Just the other day, when my dad came home from work, he flourished a piece of paper and declared that I was to speak to a girl whose phone number was incidentally scrawled on the paper, for some required information.
"Call her?" I echoed in a hollow voice.
I then proceed to ask him for her email address.
"I've got only her phone number"
I shook my head, reluctantly. How could I just 'talk to her on the phone'?
But then it hit me.
I was unwilling to talk to someone on the telephone, not because I'm phenomenally technologically advanced, just disinclined to an actual live conversation.
I realised that man has propelled himself so far into the future that he has forgotten the touch and feel of what's real.
We converse with our friends through Facebook, chat, video conferencing and an array of applications.
We 'text' our mates sitting two seats away rather than just getting up and telling them what we want to say.
We no longer listen to the comforting, deep, reassuring voices of humans and rather to the hard, metallic pings of computer notifications and cell phone rings.
So it's time we changed our mechanical habits.
Try taking a stroll with a friend or drop by for a visit at your neighbour's house. Keep in touch with your friends by talking to them and they'll like you better for that rather than artificial SMSs.
Now I must leave you for I have to make a rather important phone call to a girl I've been meaning to talk to.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Summer Slumbers
If you're a teenager and your high school has let off for summer break, you would probably be the most ecstatic person on earth.
What's queer about summers is that, while the days seem longer, we tend to turn nocturnal.
Here I am jabbing at my keyboard at 3 in the morning(shhh!) with my headphones on and the volume turned up high.
Have you ever noticed that the epitome of a Utopian summer 'freak-out' concerns slumber parties, midnight movies, night clubs etc.
The listless couch potatoes of the morn mystically transform into the life of the party by night.
While the sun is glowering outdoors at noon, the only insane nomads of daylight are workaholics choking and retching with their stifling, horribly fluorescent ties; the rest of the world is under covers, with slumber kissed eyelids and the adrenaline pumping energy of a sloth.
Yes, we, humans are exotic creatures.
We choose to rest while the animals frisk in the glory of radiance and warm light and while they hibernate with peaceful arrogance in the bitter, biting cold months of unforgiving Winter, we are alive with esprit, up and running!
What's queer about summers is that, while the days seem longer, we tend to turn nocturnal.
Here I am jabbing at my keyboard at 3 in the morning(shhh!) with my headphones on and the volume turned up high.
Have you ever noticed that the epitome of a Utopian summer 'freak-out' concerns slumber parties, midnight movies, night clubs etc.
The listless couch potatoes of the morn mystically transform into the life of the party by night.
While the sun is glowering outdoors at noon, the only insane nomads of daylight are workaholics choking and retching with their stifling, horribly fluorescent ties; the rest of the world is under covers, with slumber kissed eyelids and the adrenaline pumping energy of a sloth.
Yes, we, humans are exotic creatures.
We choose to rest while the animals frisk in the glory of radiance and warm light and while they hibernate with peaceful arrogance in the bitter, biting cold months of unforgiving Winter, we are alive with esprit, up and running!
Sunday, August 9, 2009
The Domino Effect
The great thing about holidays is the fact that you have so much excess spare time on your hands that you find room to dig through old family relics and heirlooms.
Every summer, I find myself headfirst in some dingy cupboard sorting through pictures and souvenirs of a time that seems so far back, it might not have happened.
Just yesterday, I produced a rather battered green-and-black-checkered box from my excavation site and found them to contain a pile of ancient dominoes.
I can remember the joy I used to be bursting with, meticulously aligning them in winding serpentine patterns and then watching the dominoes fall upon each other with such excellent timing that they resembled a rather dark, rippling wave.
But dominoes weren't all arrange-and-destroy toys. Turns out they have a long, winding, complex history and play like any old traditional past time.
So being the wonderful researcher I am, I devotedly, sat myself down in the swivelling chair and tapped in 'Wikipedia' on my Google Search.
Now everyone knows Wikipedia- the monster storehouse of information pertaining to every speck present on Earth.
So, there it was, all ready, digested and processed.
Here are excerpts from the website describing the two popular adaptations of playing dominoes.
There's much more to Dominoes then hit-and-run, eh?
Every summer, I find myself headfirst in some dingy cupboard sorting through pictures and souvenirs of a time that seems so far back, it might not have happened.
Just yesterday, I produced a rather battered green-and-black-checkered box from my excavation site and found them to contain a pile of ancient dominoes.
I can remember the joy I used to be bursting with, meticulously aligning them in winding serpentine patterns and then watching the dominoes fall upon each other with such excellent timing that they resembled a rather dark, rippling wave.
