Terms and Conditions

Humans don’t trust each other anymore. I mean look at the webpages and their Terms and Conditions. Each time you try to open an account with a new service you end up clicking “I agree” without reading the entire blah known as Terms and Conditions. I wonder what will happen if we start including T&C for every mundane portion of our lives:

1. Wife cooks a delicious looking Aloo Paratha and Paneer butter masala on the table. Husband hurries to the table with his mouth watering, only to be shown a 10 page document called T&C to be signed before eating the delicious meal.

2. Newly married couple having a nice conversation during their first night. Suddenly the God of Love showers an excess of flowers on both. The love scent pulls them into the pure divine marital connection, only they pull each other a bundle of sheets titled T&C to be signed before performing the act.

3. A Mother in Labour starts pushing the baby out. The baby wouldn’t come out. The mother tries hard as the doctor and the husband say “Push, Push”. Usually the placenta comes after the child, but this time the placenta comes before with a lot of writings on it titled T&C. The Mother goes (while she keeps pushing) “arghhhhhhhhh …. I ….arghhhhhhh…..agreee…..arghhhhhhh” and then the baby is born.

4. You had an awesome andhra meals for dinner last night. So you are woken up 7AM sharp in the morning due to the effect of the spice in the meals and you are rushing to the bathroom to attend the nature’s call. You sit on the commode and try to let go, but nothing comes. The commode’s seat has T&C written all over it and a sensor that will sense your voice. You hurriedly get up and dance on your feet as the bowel tries to rush out, and you say “I agree” to the commode. As soon as you say that and sit down on the commode, the flow begins and you feel relieved.

5. Touser pandi Ramarajan gets ready to Milk the cow in his usual way. He sings the song “Shenbagame … Shenbagame…”. The cow refuses to give milk. He thinks may be the cow is sick and tired of hearing the same song, so he remixes it and sings it in the hip hop style “ooh ahh oh shenbagame …ooh aah oh shenbagame!”. Still no milk. In a few seconds the Cow goes Moo and releases a full roll of tissue paper from its rear that reads its T&C. Ramarajan goes “Ooh aahh oh shenbagame … I agree… ooh aah oh shenbagame I agree”. The Milk is on!

And finally how can we be sure that the end user has read the Terms and Conditions? We all usually just skip and click the I agree anyway. So just to make sure we are covered we will throw in another Terms and Conditions that states that “Make sure you read the Terms and Conditions in Full.” and request if they agree or do not agree.

Finally Here is a Brainstuck Cartoon on T&C.

The Desperate Husband Facebook Quiz

After answering too many Facebook Quizzes, I think I am now in a position to create a Facebook quiz of my own in my own unique style. Like Sokka says in “The Avatar” – “This is the kind of Time wasting nonsense I have been waiting for!”.

This quiz will help you find How Desperate a Husband you are, Yes this is “The Desperate Husband” Quiz and here it goes!

1. What is your Favourite TV Show?

a. Get Lost.

b. Villains.

c. American Bridal

d. Anderson Hooter 69 degrees.

2. What is your Favourite drink?

a. Beer.

b. Whiskey.

c. Milk.

d. Coconut water.

3. What do you do on a Friday Evening?

a. Beer, Dinner, <Censored Event> and Sleep.

b. Dinner, Beer, <Censored Event>, <Censored Event> and Sleep.

c.  Dinner, <Censored Event>, Sleep, <Censored Event>, Beer and Sleep for real.

d.  All of the above.

4. What is your Favourite Transport mechanism?

a. Bullock Cart

b. Horse

c. Big ass 4 Wheel drive Pickup truck, even though I don’t pickup anything and just drive that to work with lunch and laptop.

d. Instantaneous Travel by Worm holes, I mean through the holes created by Earthworms.

5. What is your Favourite movie that you would like to watch with your Spouse?

a. Star Wars Episode IV

b. Star Wars Episode V

c. Star Wars Episode VI

d. None of the above, because I would really like to watch Star Wars Episode I, II and III.

