Ever since I changed my way of eating to include a lot more veggies and protein in every meal, eating at restaurants has often led to much unintentional hilarity. Evidence: this lunch time conversation at the cash register of a university canteen in a vegetarian traveler's paradise (India, that is).
Me (to the bored cashier who is more mechanical than a robot):
One order phulka ... Cashier (in an elevated voice): One order phulka, (his unseeing eyes looking up, more from practice than any need to really see the customer) Me: Two orders channa masala, Cashier: 2 order channa masala (his eyes come up for air again) Me: One order ... Cashier (looking up now and actually seeing): Parcel a? (want it to go?) Me (shifting my weight, slightly uncomfortable at the implication): Illai inga saapda thaan. (Erm.. no just to eat here...) Me: One order palak paneer, One ord... Cashier (now in a louder voice than before and miming the action of carrying a tiffin carrier): Saappaadu konduvandirukkeengala? (Have you brought food with you?) Me (stopping mid order wondering why anyone would buy food if they already have food: <blink> Cashier (helpfully, because, obviously, I am from some other planet): Illai ellaam sides-a irukkae? (because it's all side dishes here). Me (suppressing a sheepish grin): Ippdi thaan naanga saapduvome! (This is how we eat).
Long silence. Me (disregarding the stunned pause and resolutely finishing my order): One order kadai vegetable.
Silence that I will not qualify with cliches like "that you could cut with a knife". Me (looking up because my order was not parroted back at me): <blink> Cashier (looking at the cashier-in-waiting standing next to him, his jaw still unhinged): <blink?> Cashier-in-waiting (wide eyed, shrugging his shoulders, flaring his hands and trying not to burst out laughing): <blink!!>
I look expectantly at the two. The two look expectantly at me. No one moves. Then, as if snapping out of a trance, the Cashier recovers.
I woke up on a Thursday morning to an unusual sight. WaMu was draped over the side of a large blue bucket, apparently peering intently into the contents. The bucket was three quarters full of water. This, however, is not unusual. WaMu, as you all know, is a Hydrologist. The unusual thing about this display of acrobatics is not that he was capable of it either. It was that he was drinking water out of the bucket! It is not even that he is capable of drinking when suspended on his stomach that was surprising, but that he was drinking water at all! You see WaMu likes to experiment with water, but never actually drink it. What self respecting scientist munches on their samples?! Seriously, you people!
To understand this you need to flashback, oh about seven years or so, when WaMu had an emergency. Without going into the details, let me just say, it was the year when we discovered that cats don't have a thirst impulse and that their natural food usually gives them all the water they need. Long story short, we had to feed him a prescription diet that induced thirst.
Now, seven years later, gato numero dos (or if you prefer French: chat nombre deux) contracted the same condition. And if you are completely other-language-unfriendly: cat number two contracted the same condition. He was prescribed the same food, but by a different vet (in case you were interested).
So at this point you are going, "Big deal. So Cat 1 ate Cat 2's prescription, felt thirsty, drank water. Case closed!" Not so fast! Not so fast! Before you hit that back button on your browser or log in to your favorite social networking site, let me tell you (humbly of course) that you are wrong.
Strange things continued to happen throughout that eventful Thursday (yes, I am completely aware of what my life must seem like to you, if this is what I call an eventful day). Not only did Cat 1 and Cat 2 drink water, but Dog 1 (Diva, in case you have forgotten here is an intro) was also drinking copious amounts of water. They were in fact drinking from the same bowl (no surprises there, they are all lazy and prefer to drink/eat from the nearest bowl). But it took me a while to realize that they were sort of queuing for that bowl and going round robin, taking turns to drink out of it.
Now this, even you, my dear reader, must admit, was odd.
Even if WaMu had eaten Poli Saamiyaar's food, there is no earthly reason why this should make Diva drink gallons of water. So, I decided to investigate the matter more thoroughly. Like all shrewd detectives, I concluded that finding the scene of the crime was probably the first step towards solving it. Like everyone who has ever been owned by critters would know, this tends to somehow revolve around a source of food. This is what I found, when I waked into the room where their food is stored:
A bag of prescription food, shredded, a quarter of it already empty. And most importantly, lying on the floor, outside the closed closetin which it was stored. I turned around inquiringly at the brood following me. The Persons of Interest reacted thusly:
1. Suspect number 1, WaMu: looked up innocent like.
2. Suspect number 2, Poli Saamiyaar had the expression of "Oh I get food again". Not "Oh! I Get Food Again!! Whoopie!" but more Zen and Budhha like in its matter of factness.