But dominoes weren't all arrange-and-destroy toys. Turns out they have a long, winding, complex history and play like any old traditional past time.
So being the wonderful researcher I am, I devotedly, sat myself down in the swivelling chair and tapped in 'Wikipedia' on my Google Search.
Now everyone knows Wikipedia- the monster storehouse of information pertaining to every speck present on Earth.
So, there it was, all ready, digested and processed.
Here are excerpts from the website describing the two popular adaptations of playing dominoes.
Basic rules
Most domino games are blocking games, i.e. the objective is to empty one's hand whilst blocking the opponents. In the end, a score may be determined by counting the pips in the losing players' hands. In scoring games the scoring is different and happens mostly during game play, making it the principal objective.
Block game
The most basic domino variant is for two players and requires a double six set. The 28 tiles are shuffled face down and form the stock or bone yard. Each player draws seven tiles; the remainder is not used. One player begins by downing (playing the first tile) one of their tiles. This tile starts the line of play, a series of tiles in which adjacent tiles touch with matching, i.e. equal, values. The players alternately extend the line of play with one tile at one of its two ends. A player who cannot do this passes. The game ends when one player wins by playing their last tile, or when the game is blocked because neither player can play.
Draw game
In the more interesting Draw game, players are additionally allowed to draw as many tiles as desired from the stock before playing a tile, and they are not allowed to pass before the stock is (nearly) empty. The score of a game is the number of pips in the losing player's hand plus the number of pips in the stock. Most rules prescribe that two tiles need to remain in the stock.The Draw game is often referred to as simply "dominoes".
Adaptations of both games can accommodate more than two players, who may play individually or in teams.
There's much more to Dominoes then hit-and-run, eh?
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Visas: The daunting pre-vacation task
Going to the USA requires procedures. Strict, non-bendable procedures. We're talking sniffer dogs and motion sensors.
A US visa application is quite similar to a first job interview-You're sweaty with shaking limbs, constantly rifling through your documents making sure you've got them all right.
However I assure you no normal job applicant has ever been subjected to frisking and will not be jabbed by those annoying beeping probes. Nor will they have to produce their CPR for inspection or require to walk through a metal detector barrier.
We made it to the American Embassy at 8- scurrying, for they are very punctual and irritable.(Plus we didn't know what other weapons they had up their sleeve)
We shuffled through the numerous safety checks and were forced to turn out our pockets when the probe bleeped like an insolent whining siren at the magnetic stir of metal coins, watches and jewellery.
Then, clipping on our visitor badges, we strolled through the heavy, thickly reinforced doors, escorted by a security guard in a murky green uniform and matching, no to mention ridiculous, straw hat.
The path through the luscious garden soon melded into cement and tile and before we knew it, we were walking into an angular, silent waiting room.
The visa hopefuls sat themselves down, anxiously on the edge of the comfy chairs. They drummed their fingers, read the boring year old magazines ,lined on a shelf, front-to-back twice and looked around the room restless, wondering how the walls seemed so much more crowded together than the last time they had stared at them.
An intercom buzzed every seven minutes or so, calling upon applicants to submit their documents with their id-photographs.
So here's Lesson #1 of How to Apply for an American Visit Visa:
Always bring Passport-id photographs with a white backdrop and ensure the dimensions of the photograph(length of head-to-chin, length of ear-to-ear, length of left nostril-to-second-last-shirt-button. Okay, except the last one) is EXACTLY as specified. Ground Rule is that each photograph MUST be 2x2 inches. Exactly. Not a centimeter more, not one less.
Moving on...
After the verification of documents, applicants then sit their aching bottoms down once more to wait long and hard to be called for finger-printing.
After making our way back to the counter through the security checks(we needed to head back home to get pictures exactly 2x2 inches as ours were a few centimeters off) we placed our fingers- first left hand four fingers, right hand four fingers, two thumbs together- on an intriguing electronic device with a glass screen which emitted a startling green light that scanned the surface.
And back to the seats again before being called upon for the last- oh thank heavens- stage of the Visa Application Process. The Interview. The most dreaded, risky hurdle in visa procurement.
You can get shot down, straight there and cruel, and drag your sorry self back home with a rejected application, no hope of ever going to the US and the guilt of a massacre of five good whole morning hours of summer.
It took an incredibly long time for us to get our interview over with.
There was one lady who had brought what looked like a haystack of papers and she was rifling threw them, organising and sorting it- Police papers, most likely.
One horrible thing about the US Visa application process is that you have to confess all your details to the interviewer; be honest and truthful about your personal life in front of all the other applicants or rather strangers in that room.
Lesson #2 of How to Apply for an American Visit Visa:
Do not, under any circumstances, fight with the interviewer or slip her twenty dollars through the slit in the window.
