Diary of the Narcissist

Three Things That Suck About England

2013-05-05T17:37:00.000+05:30

The best thing about living in England is the internet connection which lets you download gigabytes in less than half an hour. This would have taken a few months in India but even this is slow for the Dutch guy who lives in my flat. He is used to speeds faster than the time it takes to start his computers. Anyway this post was meant to be a post on what I liked about England and the internet speed sort of concluded everything I liked about this country. That’s quite a lot I know, so I thought I should write a short post on what I do not like about this country.

Size of The Burgers

When I went to McDonalds India with my dad he found the price (90Rs), outrageous for a single burger. Turns out that you can have a full course meal in a place like Saravana Bhavan for the same amount of money. But none the less a burger along with a coke and french fries was enough to leave me burping. Having a burger in McDonalds here in England is guaranteed to leave you more hungry. When I placed an order for a regular McChicken Burger meal they gave me a burger which was the size of a large Vada. I stared at the burger for quite sometime because I thought they were playing a april fools prank on me in March. They sadly weren’t and the £4.99 Pounds I paid for the meal give me a vague feeling that I was being ripped off. These kinds of things make me love India a lot more because that day I went home and liked McDonald India’s facebook page.

The Bathrooms

In most cold countries, you will find a cold valve and hot valve in your tap and you can turn it and set it to the right amounts to get the water at the right temperature. In the UK the two valves are on separate taps. One tap gives you boiling hot steaming water which will burn your fingers. The other tap is so cold, it freezes your hand. So if you want to wash your hands in England you have to burn and freeze your hands alternatively. The English have had this plumbing system for so long that it makes me think my history teacher was a cold liar for telling me that these smart people were once the most powerful nation in the world.

The Weather

The weather is the other thing in the UK. You never see the sun. If you were a vampire you could walk in the day light without any fear of evaporating or glittering or whatever happens to vampires these days. It is always raining and trust me you will not be writing poems about how beautiful it is. Life becomes so painful when it drizzles. Breathing and walking becomes excruciating. I am not complaining though. The weather in Chennai is just the polar opposite. The sun is so hot there that I think god is trying to make us all into Sheesh Kebabs for his party.

Get Your Blog Or Website Reviewed

2013-04-11T14:08:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry - 55

Hi! I am offering free reviews to help newbie and old veteran bloggers to send their blogs and websites to the stratosphere. My reviews will have action points in the end and if you apply it, aliens will start visiting earth just so that they can read your blog. Your blog will end up impressing these advanced civilizations and they might reward us with new technology which will put an end to the war and famine that we face. This is why I am offering these free reviews.

What You Will Get:

1. A Critical Evaluation Of Your Current:

- Design

- Content

- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

- Monetization Strategy (Making Money)

2. Action Steps To:

- Increase traffic

- Improve design

- Improve the quality of your content (I can only offer little here though)

- Increase blog revenue (If you are into that kind of thing)

3. Your blog’s/website’s review will be posted here.

Minimum criteria to be considered for review

1. Blogs should be English.

I don’t expect anything in return for these reviews as I genuinely love helping people. Yes I am a selfless saint working relentlessly to uplift the human race. But like the problem my friend in Lucifer’s House Inc is facing, the number of review requests I will receive might be more than what I can handle. So I need some way to filter and prioritize these review requests. First priority will be given to those bloggers and website owners who write a short blog post telling their followers about these reviews that I am offering. The lazy among you can put my blog in their blogroll in the sidebar, if they have one. Priority will next be given to my Google Friends Connect followers. Those who followed and +1ed my blog’s Google+ page and those who liked my blog’s Facebook page will also be given equal priority. Those who don’t fall into any of the above categories will be reviewed in the end. I will do my best to try and fulfill all requests but family always comes first ;)

How to request a review

Fill up the form below and click “submit”. Please post a comment below this post after submitting the form.

Fist Fights With The Sleep Demons

2013-03-04T04:48:00.000+05:30

Diary Entry – 54

Every morning I fight a battle which I often tend to lose. Failing to win this battle will mean a lack of attendance. The victors of this battle however will see no glory. They will only find themselves slain in class by the boring lecturer. Coffee doesn’t give you invincibility against these villains. Expecting such powers will only make you want to file a lawsuit against Nescafe for misleading you.

This battle is impossible to win, when there is a class at 9 Am. I find myself with the sleeper’s dilemma as I try to decide whether or not to go to class 10 minutes before the actual class.

“To go, or not to go? That is the question.”

I have tried various alarm tones to wake myself up from my slumber. I have used everything from barking dogs to Indian mantras. Nothing worked till one ~~morning~~ afternoon after missing a class, I did a Google Search, “I Can’t Wake Up.” When you have a problem, you should first tell it to Google. That is how I found this app for my phone called “I Cant Wake Up!” When your alarm goes off, the app asks you to perform a math test among other things before you can switch off your alarm or even press the snooze button. The math test requires you to multiply two pairs of two digit numbers together and add them up together. I can now perform speed mental math in my sleep. How I miss Chennai. The 8 Am power cut along with the scorching heat made sure that nobody over slept in the city. That is why you should vote for Jayalalitha.

Unlike India, you can’t get people to give you a proxy attendance in the UK. In the University I am in, there is a lady whose sole purpose in life is to stand in front of the class room, for the first 15 minutes, to get signatures from students for their attendance. If you miss your attendance, she just won’t mark you absent but will send you an email saying, “We don’t have your signature in the attendance sheet. What was the reason?”. Since I don’t like lying about being in class when I was not, I send her a neutral reply saying, “I failed to sign in the attendance because I woke up late.” She will reply saying, “Okay I will mark you as late but present. Please know that punctuality is as important as attendance.” My mother had it right when she said, I could never get into trouble if I am honest.

The Chick Who Stalked Me Because She Liked My Blog

2013-02-20T01:29:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry – 53

The girl in the story will be referred to as a chick and not a girl because it annoys her greatly to be called that.