3. Suspect number 3, Diva? Ah, Diva! She had that tell all guilty look, where she averts her eyes first and then looks askance and then licks her lips somewhat sheepishly.
That was pretty much enough interrogation to piece this Masterpiece Mystery together.
WaMu, the ever curious, need-to-know-what's-on-the-other-side-of-every-door kitty, opens the door, reaches for the bag and pushes it down. (Everyday I am thankful that he does not possess opposable thumbs!) Poli Samiyaar (who should also be named shredder par excellence) goes to work on the package. And Diva, the Vacuum Cleaner cleans up the spoils on the floor, while the other two eat straight out of the bag.
And your friendly author Sherlock Holmes solves one more Thursday mystery!
Hello there! It's me, Dr. WaMu. It's been a long while since anyone wrote about me and my exploits. Lots of water has flown under the bridge, and in that time, I have acquired a PhD in Hydrology and now work as Senior Resident Hydrologist at my home.
I am all grown up now and very serious
Let me first inform you, I am no more the "little kid" that my Mom wrote about way back when. (See [1] for more information). So don't go expecting any cutesy/humorous stories about me in this post. I am too grown up for such trivia. I take my profession very seriously. It's my life's ambition to get a Nature paper out on the structure and properties of water. That veritable fascinating compound, that life giving force, the thing that shimmers in the light and slips and slithers all about you enticingly.
OK, so I get a little lyrical about my life's passion, but you would too, if you have spent all your life studying it like I have. If you think everything that needs to be discovered about water has already been discovered, I must regretfully inform you that you must needs get back to your research. One of these days my discoveries will lead to a Nobel prize in Physics, just you wait.
Dr. WaMu displays his water divining methods at his laboratory
My human guardian is very encouraging of my interests. (I still need a human guardian because I have no opposable thumbs, not because I am young). The other day, she even bought me a special translucent square beaker and filled it all with water. In fact, it was a special device that allowed water to fall from one part to another and purified it in the process. I think she called it "filter". I was fascinated by it. I mean it's great to have water, but to have running water that is pure, that's just a hydrologist's dream!
I got to experimenting with the thing as soon as she brought it home. I patted the thing experimentally. Lo and behold, the water played inside with me. So I patted it some more with the other paw and it correspondingly sloshed on the other side. So far, so good. It was behaving as the laws of Physics would dictate.
But I had to study it more. I wanted to see how far up the wall of the "filter" I could make my water climb before gravity took over. So, I whacked it hard. The water made some serious waves. I got all excited, so WHAM! I went on the other side. All on a sudden I had the most beautiful Milikan's oil drop-like experiment in front of me (See [2] for the Milikan's oil-drop experiment. Except I didn't have any fancy electrodes and I am not all that interested in oil. So make adjustments to your imaginations accordingly). The whole equipment slid off the lab desk (which for some reason the human companion refers to as "kitchen island") and made a lovely arc through the air. I watched very carefully as the water made neat little drops in the air as it dislodged itself from the main body of the so called filter. I wish I had a high speed camera to record it for posterity. No matter. I have a photographic memory. That will do for now, until I get enough funding to acquire an actual camera like that. And may be another chunk of money to get myself some opposable thumbs (you can't always depend on the humans to do your bidding, see?).
Oh and in case you are wondering, that piece of equipment was deemed unusable after I was done with my experiment. I think it was all worth it in the name of Science. However, I have a sneaky suspicion that my human caretaker does not quite view it that way. She made quite the pouty face when she absorbed all the water up into a dirty rag before I could take my final readings. Sacrilege!
After that incident though she never really bought me another one of those beakers. Instead she got something that fixes straight to the tap. It's not such a good equipment, in my opinion, since you really can't observe the water in its "element" as it were. I have tried telling her that, but she insists that the filter was not meant for me at all in the first place. Phbbt! Yeah, right!