Beads of perspiration began to dot my forehead as I nervously witnessed two women ahead of us be brutally rejected and sent home. It was harsh considering that usually when people are not permitted to attain the visa once, they are hardly ever likely to do so in the future.
We walked up to the sealed, reinforced glass and began what turned to be a rather short interview.(I must confess disappointment as I had imagined a lengthy questioning and had come up with ridiculous answers to various probable questions in many such hypothetical scenarios. Also we had waited for what seemed forever.)
And we did it.
Yes, we got through.
The lady behind the counter whose expressions were a give-away whether you were likely to get a visa or not, smiled at us- and our hearts leaped- her blue eyes twinkling and said,
"Right then. Enjoy your trip."
Blog Bubble: Randomly, there was also a rather interesting poster depicting a man with a morbidly sad expression behind bars for not having told the truth during his visa interview. And for most part of the long wait, I was staring up at a curious device positioned on the ceiling which looked like a hybrid of a megaphone and a thermal scanner/laser gun, wondering what it does.
I still haven't figured it out.
A US visa application is quite similar to a first job interview-You're sweaty with shaking limbs, constantly rifling through your documents making sure you've got them all right.
However I assure you no normal job applicant has ever been subjected to frisking and will not be jabbed by those annoying beeping probes. Nor will they have to produce their CPR for inspection or require to walk through a metal detector barrier.
We made it to the American Embassy at 8- scurrying, for they are very punctual and irritable.(Plus we didn't know what other weapons they had up their sleeve)
We shuffled through the numerous safety checks and were forced to turn out our pockets when the probe bleeped like an insolent whining siren at the magnetic stir of metal coins, watches and jewellery.
Then, clipping on our visitor badges, we strolled through the heavy, thickly reinforced doors, escorted by a security guard in a murky green uniform and matching, no to mention ridiculous, straw hat.
The path through the luscious garden soon melded into cement and tile and before we knew it, we were walking into an angular, silent waiting room.
The visa hopefuls sat themselves down, anxiously on the edge of the comfy chairs. They drummed their fingers, read the boring year old magazines ,lined on a shelf, front-to-back twice and looked around the room restless, wondering how the walls seemed so much more crowded together than the last time they had stared at them.
An intercom buzzed every seven minutes or so, calling upon applicants to submit their documents with their id-photographs.
So here's Lesson #1 of How to Apply for an American Visit Visa:
Always bring Passport-id photographs with a white backdrop and ensure the dimensions of the photograph(length of head-to-chin, length of ear-to-ear, length of left nostril-to-second-last-shirt-button. Okay, except the last one) is EXACTLY as specified. Ground Rule is that each photograph MUST be 2x2 inches. Exactly. Not a centimeter more, not one less.
Moving on...
After the verification of documents, applicants then sit their aching bottoms down once more to wait long and hard to be called for finger-printing.
After making our way back to the counter through the security checks(we needed to head back home to get pictures exactly 2x2 inches as ours were a few centimeters off) we placed our fingers- first left hand four fingers, right hand four fingers, two thumbs together- on an intriguing electronic device with a glass screen which emitted a startling green light that scanned the surface.
And back to the seats again before being called upon for the last- oh thank heavens- stage of the Visa Application Process. The Interview. The most dreaded, risky hurdle in visa procurement.
You can get shot down, straight there and cruel, and drag your sorry self back home with a rejected application, no hope of ever going to the US and the guilt of a massacre of five good whole morning hours of summer.
It took an incredibly long time for us to get our interview over with.
There was one lady who had brought what looked like a haystack of papers and she was rifling threw them, organising and sorting it- Police papers, most likely.
One horrible thing about the US Visa application process is that you have to confess all your details to the interviewer; be honest and truthful about your personal life in front of all the other applicants or rather strangers in that room.
Lesson #2 of How to Apply for an American Visit Visa:
Do not, under any circumstances, fight with the interviewer or slip her twenty dollars through the slit in the window.
Beads of perspiration began to dot my forehead as I nervously witnessed two women ahead of us be brutally rejected and sent home. It was harsh considering that usually when people are not permitted to attain the visa once, they are hardly ever likely to do so in the future.
We walked up to the sealed, reinforced glass and began what turned to be a rather short interview.(I must confess disappointment as I had imagined a lengthy questioning and had come up with ridiculous answers to various probable questions in many such hypothetical scenarios. Also we had waited for what seemed forever.)
And we did it.
Yes, we got through.
The lady behind the counter whose expressions were a give-away whether you were likely to get a visa or not, smiled at us- and our hearts leaped- her blue eyes twinkling and said,
"Right then. Enjoy your trip."