In December 2011, a Mallu chick happened to find my blog and ended up liking it so much that she read every single post that I ever wrote. But there would have been nothing unusual about her if she did not find me on facebook with nothing other than my blog to begin with.

It is impossible for you to know who I am because I have gone over the top about making myself anonymous in my blog. When I started my blog, the blog’s URL and my blogger user name had my real name in it. I was really narcissistic back in the old days but I quickly realized that the only way I could write about someone without getting death threats the next day, was to go anonymous. So I got a new domain, changed my user name and stopped publicizing my blog with friends. I also went on to delete the replies I had given to the thousand odd comments that I had received in my blog. I did this because the username that came up in my replies to comments had my real name. So if you really like my blog and intend to see the cute face behind all the glorious writing, it would be impossible. In fact I would like to announce a contest. You can win an iPhone if you successfully stalk me and find what my real name is. People who already know me unfortunately cannot win an iPhone even though they do deserve to be congratulated for knowing me.

Anyway, this mallu chick who had done the impossible had sent me a friend request on facebook. When I receive friend’s requests from strangers, I don’t add or reject them (especially if they are from women). I just keep their request there because they increase my facebook follower count. Yes my life is quite sad. I have 29 facebook followers at the moment and I aspire to equal Zuckerberg who has a follower count of 17 million. But when my stalker friend sent me a friend's request, I added her because I thought it was my blogging pal who happened to have the same name. Also my stalker’s home town was Thrissur. Who doesn't like a Thrissur chick? We ended up speaking like we had known each other forever. At least I thought she was my blogging friend who I had been emailing for quite sometime. I don’t know what she was thinking.

After a few weeks of talking I found out that she was not the person who I thought she was, because the person I thought she was, was emailing me the exact same time I was talking to her. I felt like how my vegetarian friend felt when he had chicken thinking it was a potato. I was very angry and wanted an explanation but she played dumb and said she was sorry. I wanted to unfriend her then and there. But she was a Thrissur chick and that is what made me blind in the first place. My mother always wondered why I tell her I want to get married, every time I went to Guruvayur (a temple in Thrissur). It is because a Thrissur girl’s Malayalam can turn any Mallu guy on. If you think mallus are hot, chances are you are talking about a Thrissur chick. But my stalker was far from hot in her facebook pictures. The sad part about stalkers is that they are never the super models that you want them to be. Anyway we didn’t want one of those pseudo internet friendships and decided to meet on 19^th Febuary 2012. Boy did she live up to the name of a Thrissur chick. She was nothing like her pictures but what really made her hot must have been her Malayalam and her mallu English. She remembers anniversaries and sort of wished me happy anniversary today, for successfully knowing each other for a year. So I thought I would write this as a tribute to her and all my blog fans and followers who help keep my blog alive. If not for you, this blog will not exist. I was not the most regular of bloggers last year where my blog only saw 8 new posts. However only good things have come out of this blog and this year I decided to make a new years resolution to blog every Sunday. It’s almost two months now and I am still sticking with my resolution, though it has changed from posting every Sunday to posting every week. I am going to say the dharma (principle) of my resolution is up held and that is all that matters in the end.

Bloggers, go follow Talitha who gave me a blog award recently without knowing I treat them like how Amir Khan treats his awards. She is a member of the X-Men and her mutant ability is her power to read every single post of yours within 24 hours of posting (assuming your blog posts are as awesome as mine).

A Feminist Irony

2013-02-11T05:36:00.002+05:30

Diary Entry – 52

My friend, who was preparing for the GRE, once came and told me he was left aghast when he saw his sister’s face. She had come home from Bangalore and he intended to tell me that he was surprised to see her. But when he told me he was left aghast when he saw her face, I assumed she got a plastic surgery or met with some kind of major accident which left her face severely disfigured.

Misusing English words is not a problem common to only GRE aspirants. This world is full of people who use the word irony to appear intelligent. It is not really a bad thing, if they didn’t massacre it. I remember the time when this Chinese girl from my class happened to meet me three times in three different places on the same day. The third time she met me she said, “Isn’t this ironic. We are meeting for the third time on the same day.” It almost felt like she was accusing me of stalking her. Some of you reading this will have no clue why using the word “irony” is wrong in this context. Let me explain. Let’s say you had a sweet tasting vanilla ice cream which had a cherry and a few peanut flakes on top of it. You eat it with great joy until you start falling terribly sick, which is when you realize that you are allergic to peanuts. In order to get better, you go to get medicines for your allergy. But on the way you get hit by a giant truck and you die on the spot. This is not irony. Even if this truck was carrying peanuts (the thing that you are allergic to), it is not irony. It would just be a coincidence. If however the truck was carrying medicines for your peanut allergy, then that my friend is some bitter irony. Most people however would call it irony even if you got hit by a garbage truck. Now that you know how the word irony is used, you can haunt all those people who find your death ironic.

The other word which happens to be severely misused is the word “feminist”. A feminist is an activist who strives to establish equal opportunities for women socially. They usually strive for protecting women against discrimination in education and in employment. It still happens in our country and there are some women out there who think feminism is bad. If you are a woman who think feminism is bad, you might as well move to a country like Saudi Arabia right now. Most people just assume that a feminist is a lady who likes to dominate men and who think women should rule over the world. People who think that, often get confused when they see a male feminist. Women who enjoy dominating men are called Dominatrix and if I try to explain what a Dominatrix does, my blog will start getting kinky. The point I am trying to make is that don’t try to offend someone by calling them a feminist. Feminism is a good thing, unless you are threatened by woman empowerment. I know Mayawathi and Jayalalitha might concern a lot of men and women, but I assure you that feminism is not about empowering these kinds of women.

Why I Don't Hook People Up

2013-02-04T20:24:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry - 51

Every now and then a guy comes and says, "intro kudu machi." (Introduce me to her dude.) When I refuse to help them out, they think I am afraid of them stealing my thunder. Little do they realize that I am doing them all a big favor and have their best interests at heart.