She is always buying me stuff, but for some reason she does not want to let on that she cares about my work. For instance, sometime in Spring, she got me this other lovely glass thing (I love all transparent/translucent things, but most of all I love water) and then filled it with water. Why would she do that, if it was not for me? Then she put some interesting things in it that she got from the garden. So, I now use this new equipment for my surface tension experiments. I tear off some of the interesting things from the garden and then drop it into the water to observe its behavior. Fascinating stuff. I could work all day with equipment like this. I am very dedicated to my Science like that.
Glass beaker with interesting things from the garden
In a bizzarre turn of events this morning, King Kamsa's routine assassination of his beloved sister's new borns, hit a glitch. The child flew out of the King's grasp just as his Royal Highness was about to smash him down on the rock dedicated to this sole purpose. To add further confusion to the already brewing chaos, the child flew upwards in clear violation of Newtonian Physics (who was not yet born and therefore whose laws perhaps did not apply) and revealed that indeed, she was a she and not a he!
The trouble with jet lag is not that you feel sleepy all the time. Well, it's partly that, but I have my nice natural sleep aid with me, so that when I sleep at night, I sleep well. The trouble with jet lag is that you are out of touch with your body in so many ways. It's not that you feel ill, it's that you just don't feel.
You don't feel hunger. You are not sure that you are not hungry either. You don't feel your brain working. You are sort of vaguely aware that it is there. But you are not sure that it is all there, you know what I mean? And so you plod along the day as best you can with a major mental handicap.
When my brain fog cleared sufficiently, my first thought was "I have a mid-life crisis!" It may well be that this is true, but it may as well be due to the midriff crisis that I am currently going through. See the thing is, hospital visits and thinking about your aging parents, while taxing enough, is not really a work out in the traditional sense of the word. So, the body never really joined in the party. And believe it or not, at the end of a month I have put one 7lbs of weight. mostly -- you guessed it -- around the midriff. The jeans that was loose when I went to India was not just snug, but was quite the struggle to get into on my return trip!
But this is not the whole of the truth. The truth is much more insidious. (See, using words like "insidious" just makes me feel like I have not lost all of it just yet. So bear with me mmkay?).
The truth is that I have not been working out regularly for two years -- at least. And my body's "get out of jail free card" finally expired. It had been sneaking up on me and if I had not had the time to sit around without internet connection in the hospital room, bored enough to go back and leaf through my old photos, I would not have realized it. The truth is there for all to see-- the slow fluffing up of me. For the record, I am now at the same weight I was (ok one pound shy of) what I was in my pre-work out days nearly seven years ago.
But all is not lost. The body composition is definitely not what it was seven years ago. The strength levels were not what they were seven years ago. Now I can squat about 115 pounds. Far cry from the 12 pound bar that many years ago.
The truth though, is that if I had actually worked out three days a week for all these years like I did in the beginning, I would have been closer to squatting my bodyweight. But, as Sheldon would say, "Could've, would've, should've, Raj!".
Once this realization hit me I promptly spent a couple of days moping around. I did not go to the gym for the following very viable reasons:
I am going to look like a dork with my tummy getting to the gym three minutes ahead of the rest of me.
None of my gym pants fit me the way they used to.
My hair looks really, really messy and there is nothing I can do about it. (seriously, sometimes it just is that way!)
I can't find my water bottle.
When I hit reason number four, I was struck by the ridiculousness of my excuses. Sometimes jet lag is good. If you don't feel hungry when the rest of the world is eating, then you have the gym all to yourself! So, fortified by a bowl of yogurt and grapes, I hit the gym.
Here is what I did:
Warm up on the elliptical
Squats: 115 lbs
Bulgarian squats: 15 lbs
Low, seated, cable row: 63lbs total (yay! I can use my right arm. Has my elbow finally healed?)
Bicep curls: 12 lbs per arm (carp mon!)
Seated, upright flyes: 20 lbs per arm
Seated, upright chest presses: 20 lbs per arm
Some stability work -- stiff arm pull downs
Planks (good old planks)
Russian twist with dumbell: 35lbs
Stability ball hamstring work
Shalabhasan
20 minutes on the elliptical-- this would have to be the first ever. Thank you, sound track of Rang de Basanti!
It's a start. Question is, will I manage to make this a regular thing, or am I going to slip back to my slacker ways?
