fellow internet users, please refrain from using “here I come” ever in your life. If you are going somewhere, please keep your status message as “Going to California” or “Will leave to California in 2 days” :) .

PS: This post is directed towards one of my friend :D

Posted in General, Rumblings | 2 Comments »

Air travel

Posted by Joe on July 6, 2009

aeroplane
I know. I know.. Lot many people have written their posts about the same topic.
Well with this post, I too join the group of bloggers who have written a post about how they used to love Aeroplanes and how they hate it now.

When I was a kid, I, like any other kid in India, used to run out of their home, or stop playing cricket if we are already outside, and raise our heads to have a look at the mighty aeroplanes cruising through the sky. While we were kids, we even had our industrial visit to an aerodrum, and we were awed to see that big monster from a distance. Almost each and every kid opened their mouth with wonder when they saw the aeroplane taking off from the runway. We followed the silver stream of mist, which was left as a trail for jet flights, and flying in an aeroplane or atleast touching it was definitely one of the wish each and every kid had at that time.

Personally, I was pretty awed when I took the flight for the first time. I was on the phone, constantly updating my mom how the interiors of the plane looked, and after landing, called her again to brief my experiences of my first flight. It was such a roller coaster ride.

After 3-4 flights, the jerk given during take off and the impact of landing stopped amusing me. Watching large buildings transform from large buildings to kid’s toys too didn’t entertained me any further. I stopped telling my mom how the world looks from a plane, and other than a small short call telling her that I have reached safely and that the pilot has not screwed up with the landing, I didn’t elaborate on anything else.

Now with 25+ flights under my belt (whew), I hate the waiting time in the airport and I hate the fake smile provided by the hot air hostess. I hate the same old rehearsals done by the air hostess and I hate the horrible food they provide in the middle of nowhere. The small cramped seats, missed baggage, security checkup too didn’t help me either. The thing which I hate the most in the air travel is the fellow passengers.

It is really easy to start a conversation with a fellow passenger, provided you are in a train. But in a flight, most of the guys will be indifferent. Indian girls normally show some attitude. In a flight, the attitude gets multiplied with the altitude.

Still there are some good things with air travel.

The sunrise and sunset which you see from some 10km above the sea level is still exciting. The view of the hills when you take a flight from Kolkata to Guwahati is still enticing. The sea line which you can see when you come take the Kolkata-chennai route is still beautiful. You get to talk with some CEOs and general managers of big companies only if you are taking a flight.

So as a whole, even if you hate air travel, it has become indispensable part of our lives. Travel to UK or US is a matter of hours than weeks because of air travel. You get to have a glimpse of the fake world (fake smiles, fake good food, fake courtesy and fake people) when you travel by a plane.

So do travel by plane if you get a chance ;)

Posted in General, Rumblings | Leave a Comment »

Repeatu

Posted by Joe on July 3, 2009

Has it ever happened to you that you will listen to the same song again again, some times even for the whole day, and the very next day, you will be so irritated with the song that you might even delete that song from your iPod!!

You might not delete the song from your iPod per se, because you might not be having an iPod in first place ;) . Even if you are having an iPod, you might not do anything dramatic, but end up yelling at any one who is listening to the same song to turn that thing off.

Not just about songs, even food items could come into the same category. You might be dying to eat halwa that you might finish off a whole kg of it, and end up taking an oath, never to touch halwa ever again in your life.

This can apply to sports, games,travel, movies, books and what not?

You might not be bored in a single day, but may be in a week or a month.

Why do we overdo/overuse stuff till we get bored of it?
Why can’t we just tell ourselves that OK, this is enough for today, we will save it for tommorow?
Why do we have this compulsion to get/do everything right here right now?

If you guys have got answers to any of the above questions, please do tell me.
‘cos I am in the same group, who have been bitten by this compulsion bug.

PS: I don’t have an iPod :D .
For those who didn’t understand the title, it is taken from a lyrics of Rajini’s Chandramukhi.

Posted in General, Rumblings | 3 Comments »

The king of pop is dead

Posted by Joe on June 26, 2009

Finally the king of pop is dead.michael-jackson

Wow!! what a career. His transformation from the coolest guy whom every one wanted to imitate to the butt of all jokes is really mind blowing.

He must have seen it all. From being a child prodigy to a pop sensation and then to almost being bankrupt! He has been called as a girl, a guy and a pedophile. He showed the world how plastic surgery could ruin your life and that you should be happy with what you have.