You might have seen pictures and memes making jokes about women’s idiosyncrasies. My friend Jessie served as an inspiration for all those pictures. Of course her name is not Jessie. For the sake of anonymity, I picked the name Jessie which happened to be the name of the female lead of Jessie’s favorite Tamil movie Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa. For those of you who have not heard of this movie, it shares a key similarity with Twilight by having an unusual number of delusional teenage girls in its fan base. Fortunately though, unlike twilight they decided to end things with one movie instead of making a whole series.

Some people wrongly think Jessie is my girlfriend. What she really is, is a pain in the a**. She is a part time model and has a reasonable amount of intelligence that fetch her good grades in college. She is someone you would call ~~beauty~~ makeup with brains. Most men including my own male buddies are actively pursuing her on Facebook for reasons unknown to me. Jessie however doesn’t add men she doesn't know. The other day, a friend of mine came to me and said, “Dude I got rejected.” At first I thought his masters’ application got turned down. But he went on to ask me to give him a recommendation. I politely told him he needed to ask his department’s dean for that, as recommendations from me won’t be valid. For that he replied, “That old man doesn't know Jessie.” He was talking about Jessie rejecting his Facebook friend request and he wanted me to give him a recommendation to get accepted. What has the world come to?

I don’t usually hook men up with my female friends but I didn’t want anybody to think Jessie was my girlfriend, so I made no fuss. So that is how Jessie added this guy on Facebook and she did it from my very own laptop. She sent him a hi and he was on fire. He was typing so much and he was doing it so fast that if he wrote a book with that speed, he might have finished it in an hour. Jessie however is very adept in conversing with monosyllables and how long her replies were depended on how many mS she chose to put in her hmmmm.

Jessie didn’t waste her time engaging in idle chat with men. She had more important things to do like stalk people’s profiles. She stalked both men and women without discrimination. She will like every picture in a girls profile but when it came to guys, she had this "I don't give likes to guys photo" policy. Apparently liking pictures where there are men in it will create some sort of controversy in her life. Only when she was about to log out did she notice the chat window of the poor guy I gave recommendation to. She said “hmmm. K da. wil talk 2 u later” and she logged out. That was the longest reply she had given him.

From Chef To Cook

2013-01-28T01:13:00.000+05:30

Diary Entry – 50

When I was left to fend for myself in the past, I usually went to the nearest restaurant which offered the cheapest food. Hygiene did not concern me because I had a gut of steel. You could say I never starved in India like how I starved in the country I am in now.

In September 2012, I found myself in this country where the food is outrageously expensive. I decided to have a Domino’s pizza which used to cost me a few hundred rupees back home in India. The bill I got here however reminded me of the time I had food in a Taj hotel.

Since a pizza itself had become so expensive, I started eating cereal and sandwiches three times a day. Needless to say, I missed my mother greatly who was now five thousand miles away. She had kept me fed for most of my life. It was during this desperate time, that I strongly considered the option of marriage. When my friends asked me why I wanted to get married, I said, “To Stay Alive.” My married classmate told me I needed a maid with benefits and not wife. Turns out his wife can’t cook and if he didn’t know how to cook, they would have had to starve together.

See, cooking is not easy for me. When I was a kid, there was only one place in the world that I was afraid of and that was the kitchen. There were so many sharp things that can cut you among other things that could create a possible gas explosion. I still think the stove is going to explode when I enter the kitchen.

Since I had to learn to cook somehow, I decided to hang out with the so called cooking experts from India. These expert cooks impressed me by claiming to be able to make Lemon Rice. But I wasn’t truly impressed till I saw them in action. They made lemon rice in just two steps:

1. Make Rice Using The Microwave.

2. Take “Lemon Rice Mix” and mix it with rice. Lemon Rice ready!

They gave Maggi noodles a run for its money. So much for learning from the experts. I however gained considerable courage in using the stove and I was able to make fried eggs. If you go to a restaurant there is big distinction between a chef and a cook. Someone who can cook is a cook. Someone who can create a new menu however, is called a chef. It is like the difference between a worker who lays bricks and an architect. Usually people go from being a cook to being a chef. I however did things the other way round. It might have been because of my aspiration to be the best that I thought following recipes were just a waste of time. I started making dishes that I don’t wish to name here. When my own personal safety became a cause for concern, I started using recipes.

I have seen considerable success as a cook. Every time I cook now, tears roll down my face and I ask myself “Did I just make this?” I spend more time taking pictures of what I made these days. I know a few women who used to gloat because they made fried rice or biryani. It was back in the old days when those kind of things used to impress me because I couldn’t do it myself. Now, I send them pictures of the stuff I make and I get a weird form of evil pleasure from it. I am no longer in a hurry to get married. If I did give out personal marriage ads, it would have changed from " seeking a girl adept in cooking" to " seeking a girl who doesn't mind cutting the vegetables and doing the dishes."

P.S - Someone insisted that I add that I still cannot make Dosas with the perfect shape. So that goes here in the P.S.

Everything in the pictures in this post was made and consumed by The Narcissist

The Practical Guide To Being Polite

2013-01-22T03:17:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry - 49

Back home in India my relatives laud my mother on raising a polite and well-mannered boy. The British however think otherwise.

It all started when I went to class here in the UK a little late and found myself without a pen. I was fortunate enough to find myself sitting next to a good female friend who I had acquainted myself with over the weeks. In India, if I forgot my pen and if the lecture was going on, I would take the pen out of my friend's pocket with only a few hand and eye movements being exchanged. I thought since I was in England and since the person sitting next to me was a girl, I should do things the old fashioned way and so I actually told the girl sitting next to me “Hey Christy, give me your pen” before I took it.