I have, over several posts, introduced the rest of the circus that is my family (here, here, here and here). What I never had a chance to elaborate on, was how one of the cats, who has been called several things including Saamiyaar (saint) and Poli Samiyaar (fake saint, I know that's a topic for a whole other post) has been trying his luck at getting the dogs to fall in love with him from the day they arrived.
The poor thing turned out to be a bit unlucky in love because while Diva decided outright that she will never cuddle up with no cat, Dufus was incurably nervous of Saamiyaar. Most of Samiyaar's attempts at winning Dufus's affections resulted in a comic and oft repeated Cat-chase-Dog routine around the house, which went something like this. Dufus would lie snoozing on his bed watching whatever dreams he tends to watch and WHAM! the little critter would go head-butt him right smack on the head. This invariably caused the utterly confused Dufus to jump up and run for his life, with the cat in hot pursuit, meowing all the way.
This would go on until the slightly slow-on-the-uptake Samiyaar would realize that all this meowing was probably depriving him of the all important advantage of stealth. As is his wont upon the sudden influx of thoughts into his head, Saamiyaar would plop down on his voluminous behind and ruminate on his options.
Meanwhile, the equally slow-on-the-uptake Dufus, would conclude that he had shaken off his persistent feline predator and settle down to nap. Just as if by some cosmic telepathy, Samiyaar's brain would reset at precisely the same moment and his quest for Dufus will begin anew. As if his memory was completely washed clean, the cat would start his chase again, meowing all the way to where his unerring sense of smell would take him.
This cat-chase-dog cycle would start all over again, taking the pair all over the house like some love struck couple serenading in a good old, late 60's, Bollywood movie. And just like in those song sequences, only the heroine (in this case Dufus) would not be able to guess the direction from which the hero can spring up next! This song and dance sequence would continue until Samiyaar just gave up in sheer exhaustion or completely forgot that he was in pursuit of his soulmate and landed up cuddling with one of the lowly humans! (Hmm.. like the vamps in those movies?!!)
Again, just like in those movies, everyone but the lead couple knew that these two made-for-each-others would eventually get together.
Tonight it happend. The heroine relented. Like the 60's heroine throwing off her head scarf or duppattah and running up to the waiting hero's arms, our Dufus threw all caution to the winds and plonked right on top of a dozing Saamiyaar! I was too slow with the trigger to capture the priceless expression on Saamiyaar's face. But here's what he did as soon as he realized who he had just managed to conquer!
Coming soon to a theatre near you, in full Eastman Color: Kitty gets Doggie!
And the happy couple snoozed off into sunset, holding hands! Awwwww!
If this isn't an awww moment, I don't know what is!
I am setting up a "Save the Self-Deprecating Humorist from Extinction Movement" (SSDHEM, or Save the JOKERS for short). C'mmon everything needs a catchy acronym to survive, so what if it's not exactly an acronym?
SDH's are the kind of JOKERS that self-deprecate themselves for your benefit. Their sense of humour is the exact opposite of, say, the Bill Mahr kind of humor and is more akin to the kind that Jon Stewart indulges in occasionally, and Ellen Degeneres, almost always.
For instance, watch this video where Jon Stewart does a push up challenge with Paula Broadwell who was promoting her book on his show. Note how he groans all the way, for the benefit of the audience. While he may or may not be able to do a hundred pushups -- I don't believe that he is in quite that bad a shape as he would have you believe. But it's all for a good cause: to give you a good dose of the best medicine there is. For free. That, and the other little matter of helping the soldiers.
So back to the JOKERS. The reason I feel the need to save this lot so urgently, is as follows.
I am one!
There, simple.
Even self-deprecators have self-preservation instincts. But, the more immediate reason is because someone decided to bite my head right off my shoulders recently. The whole thing stemmed from a misinterpretation of my comment on a social forum regarding my body's response to some types of stress.
I called my body a wimp. (See? Self-deprecation?).
But in the process of calling my body a wimp, I wrote something that implied that this person was also calling their body a wimp (in jest of course, as I would). For some inexplicable reason, this person decided that I was calling them a wimp (which is a vastly different thing).
Agreed, this was sloppy typing on my part; but I was typing something on the Fmost Ffamous Fsocial Fnetwork (whose name I will not Fmention); not a document on frikking Legal Zoom! Besides, if you know anything about self-deprecators, you know this: we mostly only denigrate ourselves for your benefit.