He taught the world to run away, instead of to stand and fight (Beat it). Even though he transformed himself from black to white, he shouted to the whole world that It don’t matter if you are black or white. He even made some revolutionary songs, singing “All I want to say that they don’t really care about us”. His single Billy Jean topped the charts for record number of weeks.

He taught us moon walk, and the whole world wanted to dance like him.

He definitely entertained the audience through out the world. Through his music, or through his controversies.

Even though he is king of pop, he has lived a rock star’s life.

I bid adieu with respect, the one and only king of pop – Michael Joseph Jackson. May your soul rest in peace.

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Why do girls get more hits?

Posted by Joe on June 25, 2009

Have you ever noticed how the number of profile comments in your Orkut or Facebook profile increases when ever a girl posts some pics of her in the internet and hardly a few comment anything in your profile even after uploading hundreds of pics?

If you haven’t noticed, you are now not one of the lucky few who are blind to this worldwide phoenomina.

This is not just with Orkut profile, but with You-Tube, Blogspot, WordPress, you name it, girls dominance is there. I am feeling as if the social networking is over run by girls.

The girl can have a really stupid post like “I am not feeling well today. Feeling real pissed off”

and you can see some 10 comments for the same post from well wishers asking what is going wrong with them in their life.

But I am sure even if a guy posts a post like “I am feeling like a total loser”, the general public will let him enjoy the latest feeling which he has got and would not even bother to cheer him up.

Why do people are so biased?

Why can a girl just blog her boring life as in Compulsive Confessor, but go on to become very famous in the virtual world, and even go on to become an author, but a guy, who is talking about serious things, will not even be touched upon, for example Thermal Noise. A guy has to be unbelievably creative to get the same number of blog hits as that of a girl.

Not just in the blog world. Look at tennis.

Nobody even cares about the number of doubles grandslams Mahesh Bhupati and Leandar Paes win, but they laud Sania Mirza when she advances to second round in Wimbledon! They dont worry about Saina Nehwal winning Indonesian grand prix, and that is another matter.

I think the crux of the problem with the male mendality of going after the beauty of the fairer sex. That explains the whole stuff.

Posted in General, Rumblings | 2 Comments »

Chak de Pakistan

Posted by Joe on June 22, 2009

afridi pakistanWell finally, our friendly foe has won the world cup.

From being called as retards by an author in TOI from the beginning of the world cup, they have gone forward to win the world cup. Spectacular turn around indeed.

So with my full heart, I congratulate them on this spectacular win.

They are the team who badly wanted to win the world cup. They were being pressured from all sides. Both from inside and out, democratic and military, Social and economical.

Lets just hope that this world cup victory brings them at least short term happiness to the minds of the people of Pakistan.

PS: There is many similarities between the movie and the performance of Pakistan in T-20.  In the movie, India was convincingly beaten by Australia, whom they meet again in the final. In T-20, Pakistan was convincingly beaten by Srilanka whom they meet again in the final.

Posted in General, Rumblings, Sports | Leave a Comment »

yesterday was my lucky day

Posted by Joe on June 11, 2009

Do you know which day you will consider as the worst day in your life?

The day where you think that you will not do any thing, but end up doing countless tasks right from the morning till the EOD (End Of Day).

You would have thought that EOD will come at 5:30 pm, but infact, you will end up having an EOD sometime after 9 PM.

Yesterday was one of those days. Murphy was playing with me through out the day.

A tester found bug in my application which was running properly for a long time. When I tried to change the code and check it in, VOB was locked. So my code change had to wait for the next release. (To know about these technical terms, read PS).

Then I had to talk with the guy from test team, trying to defend that what ever I have done is right. Only after I promised him that sun rises from west, he let me go.

When I thought the worst is over, I had to attend a teleconference with my higher ups, who give me requirements. As usual, there was some misconception, and the higher up ended blasting me. Again after explaining him that in reality sun rises in the east, he let me go.

In the mean time, 5 guys in our freshers team got together and they planned to give us treat for their birthdays which happened some 1 month back. Thinking of having a good time over the treat and empty their pockets as far as possible, I went to the restaurant where they gave the treat.

But to my dismay, I found out that there was no Chicken kabab available. How can I say that I attended a treat without having chicken kabab!!! If atleast I have got grilled chicken, things would have been OK. But even that was not available.