Never did I think I would offend someone so much by taking a pen. You think you know how to talk in English until you realize every word that comes out your mouth has the potential to offend someone. Later I learn that if I had to borrow a pen from Christy the proper way, I should begin by first exclaiming “Oh god I forgot my pen at home. What do I do now!” Most people don’t react to your problems and Christy might have been no exception. So then you look at her pen and say, “Oh that pen that you have there, looks really nice. Where did you get it?”. She will get the message and just so that she doesn't seem inconsiderate she will say, “Oh hey you can use my pen.” Now you don’t take the pen straight after she offered it to you, because that will make you seem like you are someone who exploits other people’s kindness. So what do you do? You say, “Oh thank you. But wouldn’t you mind if I used your pen to write down my notes?” for which she will say “Oh not at all.” Then as you take her pen from her hand, you repeat several times the words, “Are you sure?” before you actually take the pen and start writing with it. That’s not the end of it. While writing with her pen, you say, “Oh this pen writes so well. I have never seen a pen like this before in my life.” The idea is to compliment the pen that she gave you and you are supposed to do this even if it doesn't write properly. Then after you finished writing with her pen, you return it while remembering to say “Thank you so much”. It is important that you follow these instructions to the letter, otherwise you risk offending her. For example, if you forgot to say thank you Christy would have felt used. I had trouble saying thank you after borrowing a pen from someone I knew well because saying thank you after borrowing a pen is all it takes to freak out your friends in India.

It was very hard for me to talk in a way the British found polite but I have it all figured out now. All I do now is look at every normal conversation that I have, as a conversation with my high school vice principal Sita miss (Yeah we called teachers miss in our school, instead of madame because we didn't want them to feel old). Students of my school feared Sita miss because she was an angry woman who could talk on stage without the aid of a microphone. The entire auditorium would be able to hear her loud and clear. We always thought she could make a career in Italy as an opera singer, if she wasn’t so short tempered. So before every conversation I have in this country I think of Sita miss. Say there is this guy next to me having a pack of chips (or crisps as they call it Britian) and it is making my mouth water. Since I don’t want to be rude I think in my head, “How will I ask Sita miss to share her packet of chips with me?” It will not be long before I realize that getting my own bag of chips is the best course of action in the UK.

The skill of being polite is however a worthy skill to have and if you attain sufficient mastery of this skill, you can insult or be rude to someone in a very polite way. I will teach you a few things I have learnt on how to tell people the truth without offending them:

1. Say something very rude and say it is cute - Hey you are wearing too much make up. It makes you look cute.

2. Insult someone and say you don’t know any better - I think what you are wearing is horrible. My sense of fashion must suck.

This is especially useful, with members of the family or friends, where you want to say what you think but don’t want to offend them. Like say you have a sister-in-law and she comes to your marriage wearing a gaudy dress and with an awful lot of makeup. The only way to tell her the truth and have a happily married life is by being polite.

I know it is Monday. Just so that you know, I am still sticking to my new year resolution of posting every Sunday. My excuse for posting on Monday instead of Sunday is that the two days have only the first two letters different.

Why I Don't Read Or Watch The News

2013-01-14T00:25:00.000+05:30

Diary Entry – 48

I don’t read the newspaper. I don’t watch the news on the television or on the internet. If you ask me who the president of India is, I will say Abdul Kalam. Believe it or not, I just googled “President of India” and found out it was Pranab Mukherjee. What a shock that was. I thought Pranab Mukherjee was still the finance minister.

These kind of shocks are every day for me now. Last Christmas when I was in India, I was flicking through the channels and every other news channel was talking about Sachin Tendulkar and his cricketing career. There were also these old players who used to play in the Indian cricket team talking about how they knew Sachin as a boy. I had no idea why they were talking about Sachin out of the blue because the Indian cricket team was losing ever single match they played. This made me think Sachin Tendulkar died. I was later told that he was retiring from international cricket. In spite of all this I still struggle to understand why anybody will waste their time reading the newspaper if he/she didn’t want to ace the comprehension section in the GRE. I rather watch the discovery channel instead of the news on the television.

I live in the UK now and when I came to India for Christmas my Indian friend had to tell me this:

Macha is used like bro or dude in a South Indian language called Tamil (I have readers from the UK you see). Macha actually means brother-in-law. Here macha is my buddy whose name I cannot reveal for my own personal safety)

Macha: The British rule of India was the greatest tragedy in the history of our country.

See my macha knew how I would respond. He also knew I don’t read the newspaper leave alone the editorial columns and he purposely brought this up so he could show off.

Me: Apidi solladha macha (Don’t say like that dude). The British did give us a few good things like the railway system and roads.

Macha: Do you know why they built the railway system and roads? The British used the railways to move grains to the ports during a time when there was great famine. It caused the death of millions of Indians.

Me: Oh. I did not know that da.

Macha: That is why you should read the newspaper. Otherwise you will have a flawed world view like this.

Me: Dei idhukum adhukum enna sambandham? (What is the connection between reading the newspaper and my worldview.)

Macha: Pinne enna da, you are in a way saying that if the British had not colonized India, we would not have developed.

I usually nod my head and don’t bother telling people my world view. But when my world view itself was mocked, I just had to tell him.

Me: I am not saying that. I know that the British did a lot of bad things, but the way every Indian should see the British is the way you see Nisha. (Nisha is macha’s ex girl friend.)

Macha: Nisha va edhuku da summa illukere? (Why are you dragging Nisha into this?)

Me: Macha, when you were in a relationship with her, you hated her, you felt exploited and you even wasted your money buying her food in the name of going out on a date.

Macha: Dei kadupu ethadha! (Don’t irritate me!)

Me: Matter kaelu da. (Listen da.) When you finally did break up and move on with your life, you didn’t want to call your past relationship a tragedy. You instead wanted to look at the time you spent in the relationship with her and say - "some good things came out of something bad."

Macha: How the hell is Nisha like the British?

Me: Indha British pasangalam Nisha madhri dhan. (India’s story with the British is also like your relationship with Nisha). Your ex girl friend gave you maturity, the British gave Indians the railways. I am not saying it is the best thing that ever happened, all I am saying is we are looking into some of the good thing that came out of something bad.

Macha: Onne kitta poi sonnane parru, enna serupala adikanam. (For telling you this, I should remove whatever I am wearing on my feet and hit myself with it.)

Me: Onna yarru scene poda sonnadhu. (Who asked you to show off.)