This is not because we have bad self esteem or because we hate ourselves and want to end our lives pronto. No! It's just that we don't want anyone else to end it for us ata time and place of their choosing!
Especially any of the fire-breathing, humor uninitiated, quick to bristle, paragons of self preservation!
A brave soldier will only die at the hands of another brave soldier. Likewise, a brave coward will only die at the hands of a brave coward!
Ask any self-deprecator "who is the most cowardly of them all" and we will gladly say, "Me!" For your benefit.
Further, most sloppy-typing JOKERS usually offer some form of explanation whenever there is a misunderstanding of their intent. True to form, I did. Very surprisingly that did not prove to be enough. So, long story short, I was called several things, and then advised not to joke with strangers!
OOooooo!! You see, you can say a lot of things to JOKERS, but you had better not tell them not to joke. That's like pulling the plug on our existence. We don't like that! No, no, we shall not be killed by non-cowards! Such denouments will cause us to ... erm... flee. We will proudly live to be killed another day by another flee-er.
So, I let the offended person have their last word and walked away from the argument. This was proving to be too stressful and anti-comedogenic (Oh wait! Comedogenic means pimple inducing, not laughter inducing? No wonder most models look like they haven't laughed in years!).
But I digress. So what was the thread about, you ask?
Someone in the group wanted to know what everybody's best de-stressing mechanism was! Certainly not hanging out at Ffamous Fsocial Fnetwork any more.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Sometimes I wonder why I married the guy I did, and then something like this happens and it all comes back to me.
Scene opens.
Setting: A fairly well kept office room (ahem!).
Time: Evening
Purpose: Procrastrination a.k.a annoy the b'jeezes out of the wife.
DH fiddles around with newly acquired iPhone (supposedly for the wife, a.k.a the author of this blog). Face is lit with happiness that only a new found toy can bring.
DHto wife: Ey! What is your security code? Wife: ignores husband and continues to mess around with computer looking all busy. DH [murmurs to himself]: 3..4..6.. no.. 3..4...2 no...4? noo..
[Succeeds in unlocking the phone and exclaims] :aaaanh!! Got it!
Wife [turns away from Facebook to observe with consternation that DH has indeed unlocked the phone. Something soft touches Wife's arm and she looks back to see that the Cat (Poli Samiyaar) was about to click Like on something she didn't exactly like. Wife picks us Cat and dumps him unceremoniously on the floor while twisting herself into a pretzel to face DH at same time and exclaim]: Why do you have to mess with my phone!
Cat [looking very annoyed]: QUAAAM!
DH [ignores everything going on around him]: I am going to use Siri. Heehee.. See? Siri. Heehehheheh
Wife [rolls eyes at silly pun (siri = laugh in Tamizh)and says nothing, continues to load another CD to import into iTunes]
DH: Hoysala! Hoysala! Wife: [turns around looking completely mystified]
DH [Motions to wife to shut up and whispers] Shh... let's confuse her. Wife[Looking all the more bewildered, hitting eject button] Confuse whom? Cat:[Jumps back a foot as the CD is ejected and exclaims, surprised]: PHRAAMP! iPhone: I don't know where you are, but if you enable location services and Siri, I can help you.
DH: [Cracks up uncontrollably, rolls his eyes at iPhone and acts like he expects a living thing to come out of it]: hehehehheheheh!
[Gesticulating wildly at Wife]: shhhhhshshhhh! DH:[to iPhone] Find Hoysala iPhone: Finding voice la DH:[guffawing loudly now, with tears streaming from his eyes] Ahahah!!! This thing talks like a Singaporean: finding voice la?! Hahahaha!
Wife:[Completely missing the point of Siri, but distracted by all the noise] Hey! I don't want you to train that thing to your voice! Wife:[turns back to computer and opens up blogger]
DH: [Continues harassing Siri]: What is my name? iPhone: I don't know who you are! But you can tell me... Click Siri Settings and .... DH: [roars out laughing]
Wife: [returns from kitchen with an apple] What's going on? DH:[still busy laughing] Wife:[turns to sit and finds Cat on her chair. Tries to click a picture with her new camera for this post. The picture is lousy because the new iPhone has a flash! Gives up on camera and picks up Cat and for the second time and dumps him on the floor]
DH: [Continues to talk in the background to Siri]: Where is my dog?