6. How bored are you?

a. Just Bored.

b. I am so Bored, I will even take “Desperate Housewives” Quiz even though I am a Man.

c. I am so Bored, I thought this was a real Facebook quiz and started writing down answers.

d. I am so Bored, I wrote a Blog post named “Desperate Husband Facebook Quiz”.

Strange thing will be that even though this is a “Desparate Husband” Quiz, it will be taken by every one of every age and sex in spite of their marital status. What will be even more strange is, though there can be at least 24 combination of answers to the above Quiz, every single one of them who take this quiz will get only one answer.

How Much of a Desperate Husband are you?

Answer: Pretty Desperate

Jet Lag

Jet lag is a phenomenon where a person gets from a place of one Timezone to a place of another timezone in a high speed jet, while sitting his ass off and doing nothing nothing but sleeping, eating and watching a Tiny monitor. Obviously because of the huge difference between the speed of the jet and the speed of the person’s rear, there is a Jet lag. (Note: Jet Lag is not the reason for Flight delays and Jet Lag has nothing to do with Jet airways or Jet Lite).

CODE LAG

A major section of Software Engineers travelling from US to India seem to sleep well during nights without the supposed Jet lag. This is due to the fact that they sleep at work staring at the computer. So if you suffer from lack of sleep due to Jet lag, just imagine yourself looking at millions of lines of C++ or Java code or just imagine looking at a Powerpoint presentation from your HR Department. These things knock you out immediately. I call this Code Lag.

JETTY LAG

While packing, always remember where you packed your underwear. Write it down somewhere or just mark the suitcase. You can also try to keep your underwear in the same suitcase where you carry your expensive new electronic item like LCD TV. The Indian Customs department will do the rest to mark it with a huge ugly cross mark with a chalk piece. If you forget where you packed your underwear then you may have to spend a day inside out in the old underwear, until you find fresh ones or buy new ones. I call this Jetty Lag (Originally coined by Chutneycase in a different context involving super models and what they wear and don’t wear).

SHIT LAG

Shit may come and Shit may go, but Bathroom remains forever.

So obviously whenever you get bowel movement, you just go to the bathroom. If your bowel movement had to happen only in the morning then your bathroom will disappear for the rest of the day and reappear only the following morning.

Since Jet lag confuses your whole body, it can also confuse your internal drainage system. Usually you will be in a fit, do I go before dinner or right after dinner. Do I have enough urge before dinner? Should I eat more to get the push. This my friend, I like to call Shit Lag.

Note 1: Bathrooms are not of standard shape and size in India. So if you are going to be in a place unfamiliar to you, walk to the bathroom and take a look. Depending on what you see there, control what you eat (Otherwise, be ready to sit in an awkward position in the Autorickshaw, till you reach familiar surroundings). No one knows when shit happens!

Note 2: If you see a variation in the speed of shit release (either an increase or a decrease) you are either having diarrhea or constipation and it has nothing to do with Jet lag or the speed of your rear in the Jet.

FUTILE ATTEMPTS

The following attempts will not cure Jet Lag:

1. Running in the airplane as fast as the Jet. I mean if you do this, you will practically knock over the crew selling expensive but duty free stuff, pass through the business class, break open the cockpit door and jump out of the airplane through the front glass window. Don’t try this, even at home.

2. If you are not a Software Engineer, obviously it is difficult for you to imagine millions of lines of code. You can try to imagine yourself as an Indian Govt. servant working as a Head clerk at the Treasury, sipping single tea while staring at a stack of dusty files. Sleep will come automatically.

3. Do not attempt to wear 2 underwears, to avoid forgetting where you packed. This will backfire by creating extra space in your suitcase for your wife to carry some more stuff that may increase the weight of the suitcase by 0.5 Kg, even though your underwear weighs only 0.05 kg.

4. Do not attempt to predict the time of the bowel movement. It is as uncertain as the electron in a Heisenberg uncertainty principle. If you predict a time and stay in your familiar place, it won’t come. If you predict the place where you will feel the movement, it won’t be at the right time. You have to go with the flow, I mean literally.

The Shanghai Restaurant

“Where shall we eat today? I don’t want to go to the mess, it’s chappathi today and it is usually awful” I tell my friend N.