Blog Bubble: Randomly, there was also a rather interesting poster depicting a man with a morbidly sad expression behind bars for not having told the truth during his visa interview. And for most part of the long wait, I was staring up at a curious device positioned on the ceiling which looked like a hybrid of a megaphone and a thermal scanner/laser gun, wondering what it does.
I still haven't figured it out.
B.R.B. A.S.A.P. k?
Just as the future of the gramophone is the iPod and the horse-drawn cart is the V8 engined SUV, the future of the English language is sickeningly, the 'chatting jargon'.
Little acronyms, halved words and techno-talk have wormed into the heart of the English language itself- Yes, the worst has happened, "Web 2.0" has been listed in the Webster's dictionary.
With progression and development, men have felt themselves superior and rather brilliant by concocting complex names to christen their inventions/discoveries/findings.
The SONAR, the LASER, the SARS virus, the Y2K bug, EBIDTA, the ENIAC etcetera.
What happened to the good old days, when people would spend lazy summer mornings sprawled in the sunlit grass, breathing in the fresh air and casting fishing lines into the still pond. Now, we have overweight slobs drooling over their "Macs", "ass-whupping gangstas" in some mindless "PC game". Or even "killin' off losers" in some trashy "PS3/Wii/Nintendo" video game.
Casting away the fact that the movie was too unreal and flimsy and flawed in the story plot structure department, The Sisterhood of Travelling Pants 2 does have a rather heart-melting scene capturing a bit of chemistry between Carmen and Ian, they talk about the dying legacy of English and how the old English used to feel- good and rich to speak, pleasure to your throat, royal and regal.
Little acronyms, halved words and techno-talk have wormed into the heart of the English language itself- Yes, the worst has happened, "Web 2.0" has been listed in the Webster's dictionary.
With progression and development, men have felt themselves superior and rather brilliant by concocting complex names to christen their inventions/discoveries/findings.
The SONAR, the LASER, the SARS virus, the Y2K bug, EBIDTA, the ENIAC etcetera.
What happened to the good old days, when people would spend lazy summer mornings sprawled in the sunlit grass, breathing in the fresh air and casting fishing lines into the still pond. Now, we have overweight slobs drooling over their "Macs", "ass-whupping gangstas" in some mindless "PC game". Or even "killin' off losers" in some trashy "PS3/Wii/Nintendo" video game.
Casting away the fact that the movie was too unreal and flimsy and flawed in the story plot structure department, The Sisterhood of Travelling Pants 2 does have a rather heart-melting scene capturing a bit of chemistry between Carmen and Ian, they talk about the dying legacy of English and how the old English used to feel- good and rich to speak, pleasure to your throat, royal and regal.
Carmen Lowell: "Oh, Lady Fortune! Stand you auspicious!" God! Why don't people talk like this anymore? It's just, we've gotten so lazy! We don't say "Oh, Lady Fortune! Stand you auspicious!" We say "Dear God, help me..."
Ian: Or instead of "Enjoy the honey heavy-dew of slumber", "Yo, get some Z's"
Carmen Lowell: It's just... It sounds so good and it feels so good to say. It's rich and luscious.
[Carmen touches her cheek]
Ian: "See how she lays her cheek upon her hand. Oh, that I were a glove upon her hand and I might touch that cheek"
[Carmen blushes]
Ian: See what I mean?
Carmen Lowell: [blushing] Yeah...
More than acronyms(which by the way is an acronym itself. Dear God.), jargon gets to me. A myriad of 'so called chat lingo' has sprung up and infested the Internet like weeds to a garden, ruining the sheer beauty and tranquility of a once glorious language.
A farrago of 'words'(not really words, but you know what I'm getting at) like 'brb', 'ttyl', 'asap', 'g2g', 'idk', 'ily', 'u', 'skol', 'btw' and the ever popular 'k'.
It's quite unnerving to decipher the gibberish, no even better- gobbledygook, that get posted as 'sms' s. Par Example: "hope u f9. cnt cum 2day. sori. wanna mke it up 2 u. tc. hf. ttyl. ily."
I mean, can I at least have the dignity of understanding English the way it's supposed to be understood. Are we so primitive and immature to mix our numbers and alphabets and type out incomprehensible syllables that make no sense when strung together logically?
And don't get me started with the excessive usage of exclamation marks.
Lord help us. Thy fiery might and awesome power shall be the only reasoning pillar in this jungle of madmen. It is you, the erudite, that hold the staff that controls these blabbering buffoons. You the great Linguist who can stop them from brb-ing with their 'techno-junkie-jargon'.
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