Dog:[Perks one ear up wondering if the next word would be "park"]
iPhone:[Does not talk but puts up a text message]: I found 6 kennels near you.
Wife:[Shakes her head and continues to type this post].
DH: [Comes up to wife and gives her the phone still laughing] Here have fun with it. Hey! You should blog about this "Top 10 answers of Siri". Ask her 10 questions. Ask her "who am I?" Ask her "who are you"? You had better thank me for the idea and acknowledge me in the blog!
[leaves the roomalmost falling to the floor clutching his belly]
The day we reached Ranthambhore, my father had made himself a 7-layer burrito out of bed linens and blankets and slipped himself into the core of it. His mouth emerged just once from his self-imposed cocoon-doom to declare "too cold" before going back in for the rest of the stay, emerging only occasionally to eat.
7-Layer Dad Burrito
Since my sister was also unwell the second morning, our party of five, had dwindled to a party of three and I almost canceled the safari. The experience with the previous guide left me cold about the possibility of actually even trying to find a tiger. Reluctantly I went through the motions of gathering the Pug Mark issue blankets and stood waiting in the foyer. Again. Again, for a long while. This time, we had a smaller canter and we almost left as soon as we sat down. Interesting. But I am not getting my hopes up.
Once at the entrance, we went through the usual identification verification process, except for one twist. The "attendance taker" kept wanting to give me a second identity. You see, we had already identified ourselves as XYZ: party-of-five-now-dwindled-down-to-three and he had nodded recognition at each of us. Then he looked at me again and said "Jamie?" I shook my head "no". Anyone can make a mistake, it's early by human standards after all. The caucasian lady behind me had an amused grin as she came forth to identify herself as Jamie. The next name was that of an Indian woman, UVW. He looked at me again and raised his eyebrows. Again I shook my head "no". Seriously? The third name wasABC Singh. Believe it or not, he looked at me again with raised eyebrows.
What the what? First I was Jamie, then Maami, now I am a man??? And this after I had already identified myself as one of party XYZ.
I sat looking at him for a moment before I shook my head "no". This must have had the effect coffee on the man and presumably, he realized what he was doing. The rest of the list was read out and acknowledged hurriedly without me being involved in it.
We were but a minute into the forest, when we sensed a difference in the mood. There was a lot of Getting Together of Guides and Talking Amongst Them! More importantly, our guide actually seemed to be into it. He did not have the "been-there-done-that-bought-the-T-shirt-couldn't-care-if-you-haven't" attitude of the guide of the previous day. He actually cared, and seemed to enjoy his job. Long story short, we were off in hot pursuit of a tiger, very very soon.
The first encouraging sign we saw was a pug mark. A large one. An impressive one. And then several more. Obviously somebody had walked this way at some time. Question was, when? Interesting. But I am not getting my hopes high. I am not. I wont even take a picture of this pug mark. I wont.
And then it happened, completely suddenly, a flash. Unlike William Blake's euphoric outpouring, the tiger, tiger, wasn't burning bright. It was more like a blink-and-you-miss-it, event. We didn't blink, we didn't miss. All except one unfortunate woman in the canter.
But, in order not jinx anything, I preferred to play the role of the proverbial mathematician in that joke involving goats (or was it cows?). I agreed to believe that, there exists one animal in this forest whose right flank has tiger like markings. That's it. I was determined not to hope for a proper sighting. Like Nagesh in Tiruvilayaadal, "enakkilla, enakilla" (not for me, not for me).
Everybody fell silent, unbidden. Again a sambhar barked, which someone mistook for the tiger's roar. Our guide immediately disabused him of that idea and we were on our way again. By now, my glutes-abs routine was perfected and although we were rattling along the road like never before, I retained saddle most of the time. I had also become expert at ducking my head to prevent myself from being decapitated by the low lying tree branches. Then it happened again. This one was smaller. We later realized it was a she. She was walking up the mountain. I was a kid on Navarathri break again! As, it would seem, was the entire canter. Including the English blokes who had managed to keep their proverbial English cool until then. Again, it was only a glimpse.
