Beware - Highway warnings.

On my recent drive back from Chennai to Bangalore, noticed a few of the warning signs posted by NHAI along NH 46.

Here is a list of the few I can recollect-

1. Accidents do not happen, they are caused

( Whatever happened to the age old saying - Accidents are just waiting to happen?)

2. If you drive, do not drink; if you drink, do not drive

(If you can read this alliteration in the time you take to zoom past it, you probably don't need the warning anyway)

3. If you drive like hell, you will reach there faster

(I wanna go to heaven, should I just walk?)

4. Minor drivers.... major accidents

(Major drivers.... disasters?)

Movie Review - Kal Kissne Dekha.

I know.. I know... the first reaction that I am gonna get is.. "WHAT? You saw this movie and are brave enough to even write a review of it?" Yes, I did see this piece of s*** movie and I am going to write a few words on it. It is left upto you to decide whether you want to read it or not.

The movie in short:-

It is the story of Nihaal from Chandigarh, who comes to Mumbai to study in a college. He can see the future owing to some superhuman capability of his. He uses this skill to befriend his seniors, acquire a girlfriend (in true bollywood style), get a bank robber arrested and a terrorist ring busted. A few songs, absolutely irrelevant item numbers, some fight sequences, a trying-to-be-funny-but-always-crying mother, horrible direction and acting which can be called better than only a statue's, and you have real masala movie here.

The movie in detail:-

About the hero - He can sing, dance, fight, is a scientist, an inventor, converts a video game joystick into a signal jammer, talks about reverse current blocking forward current and hence completing a circuit, jumps a car from a hotel onto a boat so far out in the sea that you need binoculars to see it and so on and so forth.

Hilarious scene #1-

Mr super fighter can kick a football at his seniors, without the ball ever touching the ground. He takes down 6 of them one-by-one with the ball always bouncing back to him.

Hilarious scene #2-

Our local Nostradamus is in a shopping mall. Juhi Chawla is the host of some game show being conducted there (why does she keep doing these hideous movies nowadays?) She walks about on the stage, but nothing happens. When our hero's sweetheart gets onto stage and starts lambasting him, he suddenly screams out - BOMB. Using the power vested in him by the supreme maker, he is able to sniff out the presence of a bomb under the stage. And it is a pressure bomb, will go off if the heroine moves even a little bit (what amazing technology). We now have the police and the bomb squad coming in and doing what they do. The bomb disposal dude is about to cut the yellow wire, when Mr visionary scientist tells him to cut the red one instead. It turns out to be right. The bomb is diffused with about 300 milliseconds left for detonation and the heroine falls into the arms of our hero. Now, if you are a policeman and are being told the exact location of a bomb, and then you are hold to cut a particular colored wire to diffuse it, shouldn't you be arresting the guy on suspicion? But NO... he his hailed as a hero in front of the media.

Hilarious scene #3-

In the police control room, an inspector is shown walking repeatedly through a metal detector with an explosive device in hand. The ACP says "This is very dangerous. Such a sensitive radar is not reading this explosive." Looks like I should have paid a little more attention to my Radar and Microwave Techniques course. Never knew that a radar could be used to READ explosive devices.

Hilarious scene #4-

Mr scientist along with his prof makes a device fashioned out of a video game remote control. It uses the concept of reverse current to block all circuits in the backward path (now what the heck is that supposed to mean??). By that logic, it is a jammer. He even demonstrates it by controlling the traffic signals. AFAIK, traffic signals do not have wireless controls. Then... what were they trying to prove? Here's my advice to the entire crew of the movie - they should have seen "The Italian Job". In it, they have done similar stuff, but which is far more believable.

Hilarious scene #5-

Fight scene. Hero saves heroine from the clutches of the bad guys. All I wish to say is - instead of it looking like a good-guy-beats-bad-guy scene, it looks more like the last over of the first innings of a T20 match with Dhoni and Muralitharan swinging their bats to maximize the score. You have to see it to believe it.

Somehow I feel that Mithun Da's 'Gunda' and Rajni's 'Sivaji - The Boss' will match up to the caliber of this movie. Should try and watch those movies sometime.