“Let’s go to Shanghai.” He says.

I was bewildered “Shanghai?”.

“There is this restaurant opposite to IIT. It tastes great and it is cheap too”

I liked the idea of a restaurant named Shanghai and walked on. I had never been to that restaurant and I was starting to imagine what they could be serving. A chinese place so definitely they ought to have great soups and manchurians. I will have chicken manchurian, yes definitely I thought so. Manchurians make my mouth water. I will probably start with a Hot and sour veg soup, it will be an absolute blast (atleast in the morning!). Veg Fried rice or an egg fried rice. I had almost decided what i was going to eat within the next 15 steps we took.

As we walk out of our rooms and go down to the door, we meet another of our friends S. We tell S that we are going to a place called Shanghai for our dinner. S wants to join and we agree.

Me, N and S walk out of our hostel block and take the shortcut route passing by the LH (Ladies Hostel, and really it was a shortcut ok!).

I hope I can afford it though. I had 50 Rupees and I was hoping I can have the above listed items within my budget. Even if it costed 10 Rupees for the Soup, 15 for Manchurian and 15 for the rice I would be left with 10 extra rupees for a juice later or some other snack, assuming inflation doesn’t work in one night. I didn’t care to ask my friend what’s the price though as he already said it was cheap and I went on to set my own prices on the dishes. May be I can share the manchurian or the rice with my friend if it is not within the limit, or just open an account (a debt account which gets accumulated like the mortgage loans and then a bailout is done by opening account with another friend, who gets into a gutter after you borrow from him too much in which case you repeat the bailout again with a third friend. Bottomline, you need to have a lot of friends and make sure you don’t become a borrowee) with my friend.

On the way somewhere between our block and LH, A and J watch us walk and decide to join us for the dinner. I guess they knew about Shanghai already as they said “Oh! “Shanghai”ya? we will also come then!” That’s all the friends who came to Shanghai that day. Don’t worry I wasn’t planning to introduce all the alphabets as my friends.

The walk is a bit long and it felt longer as I imagined more about how this new place will be. Will it be a decent place? Clean tables, chairs, ambience? I was wondering! Nah, I thought! If it is cheap then it could be a little dirty. Atleast they would have clean plates, I hope. May be the place will have figures (good looking gals). Yes, it is all about figures. Any place you go you have to have figures for that place to be called as the “Happening” place. Otherwise it will be deemed boring or called a museum. In those years the only thing we did was figure watching, even if we were bored of figure watching we kill the boredom by figure watching. Too bad we couldn’t proceed beyond watching.

Picture: Chicken Manchurian – http://www.instructables.com

              Aishwarya Rai Bachchan – http://www.askmen.com

Me, N, S, A and J all walk together chit chatting and then we take another short cut through the sidewalk and jump over the compound wall to reach the main road.

My friend says “Ah, he is there today! good!”

It was a small hand driven push cart. A smell of steaming rice and frying pan with oily substances tore open our nostrils. The cart had a top cover and a name plate that read “Shanghai Restaurant”.

It was a WTF moment for me. All the while I kept imagining how great this place could be and walked with all the enthusiasm of avoiding the dreaded Chappathi in the mess and here I am standing before a push cart that served Fried rice for 8 rupees. There was no soup or manchurian but only fried items. Everything was fried, fried rice, fried chicken, fried everything. Figures? The only figure standing was a long pole with a poster of a political party stuck around it. You had all the ambience on earth, yes it was open air and you could hear the natural sounds of cars, bikes and Pallavan Buses. Note, no chairs, no stools, er where do we sit? the compound wall. We climb on top of it and he comes to us serving hot fried rice. Irony was staring at my face real hard and slapping me left right top and bottom and laughing at me so hard that I could hear it snort, belch and fart all at the same time. Mr. Irony had his day that day!

It was like you were taken up to an altitude of about 100 feet and let go for a free fall. In the end, no complaints though as the food was tasty. Shanghai lasted for a while and then it wasn’t seen around at all and we completely forgot about that little push cart restaurant.