We waited for a while peeling our eyes, looking for any movement in the shrubs. A while and a few false sightings later, our guide calculated that she must be walking the boundary of her territory. "It takes them days to patrol their territory", he said, half to himself, half to us. He drummed his hands, winced his face and made his up mind . Then he gave a few short directions to the driver. We were lurching again, going forward, backing up and sometimes, without warning, abandoning the road altogether.
On one of our random mad rushes, we met another jeep that carried a guy with a binoculars who was gesticulating madly at one of the roads. A few words later, we were hurtling along another path and completely without warning, there she was again! On the right, still too far away. We watched her for a bit. She seemed to know her itinerary well. Too bad she wasn't sharing it with us. She was gone again. The cogs in the mental wheel of our guide was turning again. He must have reached some conclusions, for he directed our driver again and we were off.
Mid way through our revised path plan, another jeep told us to go to the Ranthambhore fort gate, because she seemed to be headed that way. Aha!.. so while were busy making rattles out of our bones in the jungle, our pretty little tigress was out city slicking!
We made fairly good speed, since part of that road was flat and almost rock free. We reached the gate quickly and waited. No sign of the tigress. There were as many theories as there were people and jeeps in that little congregation of humanity. Finally some guy on foot (wo-ho-w! Brave!) walking afew feet above us on the hill informed us that she was at **** place. **** place looked incongruously like a gram panchayat setting. It was a small clearing with a large banyan tree sitting pat in the center with a nice little cement tree bench surrounding it. Someone in uniform emerged from a small squat cement structure to the right and listened completely uninterestedly to our guide's query. Then, like any person, on any street, in any city, in India responding to a lost tourist's (or local for that matter!) query about any address in the city, he nonchalantly pointed in the general direction of the fortress again and said something that sounded like, "ah, yeah well, I am sure she is somewhere there".
More commotion and confusion later, we were suddenly in her presence. There she was going about her morning patrol right along the side the road, a little into the shrubs completely unperturbed by the delirious humanity that was desperately trying to make eye contact with her. And then, just like that, as if she preferred the relative ease of walking on the roads, she stepped out into the open and walked right by our canters and jeeps. Feast your eyes, my patient readers, I present to you, my city slicker tigress:
She jumped off that ledge and walked by our side for a bit more, before crossing the road and walking off into the forest.
Cat 2.5: Dances with the Dogs but Freaks out at the Humans (DDFH).
Apart from these names, other names have been made up and will be made up on a continuing basis. Once we reach a 1000, we are planning on releasing a Sahasranamam thumb drive for each one of them, which can be yours for only $2.99 + Shipping and Handling OR $1.99 + no Shipping and Handling for electronic downloads.
1 Laptop
1 Microwave
1 human body
1 trip to smoke loving country
Method:
For Mixed Microwave-Laptop Stir Fry:
This is really more like a case of waiting for your microwave to mature. You can't really make it happen. Like mushroom, it needs to grow on its own. So, it's only a matter of knowing when the microwave is mature enough. To do this:
1. Stick a cup of water in the morning, punch 15 seconds, press start.
2. krrrrrr----phaatttttttt -- this sound says you could have a mature microwave.
3. Turn mains off, change fuse in microwave. Repeat 1.
4. If you hear another krrrrrr----phaatttttttt, you have a fairly well mature microwave.
5. Repeat 3 again. If your microwave goes krrrrrr----ph--kkkrrr--phaatttttttt, it's done.
6. Set aside.
7. Leave a laptop plugged in day and night for months. Even years.
8. Turn on laptop one morning and if you hear "kweee--phtt" then you know your laptop is fried.
9. Set aside.
Smoked Sinus:
For this, you need to be allergic to second hand smoke. If not, you can never make smoked sinus. Sorry. I know. It's unfair, but that's just the way life is. You could try making Sinus Pollen(ta) if you like? But if you are allergic to second hand smoke, here is the recipe for smoked sinus:
1. Take a trip to a smoke-happy place.
2. Forget your antihistamines when you pack. (this is very important)
3. When your sinuses inflame like a hot-air balloon, start to believe in your super powers to fight the allergies on your own.
4. Keep believing for 4 or 5 days, until your body begins to burn up with fever.
5. Now hurry to the nearest pharmacy and get yourself some anti-histamine and some decongestant. (after all you don't want to smoke your entire self into oblivion, do you?)