Nokla Phones.

Just found out about this doppelganger of a company called Nokla. They are an absolute rip-off. Authentic looking handsets are a piece of cake for them. They even have Engadget talking about them. And surprisingly, the phones actually work.

Standard Chartered at it's best.

Your money might be safe in the bank, but what about your cheques?

Will anyone still want to drop off their cheques in the so-called "CHEQUE DROP BOX"? I wonder... Or is reverse psychology at use here? Maybe the authorities thought that if they keep it out in the open, making it easy for anyone to just pick it up and leave, no one will actually try and do such a thing. But, who knows... this is India after all.

The kid in the van.

Today morning I received a big compliment. There were no words involved and there was no conversation. I was amazed to realize how such a gesture can liven up your whole day. I was driving on my bike to office, negotiating Bangalore's reckless traffic and cursing my luck at being stuck in it. That's when I saw a van in front of me and a small boy leaning out of the window. He took one look at my bike and I saw a big smile on his face. In fact, he got so excited, that he pointed it out to all his friends in the van. I am not sure what they liked in my bike, but their excitement was worth watching. When they van took a turn and I had to go ahead, the little fella was literally hanging out of the window, craning his neck to get a last look. That is when I realized, I was not driving any ordinary bike - I was on a cruiser. This might be the sincerest feedback ever provided about the Avenger. Hat's off to Bajaj, for coming up with such a gem of a cruiser.

I could not forget this incident the whole day long. In between my bouts of work, the kid's face would pop up in my mind and it would be like an instant dose of happiness. Thank you buddy, for making my day.

Shifting states.

This is the tourist information board at Lalbagh, Bangalore. There is nothing out of place in this shot, unless you zoom in onto the map of India.

In my 6 six years of learning geography in school, and ever since, I always believed that Karnataka had a really long and beautiful coastline on the Western shore. But, the person who came up with this masterpiece, does not seem to think so. Maybe he is a Malayali living in Mumbai, who would love to get his homeland closer.

Bangalore's Back-Breakers.

Vroooomm...Vroooomm...Vroooomm...Rrrrrr....Vroooomm...Vroooomm...Thud.. Clang... Ching.....Oh S****!!!

Dont worry.. I have neither gone bonkers nor am trying to be a one man rock band or something. This is the kind of sound sequence that every biker in Bangalore would have heard atleast once in his lifetime. And the source of all this - Bangalore's ubiquitous (so called) speed-breakers. These monsters can be seen (rather, NOT seen) everywhere. They come in all sizes and shapes. The recently introduced 'stretch' ones, the more traditional smooth ones and the absolutely illegal 'more-the-height-more-effective-it-is' kind. And it is the third kind which is responsible for the afore mentioned audio effects.

Speed breakers are not much of a concern if you are travelling by a BMTC bus. But, since the day I bought my cruiser, I have come to realise the apparent (mis)use of these things. I have already bottomed out my low ground clearance bike quite a number of times. And it gets just worse with a pillion. Not that I am completely against speed breakers, but when concerned citizens start making their own on arterial roads, that is when you know that something is going wrong. As per this post, there are only 282 authorised speed breakers in Bangalore. The rest are all back-breakers and death traps. In fact, the number of accidents caused by these breakers just keeps on increasing. The day is not far, when we could have motocross races on Bangalore's roads. I just hope that the Lokayukta lives up to his promise of taking out the unauthorised speed breakers, before this fantasy becomes a reality.

Election Campaigning and VIP movement

I could not help but notice the stark difference in politicians' attitude when they are out for campaigning and otherwise. As I have written earlier, whenever these 'public servants' decide to translocate, it turns out to be the most trying of times for the public. Road diversions, traffic jams, two wheeler riders sweating it out in the sun, pedestrians waiting for eons to cross a road... The lesser mortals are kept as far away from the (atrociously long ) cavalcades as possible. Security is one of the primary reasons cited for this. But then, what happens when they are out campaigning? At such times, people are allowed to get as close as is humanly possible. They try to closely interact with everyone. Voters are hardly ever stopped from approaching them. Isn't their security of any concern then? Or is it that, they do not care when it comes to the question of garnering more votes? 