In India, there are people who think reading the newspaper every day somehow increases their IQ. Macha was one of them. What these people fail to understand is that just because someone doesn’t know about something, doesn’t mean that they are not intelligent enough to talk about it.

I am sticking with my new year resolution by posting every Sunday. However, I post in GMT so that it might be Monday In India, when I post here in the UK.

Previous Post - The Phone That Lived

The Phone That Lived

2013-01-06T21:08:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry - 47

This is not a phone review. Well maybe it is, but not the kind you usually read. Often you hear users of the Nokia 1200, basic phone tell you how awesome their phone is. I am one of those people. But the time came when I had to leave the country and I faced tremendous pressure from my friends to get a new phone. My pathetic old phone did not have whatsapp they said.

See I loved my phone for several reasons. Once when I came home from hostel, I forgot to take my phone out of my bag. My darling mother has a habit of cleaning everything that ventured outside the house. Washing is something she enjoys so much, that some people in the family used to think she suffered from OCD. So when my perfectly clean bag from hostel, entered the house, she HAD to clean it. I think in her haste to clean my bag, she missed to see my poor phone which was inside. She rinsed and soaked my bag, in water. Have you ever washed your phone with water? My mother has washed mine with SURF EXCEL.

Eventually I ended up searching for my phone and found it in my bag which was soaked in water. Needless to say I was angry with my mother for being so careless. She had this weird smile which made me think, she wanted to wash my phone ever since I first got it from the store. This is not the first time. My head phones and USB cables has got washed before. Have I told you about my laptops motherboard going bust after my mother decided to wipe it with a wet cloth?

I should have been careful and I know some of you might be wondering how the hell I forgot to take my phone out of my bag, in the first place. It’s like forgetting my arm somewhere rite? Well when you are single and when the only people who bother to call you are your parents, the probability of you misplacing your phone is tripled. As for my phone which went through the Surf Excel wash, it survived. If I could miniaturize people (people who tell me my phone sucks) to the size of my mobile phone, and if I could soak them in Surf Excel for more than an hour, I am pretty sure they will not make it out alive. My phone however will come out a survivor.

When you own something as indestructible as my phone, you own something that becomes part of your family heirloom. It is something you can pass down to your great grandchildren. I now have a HTC. But you will still find me proudly carrying my old phone around on certain days.

I know I haven’t written much in my blog for quite some time now. I can give you several reasons as to why but why will you be bothered rite? Well you should be. I am now part of the Illuminati and my spare time is spent on making plans for world domination. I am currently undergoing secret training in the UK. However my blog is just as important as world domination and so I have made a New Year resolution to write every Sunday from today. God knows how long this will last but here is hoping that this will be a productive year where the Narcissist will shine with all his glory. Happy New Year.

Readers who just read the last line of this blog post and comment happy new year below will feel my fist.

Previous Post - A Restaurant Review

A Restaurant Review

2012-08-12T11:35:00.002+05:30

Diary Entry – 46

The first time I went to Saravana Bhavan, I was ten.

They served unlimited meals and my mother and I had so little that the waiter felt sorry for us. It was the first time my mother was eating there as well and she was shocked when they charged us only forty rupees for the food. We happened to meet the manager and my mother told him, they should be charging more when the food is so good.

I think they took my mother a little too seriously.

A few days ago, I went to Saravana Bhavan again. It was one of those days when I skipped breakfast. When I left the house in the morning, my mother told me to order something other than meals, because last time (11 years ago) we were not able to eat much. If you are wondering why I did not go to Saravana Bhavan for the last decade, it is because a non-vegetarian simply does not pay to eat vegetarian food in a fancy restaurant. If you are a non-vegetarian going to a restaurant which serves only vegetarian food, you won’t even ask for the menu. You simply order Naan with paneer curry.

When the food arrived, I thought I was dreaming because of starvation. I was amazed how small the Naan was. I kept staring at the food, like the fat guy who looks at the small idly in the Docomo ad. (See Video Below.)

The paneer curry I ordered along with the Naan was served on fire. There was this casing sort of thing which had a bowl with paneer on top. Below the casing was a lamp. All that looked cool and fancy, till I realized how small the bowl actually was. After gobbling down a few pieces, I was left poking my finger into the bowl searching for the paneer.

When I finished eating, I felt as hungry as I was before. The quantity of the food they served was not half as shocking as the bill. They made sure that my purse wouldn’t let me think about food till I reached home.

I know. I should have just gone to McDonalds. So much for cheap, healthy, vegetarian food.

Previous Post - The Relatives

The Relatives

2012-06-13T19:56:00.000+05:30

Every time I go to a family gathering, my brain goes on over drive. I frantically try to jog the memories I formed in my head when I was 3 years old. I smile and pretend to know everybody. If I fail to smile at someone, they will come up to me and ask,

“Ariyo?” (Do you know me?) - Malayalam

When someone asks me this question, I act all offended that they even thought of asking me such a question after all the good times (I assume) I spent with them in the past. This is what you should do if you don’t have the slightest clue who you are talking to. If you fail to answer or deflect the previous question you will be asked the next question from which there is no escape

“Njan aara?” (“Who am I?”)

Unlike the first question, there is no way to deflect this one. I will have to hear them describe my family tree, which has more branches and leaves and roots than any other tree in the planet. It is so big that there is a high probability you are one of the leaves in my family tree. Even if you are Chinese, or Punjabi, my relatives would have married someone from there.

The ones who bore you describing the family tree are not that bad when you meet, the ones who love drama. The other day I met this lady

Aunty: Njan aara ariyo? (Do you know who I am?)

Me: *stupid grin on my face implying I have no idea*

Aunty: You forgot me didn’t you?

Me: Sorry aunty. I know your face so well. I just can’t recall your name now.

Aunty: You used to come to me saying Binduamma binduamma as a kid.

Me: Oh now I remember your name :D Sorry binduamma. Pettanu maranu poi (Sorry Bindu Aunty. I forgot your name, when you asked me all of a sudden.)