After all these setbacks, I just wanted to go home and sleep, and there comes the rain. It rained cats and dogs continuously for atleast 3 hours. After sending off the girls and the younger members of the team in autos, as no cab driver was ready to come out in this monstrous rain, I came out to take my bike, when it was still raining heavily.

Only then I realized that yesterday was not that bad after all.

I learned how to convince a guy why chicken is a dog.
I learned to be calm and push my point.
I got to get drenched in rain.

And even I remembered the song “Singing in the rain” and I was dancing in the middle of the road at 11 PM with rain falling heavily all around me.

With that exotic mood, I took my bike and was riding happily towards my house in utter darkness, when two cycle walas tried to hit my bike through their foolishness.

After cruising away safely from those retards, I realized Murphy is still against me.

So with utter care which I have never shown ever in my life so far, I reached home, and slept the happiest sleep I have had for a long time.

So yeah yesterday was my lucky day. I have done enough stuff to write a post about it ;)

PS: If you understand ‘check in’, release and VOB, you dont need this PS rite. For others who dont understand it, enjoy life till you come to understand it. ‘cos once you know these terms, you can say for sure that your life is in shackles ;) .

Posted in General, Rumblings | 2 Comments »

Problem with racism

Posted by Joe on June 10, 2009

racismI have serious problems with racism.
Mainly because I really dont understand it.
Seriously. I have tried to understand hell lot of times.
Every time I thought
‘Now I know racism’,
something new pops up.

For example, let us consider that a girl is really beautiful.
If you go and tell her
“You are beautiful and you look like a lovely Rose”,
then definitely that can be called as racism.
Confused? I will explain why.
That girl might be from Himachal, and that girl might be having a milky white skin and perfect teeth and crisp nose and so on and on. Guess you guys got the flow.
So definitely she is an Aryan.
So I am calling her beautiful because she is Aryan.

This is definitely racism, as we all know Nazi’s are called racist, as they said aryans are the most beautiful, brilliant, strong and blah blah blah in the whole world.
If you think that is not racism, then how do you explain Harbhajan Singh calling Symonds a Monkey racist? (Maa ki *** was not considered racist and it was OK)
It is not a big secret that Symonds looks ugly. I dont understand how calling him ugly and saying that he is looking like a monkey is considered to be discriminating his Aboriginal race and calling his mom names, who I think is also Aboriginal is not considered discriminating the same Aboriginal race?

I seriously dont understand it.

By the way I have been called racist twice.
I dont understand why I was called racist both the times.

The first time was when my friend completed his maiden marathon and he updated his pic in Orkut. He was having a french beard like I am having right now, and he looked like an Afro American (This is not considered racist). So I told him that you are looking like a Nigger. He told me not to use the N word, as it is considered racist.
Now my problem is that, I learned this word from the same Afro Americans through their Rap songs. I dont understand how the same word, when told by some one from their community is not considered racist, and infact those songs are telecasted all over the world, and if some one who is not an Afro American says the same word, he is called as racist. By the way we should not call Afro Americans black. Because if you call them black, it is considered racist. But I feel Afro Americans is a more racist word than calling them blacks or Niggers. This is because you are telling them that you are from Africa and thats why you are looking like this.

Some how, moving forward, I did my MTech from IIT Guwahati. And it is a common term to call the people of north east as Chinki. But only recently I came to know that that is also derogatory, as one of my friend got upset because of calling a person from North East Chinki. My problem is that my best friend is from Assam and I regularly call him Chinki. He never had any issues with that. So only after one guy got hurt because of an innocuous Chinki comment, I came to know that I have been racist for the past three years. Now my problem is, if I call a person from Tamil nadu tamilian should be called racist. But no one is even thinking of terming that as racist, as we even have a famous saying in tamil ‘Tamilan endru sollada, talai nimirnthu nillada’, which literally translated, denotes something like ‘Call yourself Tamilian and stand with your head held high’. That is definitely racism. But nobody calls it so. But when you call a north east chinki, that is called as racism.

I seriously dont understand it.

I think racism comes out in most of the cases because the people are so sensitive and we dont have any idea when we will hurt their feelings. May be they were having some inferiority complex too. I think Racism is some thing to do with having prejudice about a person just because he is from some race.

But people dont think in that way.

Now we say the recent attacks on Indians in Australia racist. I dont think any of the attackers would have singled out the Great Khali, if he was caught alone.
Indians with soft muscles and smaller build were soft targets and thats why they were picked. I think the attackers, given a chance would have picked Australians, provided they were having soft muscles and smaller build.