In the past 24 hours, I have been witness to both these kinds of incidents. Yesterday afternoon was when the BJP's top brass decided to show their faces to the people in and around HAL 3rd stage. The chief minister himself was part of one such road show. They even entered into the narrowest of lanes where reaching upto him was child's play. I myself drove my bike for quite some distance, along with the cavalcade. And in the second incident, while going to office today morning, I was witness to a VIP movement related traffic blockade . Traffic on airport road, near the command hospital, was held up for a few minutes, to let some official cars pass through. A cop was desperately signalling to all and sundry, to stay away from the road. The traffic from the opposite direction was stopped quite some distance away. Some people were left wondering, whether it was an emergency of sorts. But then, a handful of cars sped by, as if on a mission to save the planet. I am sure, it was nothing but just some 'public servant' who was going by. 

Should women celebrate "Women's Day"?

The origin's of celebrating March 8th as International Women's Day can be traced back to the first decade of the last century. It was marked by protests against low wages and poor working conditions for female workers in the garment industry. This went on for a few years and after many other dates being used for the purpose, March 8th was officially declared as IWD. Considering the social conditions of those times, it did make sense to dedicate a day to women. After all, it was a highly male dominated society. 

But, a lot of water has flown down the river since then. Today, there is no field which does not have women equally collaborating or competing with men. It hardly makes any sense in celebrating just one day as IWD (does it mean that the other 364 days are for men?), when they should be accorded equal status in each and every facet of life. Isn't it what the feminist movement was all about? Here is an attempt to put this all in numbers:-

International Women's Day - 0.274 % rights demanded

Feminism - 50 % (if not more)

Indian Politics/Education system - 33 % 

In my view, women should refrain from celebrating any single day as their day or even asking for reservations. They were born equal and should be accorded equal rights to this world and everything that it encompasses.

Barking up the wrong tree?

Isnt it just wonderful that reel life can sometimes teach you so much about real life? You are least bothered about what the movie is all about. After a hard day's work, all you care about is a few laughs and some stress-busting entertainment. 

But then, life has this uncanny knack of hitting you hard at the most unexpected moment, which sets you thinking. Thats eggxactly (why am I so influnced by Javed Jaffrey?) what happened to me while watching "Back to the Future". In the movie, the protagonist accidentally travels back in time in a time machine invented by a scientist. What follows is a hilarious sequence of events and how they are dealt with.

Anyway, what I really want to say is that, while watching the movie, I realised that humankind has been trying to solve the wrong problem all along. In fact, the solution to ALL our problems has been right in front of our eyes all this time - TIME TRAVEL. Just that we never realised how to make use of it. The basic premise on which time travel is based, is that every physical entity has a unique identity and presence at every instant. Which means an object at time x and the same object at time y are in fact two different objects. This simple fact leads to infinite possibilities. Imagine:-

1. The world's fuel reserves are about to go kaput. Just travel back in time, and get some fuel from then(there?).

2. No more food shortage. Go back in time, stock up on as much is needed, and come back.

3. Crime can be virtually eliminated. Hop into the future, know about the crime, return to the present, and prevent it from happening.

Isnt this just so simple. Which leads us to the most important point - that we have been unnecessarily trying to solve all of these issues, when we should have been investing all our time and money in making time travel possible. So, here's my advice to all those organisations, governments, NGOs, institutes and individuals, who have been trying hard to solve the energy crisis and feed the burgeoning world population. Concentrate all your efforts in inventing a time machine and thou shalt all live happily ever after.

(All the views expressed in this post are purely delusional. These are just the side effects of an overworked engineer being allowed to write nonsense on his blog)

MTR.

Do I really want to write again about today's experience? Oh no, I dont... So in case you really wanna read my review about the much hyped MTR in Bangalore, just follow this link and save me the trouble of putting in additional words here which would otherwise just contribute towards hogging more disk space on Google's servers.