Aunty: You remember the toy train I got you when you were a kid?

(Me: What train?)

Me: Uh hmmm.

Aunty: You don’t remember the train do you? You have forgotten me completely.

(Me: Hey lady, wait a minute. It’s not like you got me a xbox)

Me: Aunty my grandmother there just called me. I will go and come back in one min.

(And I disappear forever)

Later that day, back home.

Grand Mother: I saw you talking to Bindu.

Me: Yeah. I got out when it started turning into a nightmare.

Grand Mother: What did she say? Last time she saw you, you were three years old.

Me: WHAT! Did I have the verbal ability to run around saying Binduamma Binduamma when I was three?

Grand Mother: What are you talking about?

Me: You will never believe what happened.

So when I say that some of my relatives expect me to have the memory of an autistic savant, I am not exaggerating one bit. I thought this CIA like interrogation happens only when I go out of the house to meet my relatives. But the other day when I logged into facebook I get this friends request from a strange looking old man along with a message, “Guess who I am? I saw you today. You are wearing a blue shirt. Aren’t you?” Scenes from the horror movie, “I know what you did last summer” flashes in my head. Is this a psycho serial killer? Am I going to die? Then I did a quick translation of “Guess who I am?” in Malayalam and I realized that when translated it becomes, “Njan aara?” Next thing I do is search for the report abuse button. A friends request has never creeped me out this much.

There have been a few developments in the past six months. I have gained 9 kilos staying at home. I have reached a personal record of my highest ever weight of 57 Kilos. Though still very far away from being overweight, I fear the worst if I stick with the current gluttonous diet pattern. My relatives however don’t seem to think so. Before this, I have NEVER crossed 50 kilos in my life. 50 was my personal best in high school. The last four years I spent in college made me look like a kid from Sudan. So I cannot stress enough of how much “not thin” I am now. But when a relative of mine sees me, they have only one thing to say:

“YOU HAVE BECOME SO THIN!!”

What shocks me is that, they always say it with such shock. Their own children are starved because their mothers fear cholesterol and obesity. The other day I was at my cousins place:

Cousin: Amma, it is evening. Make me some tea.

Aunt: Do you really need to drink tea now? No need. Drink some water.

Yet in the name of love, they try to stuff everything that there is, into MY mouth. What can you do with these people, especially when you love them? I just sit and make false mental promises of going to the gym as I gobble down the fourth round of payasam that they made "just of me".

Previous Post - Tonight We Sleep In Hell

Tonight We Sleep In Hell

2012-05-09T11:30:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry – 44

At two in the morning I woke up and cried out fu*k Jayalalitha. Jayalalitha is the chief minister of the state that I live in. A state with no electricity.

When you have a power cut at two in the morning, it will tick anybody off. In my state people blame Jayalalitha for their troubles the same way we blamed the dean of student affairs (aka dosa) in our college. We blamed him for the lack of water and the pathetic food. I blamed him more for the food than the water. Our mess + electricity fee + water fee per day is 75 rupees. It was a miracle that we even got food. My college is a management miracle that should be a case study in Harvard Business School. For the obese, joining my college is like joining a weight loss program. What could the poor old DOSA, do if he is expected to serve a full day meal for seventy five rupees apart from providing water and electricity. So whenever I seem to miss college, I think about the food, the water and the electricity and say to myself, “Home Sweet Home.” But home is turning out to be an even bigger nightmare. Nights like these where you spend swimming in the pool of your own sweat makes you miss hostel.

Some people from other states will now empathize with our problem saying that they don’t have electricity either. When this empathy comes from places like Kerala, it really pisses me off. The monsoon rains there makes the entire state feel like it is being air conditioned where as we people here in Chennai feel like we are living in a furnace. Empathy from such people is not wanted here. Chennai is hot as it is and the other day this is what my mom had to say:

Amma: Eda Kathri is coming to Chennai in another few days and will be here for the entire month. So don’t go out too much.

Me: Kathri? Is it one of our relatives? Why the hell does she want to stay here for an entire month? I cant entertain relatives, who decide to vacation in the hottest place in the world.

Amma: Ayo Kathri is not our relative. It is the name of hottest season in Chennai. It is going to get more hot from now on.

Me: What? That is worse. I wish Kathri was one of our relatives now. *sigh*

The power cut at two in the morning lasted for two hours. I couldn’t bear it and so I decided to take a bath. As I found my way to the bathroom in the dark, I saw a shadowy figure lurking around the bathroom. Times like that you wish you saw the reruns of the Karate Kid in Sony Pix. It is not usual to have power cuts at 2 A.M and I thought the thief’s played with the power lines. I was ready to ambush what I thought was a thief. It turned out to be a lady and the lady turned out to be my mother. I was glad that I hesitated with the punch. My mother was in the bathroom for the same reason as I was. She couldn’t bear the heat and wanted to wash her face and hands to cool down.

We don’t have an inverter in the house because of rationalization that we do in the house for any purchase we make other than food. When it comes to food, the people in my house will spend their entire fortunes on it. Sometimes I get the feeling we are buying too many sweets and ice creams. When I tell mother we should be saving she says, we don’t spend our money on any other unwanted things so we shouldn’t worry. She couldn’t be more right. We don’t spend money on anything at all. That includes the inverter. Whenever I tell her that an inverter is something we need in our house, I am asked the question on how our ancestors who had no electricity hundreds of years ago lived in this country. Then I am asked, how the British not only lived in the exact same place we are living in now, but also made a big city during a time when even a ceiling fan was a luxury. *face palms* is the only reaction I can give.

One good thing came out of this early morning nightmare though. Current came back at 4 A.M and we went back to sleep. When I woke up, mom comes up to me and tells me, I made some calls. We will have an inverter with 5 hours back up in our house in another few days. In my head I shouted, “Thank you God.”

I know my blog was about to face extinction. I have been very busy doing several things at once in life. A lot of good things came out of this blog and I will never let it die that easy.