Pinched Nerve:
This is also a case of letting happen rather than making it happen. But, you can speed up the process to create a perfectly pinched nerve if you do the following:
1. Ignore everything you have ever learnt about good posture
2. Get a job that needs you to be on the computer constantly
3. Stick a laptop on your lap and slouch on the couch
4. Crane your neck forward. Stick it out like you mean it. Stick it out like you want to be sucked into the screen and spat out into the Internet.
5. Do this for a few years.
6. When your triceps start to feel like someone's drilling a hole through it and the nerves in your arms start to tingle, you'll know that your pinched nerve is ready for the harvest.
That's it, your Mixed Microwave-Laptop Stir fry, with a Pinched Nerve and Smoked Sinus is ready.
Add antibiotics and NSAIDs to your taste and serve with generous amounts of humour. Enjoy! If you neglect it long enough, it can even last 25-30 days.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Dufus, simply put, is a Bozon. A Bozon, is an elementary clown particle and can be expressed by the following equation:
Bozon = Bozo (the clown) + ... "on".
If you add an "on" at the end of a word it becomes an elementary particle. Like electron, proton, Boson (= Bose + on, because Bose found it), ....
Although it bears a very similar name to Boron, the two are completely different. Because,
Boron = Boring + Moron.
Which, as you can see, is a completely different thing than a Bozon, although it is an elementary particle in itself. Oh and of course, I hope you did not confuse it with Boron the element, which is not an elementary particle. See the difference?
So Dufus's behavioral traits all spring from one elemental truth about him. Which is, of course, the Bozonishness of him. A Bozon exists in three states: the highly excited, the steady state and the highly excited negative state. We will discuss mainly about the first two states here, since the third state is out of the scope of his post.
A Bozon in a steady state looks very docile and behaves like an amoeba -- as if (s)he has no skeleton. In the case of Dufus, the look resembles that of a highly contented goat or sheep.
Bozon in steady state
A Bozon in the highly excited state is a whole other ball game. A Bozon in the highly excited state has very high kinetic energy making it nearly impossible to photographically chronicle this state. Some images of a Bozon in a quasi-highly excited state have been acquired and will be put up on this page at a later date. The state transition from steady state to highly excited can happen in nanoseconds which often leads to spilled human food, bushy tail in human mouth, flying forks/spoons, one canine foot (some times more) on human stomach and one almighty shriek (usually from the human).
My VoIP phone is very proud of all the service that it offers us. One of which is that it sends us a mail whenever we have a phone message. What's more, it actually, sends us the content of the message in an e-mail. So if we ever miss a call that we never wanted in the first place, we have no choice but to have it intrude on us during the work day. I have had all kinds of sales calls sent over to my inbox when I couldn't care less about it. The latest message totally takes the cake, though. Here it is, without any alterations:
"Hi Belinda this this Sunday. I just wanna let you a pause in Dale now and also on the event that you would good to just to know been, I mean I'm going to be sent without talking to Paul and also do now is the tried to Scott copy machine just leave it there and we we dialed parking weekend and that we don't try to open. Okay. Thank you. And soup. Bye"
I totally love the punch line, "And soup. Bye". Of course, now I understand everything!!! So much for voice-to-text!
Oh! And in case you were wondering, my name is not Belinda!
Diva † was having some mysterious issues. She would get up from a deep nap and you'd discover a mysterious puddle of liquid where she had been. After a couple of such incidents from a very fastidious, cleanliness conscious dog, I decided that something was definitely amiss and called her vet. The vet broke it to me as gently as she could, "As dogs get older, they sometime tend to have bladder control issues. This is easily fixed with..."
"But", I interrupted quickly, "when she was five, they thought the same thing and it just turned out to be an infection".
An infinitesimal pause later, "Sure, we can definitely check for infections. All you have to do is drop-off a sample", said Vet.
"Great!" said I, feeling all positive. As soon as I hung up, I realized that dropping off of a sample, involved, as a first step, the acquisition of such sample. This, to put it mildly, is easier said than done. Consider for instance, the structure and behavior of a dog. Even medium sized dogs, which mine are, are only about as tall as your knees when they are on all fours. And they squat. Unlike cats, they do not dig. So, you have such a small window between the preparation for the deed and the deed itself, that if you snooze, well, you lose. Add to that all the fur and long hair and you really are working blindfolded!