I seriously dont understand it.

If any one did understood what racism means and how the recent events are considered racist, please do enlight me.

Waiting for your replies :)

PS: I already wrote a post about racism and even there, I was not able to understand racism.
PS: The photo is taken from here

Posted in General, Rumblings | 5 Comments »

Rajini – The male Chauvinist

Posted by Joe on June 6, 2009

Rajinikanth, the superstar
Rajinikanth, the supreme hero
Rajinikanth, the people’s champ
Rajinikanth, the hero of the masses

Every one must have listened to atleast one of the above mentioned titles to the one and only superstar in tamil cinema.

I add one more title to him

Rajinikanth – the male chauvinist.

Rajini, as we commonly call him, came into tamil cinema with a bang through Balachander’s Apporva Ragangal. That movie, when released, was appreciated both by the critics and general public as a classic and it rightly deserves so. The film, which is about a old lady falling for a young guy and vice versa, was heavily based on feminist theme.

From that film, he improved his screen presence from hardly 10 minutes to the main villain in Moondru Mudichu and finally the single hero in Billa. By 1991, when Thalapathy was released, he was having a cult following.

The crowd lived the dream of Rajinikanth, a guy with average looks and dark complexion fighting against the evil Thasildars and romancing with heroins with milky white skin. Rajini kanth was performing all the suppressed longings of the common man.

Some where down the line, he must have realized that, the number of male chauvinist heavily outnumber the number of feminist. So he started living the male chauvinistic dream. More recently so than during his struggling times.

Consider his movie Mannan (1992), the most chauvinistic film I have ever seen in my life. In that movie, Vijashanti, the CEO of the No.1 company in the whole of India was made to be a house wife, as our hero is just a mechanic working in the same company.

You can see in all of his movies that he never looses a bet or a fight to a girl. Consider Pandian for example, where he wins a dance bet against the heroin.

In his movie Veera, he played a guy with two wives, and thus again playing the chauvinistic dream of having two wives.

The movie Padayappa became famous, just for the scenes between Ramya Krishnan and Rajinikanth, with the common man hurling obscenities towards Ramya Krishnan. Rightly in the climax, Ramya Krishnan gets her fitting end. The movie even has a scene where Rajnikanth preaches how a girl should be.

Chandramuki had him teasing the hapless Nayantara and Sivaji had him searching for the proper tamil girl – a girl in pavadai thavani.

Most of his movies never gave any importance to the female lead and even if equal importance is given, they were somewhere subdued in their character.

Instead of living the dream of a chauvinist, if he acts in more movies like Valli, definitely it be of big help to the gentler sex and will help them to break free of the conventions which are binding them down.

PS: Valli became a huge flop.
PS: The pic is taken from here.

Posted in General, Movies, Rumblings | Leave a Comment »

Che Guevara from a Capitalist viewpoint

Posted by Joe on June 3, 2009

che-guevara-portrait-5001050One of the few things which I have pinned in my cubicle is the iconic portrait of Che Guevara looking sternly away from you.

The reactions which I get after some one see this photo varies from “Is he Jesus Christ?” to “Are you a communist?”

This shows that many people have seen his pic, but have no idea who he is OR People think who ever likes him is a hard core communist.

For me, I was in the first category for a long long time. I have seen his pictures in T-shirts and have thought that those shirts are really cool. More over, being brought up in Madurai, the most communist city in the whole of Tamil Nadu, I was bound to see his T-shirts every where. But I didn’t care enough to enquire about who he is.
Every thing changed after I have seen the movie “Motorcycle Diaries”.
The movie opened the door about a person who didn’t care much about himself and felt the pain of others.

And with the advent of Internet and free download, I learned more about him.
This post is not about the characters of Che Guevara, but the characterstics in Che Guevara which I like. Better check the wiki page for Che Guevara to know more about this charismatic person.

Even though he is not a great military tactician or a financial wizard, the posts which has taken during his life time, the one thing which changes Che Guevara from all others is the spirit which he has shown in his actions. He believed in what he was doing, even though things were completely going on in the opposite direction (take struggle in Bolivia for instance).
By the way if you are still wondering about the topic of this post, the capitalist is me and it is used as a singular noun ;)

I finish off this post with one of his most famous quote

“It is better to die standing than to live on your knees.”
For Spirit – Che Guevara

PS: Photo is taken from here

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