Previous Post - Getting Killed in The Kitchen

Getting Killed in The Kitchen

2012-02-28T21:50:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry – 43

So my stomach was making noises. I was hungry and mom was not home. I think veins started popping out of my eyes. I could not stand it any longer. So I do a brave thing of going into the kitchen, of all places.

I opened the fridge to find eggs, vegetables but no edible food. Mom manages to conjure food from thin air, in minutes, every time I say I am hungry. That is one magic trick I should have learnt.

Noodles?

I already searched for a packet in every corner of the house. Nothing.

I said a prayer: Please God! Dont let me die. I wont waste any food from now on.

Tears started to stream down my face.

I should have listened when I was asked not to skip lunch. I could not even find an apple (apple because some of you will find banana too perverse).

I went to the fridge one more time to study my options. There were carrots, capsicum and a few other things I did not know. Eat carrots like bugs bunny rite?

No.

I did not want to eat something I spent my entire life hating.

Eggs was the last option. Well I had to cook it. Fortunately I had seen it being cooked so many times before that I was some what of an expert in it, even if I had never actually cooked one in the kitchen.

So I decided I was going to have fried eggs. I turned on the gas. I tried several times to turn on the stove. Gas smell filled my nose but there was no fire in stove. If I kept that up, tomorrow’s news would have been “Hungry Boy Died in Kitchen trying to make an omelette.” Not the kind of headlines I want to be making.

So I turned off the gas and looked around to realize that we had a microwave. This is where I got really nerdy. Well we can cook eggs in a microwave without anybody getting killed rite? Well not quite. I happened to attend a lecture on microwave welding of metals by a visiting IIT faculty in our college and I remembered him telling:

“Eggs explode when you put them in a microwave.”

But he was talking about an egg with a shell. The shell prevents the water molecules from escaping out and so because of the pressure build up, it explodes. I was going to make a fried egg so my egg was not going to have a shell. I just wanted to make sure it was safe so I looked it up in google. Turned out the egg's yellow has a membrane which holds it together. So when I microwave the egg, the water molecules wont be able to escape from the membrane and it might blow up. Though it will be less disastrous than microwaving an egg with a shell, trying to cook it in a microwave is going to be catastrophic one way or the other.

That is when my brain started saying “Eat it Raw dude. I will turn off your taste buds till you swallow it.”

But then I decided to make one more google search before I was left to take that desperate measure. I landed upon a fellow bloggers blog and she had this ingenious idea. Break the membrane of the eggs yellow with a tooth pick so when the water wants to escape, it can from the hole in the membrane. I poked the eggs membrane with the plastic tip of my compass.

Three minutes I peered into the microwave to find any starting signs of an explosion. Monitoring a nuclear reactor would have been easier because I had no idea whether it was getting cooked or whether it was going to explode.

The end result was a work of art that would have made even Pablo Picasso envy me. Whether I ate it, will forever be a mystery.

Previous Post - IIT Bombay

IIT Bombay

2012-02-18T14:32:00.000+05:30

Diary Entry – 42

The only reason why I am giving such a boring title for a blog post is because there is a lot of talk about Search Engine Optimization in the blogging world these days and I am just trying to say IIT Bombay so many times in this post so that when someone searches for IIT Bombay in Google, they will land up in the Diary Of The Narcissist. So if you are that someone who came here because you searched for IIT Bombay then I am sorry to inform you that I do not have free GATE or JEE Test Papers here in this site.

Last three days there was this international conference on Simulation and Modeling in IIT Bombay. My project guide who is one of the leading experts in the field of simulation, was one of the few invited guests. He wanted me to come and promote a simulation technology in this conference. This conference in IIT Bombay had more participants from the industry than participants from the academic field. It meant a lot of clients for my guide who was a consultant. He promised to pay five thousand rupees if I came.

Now I did not want to go to IIT Bombay to attend this conference for two reasons.

1. I have been using this simulation technology for a month for my final project. This meant that I knew little to promote it to any potential customers.

2. I cannot speak a word in Hindi.

But I had to go because I was in debt to my professor for a few reasons. Yes, curse my sense of loyalty towards people. Anyway just so that I wont be massacred in an alien city, I decided to learn a few sentences in Hindi, two hours before my flight to Bombay. I asked my friend to give me the translations for the following sentences.

I want to go to IIT Bombay (Mai IIT Bombay Jana Chata Hu).

I started learning Hindi only Today (Mai aaj Thoda sa Hindi Seekha)

Can you tell me this in English? I speak very little Hindi (Kya aap muje angrezi mey samja denge? Muje Hindi Bahut thode hi aati Hai)

Finally just in case I stopped to ask direction to Raj Thackrey who has been known to bully people who came from other states, I learnt this:

I am going to IIT Bombay to attend a conference for three days. (Mai ek conference meing saamil hone ke liye IIT bambai jar aha hu... teen dino ke liye)

That was by far the toughest sentence to remember.

So the first thing I say when I enter the Taxi was this –

Me: Namaste Driver Ji? Aap Kaise hey? (Hello Driver. How are you?)

Driver: :|

I looked up youtube for learn Hindi Videos the previous day and this Aap Kaise hey line was one thing I learnt. I was determined to use every single thing I learnt in Hindi. So I tell the guy in Hindi I want to go to IIT Bombay and I feel confident that I can manage anybody who talks to me in Hindi. But then I met this hot police chick in IIT Bombay’s entrance.

I know all North Indian women are hot in the eyes of South Indian Men but this super fair police officer was different. I thought such hot female law enforcers existed only in the movies. She was more like the security of IIT Bombay. The lady did not just let me inside instead she said crap in Hindi and the sentence had bag, mobile phone and laptop in it. The last time I heard a similar sentence in Hindi was in the plane and it was the flight attendant asking us to switch off our mobile phone and laptop during takeoff and landing. I told this lady that I had no laptop in my bag. This lady for some reason repeated the same sentence again. I was frustrated and told her this:

Mai aaj Thoda sa Hindi Seekha (I started learning Hindi only Today).

Kya aap muje angrezi mey samja denge? (Can you tell me this in English?)

Then I realized the mistake I made. She looked at me stone faced. I practised these two lines so much on the way, that I probably sounded like a native Hindi speaker when I spit it out fast. So after I told her that, she probably thought I was a creep who was messing with her because she was pretty. I had to keep talking in English before she would finally let me in.

The actual conference and my time in IIT Bombay went very well. I mean I was totally wrong about North Indians. They were just like the Hindi guys in my college if not more friendlier. For some reason they all liked me even if I did not speak Hindi. After that incident with the police lady, I decided to stop pretending to know Hindi. At first I was a little bit intimidated when people spoke Hindi. Sure I could understand and all but I can only respond in English. But that ended up intimidating people who spoke to me in Hindi. But they still liked me. They gave me their email address so that I could add them on facebook and stuff. One chick I met in the conference was a M.Tech student in Industrial Engineering Department. She asked me how I was finding IIT Bombays’s campus. I told her it is very large and I am scared of getting lost. I also told her I speak very little Hindi, in Hindi. That got her rolling on the floor laughing. When she finally stopped giggling she told me that I sounded like Katrina Kaif when she first came to Bollywood. Turns out that Katrina Kaif had this British accent in her Hindi and I was talking Hindi the same way. For a moment I thought my Hindi was as good as a film star’s.

It was finally time to go home. My cousin kept telling me don't go to that area in Bombay, don't go to this area in Bombay, because I will be robbed or raped. Though being robbed worried me a little, I thought rape was for women. I reached the Mumbai airport and I thought I successfully managed to leave Bombay without being robbed or raped. Well all that changed when I went through the routine security check. It was a Nightmare. The guard asked me to spread my hands and legs so he can check if I was carrying some bomb or ammunition. What happened next made me jump and shout out WTF. That guy grabbed my uh.. Yeah that.

Gay Police Officer: First Time in airport?

“First time being groped in public by a police officer. Where do I give a complain?” I wanted to ask. There is no terrorist in this world who is going to sacrifice his man hood just so that he could place a bomb between his legs. It is going to be really hard for a terrorist to place a bomb in the Bombay Airport because the security leaves no place unchecked. I am going to need therapy for this trauma.

P.S – For the sake of search engine optimization I required to say IIT Bombay one more time in the very last sentence, which is this. :D

Previous Post - I am not Crazy

I am not Crazy

2012-02-05T19:30:00.000+05:30

Diary Entry – 41

If you know me personally you can read this. If you don’t anything about me, I don’t know why you will want to read this, please move on to the next post. If you are stalker then you can read this but be warned I am writing this because I am just tired of explaining everything to each person who talks to me.

I applied to six universities in the United States and one University in the United Kingdom. I applied for Industrial Engineering, specialising in Operations Research in the US and Business Analytics and Consulting in Warwick Business School UK. Ever since I got that offer letter from Warwick Business School, people who dont know shit have been giving me their advice. Some have concluded that I am stupid. I know I really shouldn’t be listening to you people, but it fills me with a small sense of doubt every time I hear something in the lines of “You are making the biggest mistake of your life”. So let me answer the whys whats and hows.

There is an industry called consulting which most people in India have not heard of. The people who work there are called consultants or they may have other fancy names like Business Analysts etc. It is what companies like Mckinsey do for a living. Good consulting companies are hard to get into. That is because they invest a lot of money in training the new consultants and if the newly hired people leave after a few years saying that consulting is not meant for them, then it will mean loss for the company. So they are very picky when choosing people and they hire people who have demonstrated an interest in consulting or people who have already been in consulting.

I have always wanted to do MBA. Years ago, I spoke to someone who did his MBA from Boston Business School. He told me the smartest and the top bunch of students in the MBA class will usually prefer consulting. The middle set of students will go into finance and the bottom of the class will go into marketing. He asked me to get a job in consulting before I do my MBA. If the work experience I had was from a consulting company, it will be a lot easier for me to get an admission to the top business schools in the world. My consulting background will give a higher value to my profile. He told me this years ago and I had no idea what consulting was then and you can even say I forgot about consulting up until the time I studied Operations Research in college. I decided that Operations Research is the thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I remembered what my senior told me years ago, when I was researching the job prospects of Operations Research. Consulting was a job where you will use Operations Research ever day, to help solve problems. I had no idea. Naturally, the statement of purpose I sent in was very strong. Also I had done work in the field which made it even more strong. No the course in Warwick is not MBA. It is still called masters.

If you are from India, you will probably here people tell you that if you do an MBA you have to get into finance. That is because consulting companies don’t come to most Indian MBA colleges except maybe the IIMs. That brings us to the next question. Why did you not write CAT? I am not smart enough for that exam. It is easier to get admission into Harvard Business School when compared to getting admission into any of the IIMs. CAT is that hard. So the next thing people ask is why I don’t do my MBA directly. MBA programs abroad require two years of relevant work experience. They wont give you admission otherwise. Even if by some fluke you get admission without work experience, you will struggle to complete the program.

Also the tution fee for the MBA is not cheap. If you study in good universities, it will cost you $80,000.If I worked for a few years in consulting, I will not only have the relevant experience but since consulting is one of the highest paying jobs in the US and in the world, I will also have the money to pay for my MBA.

I applied for Industrial Engineering specialising in OR because it is more or less the same thing. Operations Research is what you will use for consulting. If I did Industrial Engineering specialising in OR, I can still get into consulting. However you can do a lot of other things with OR. The program in Warwick Business School is tailor made for consulting which makes it better for my interests when compared to the courses in US. It like a mechanical engineer can work in aerodynamics apart from other things like manufacturing and automobile, but if you are bent on doing aerodynamics to begin with, is it not a lot better if you did a course on aerodynamics instead of something generic like mechanical engineering. You will save yourself the trouble of not learning a lot of things you will never use in your life.

Also when compared to the masters program in the US, I will finish the course in Warwick in half the time and I will have to spend 30% less if I studied in Warwick. I have not received any admit letter from the universities in the US till now anyway. No, it does not mean they rejected me. If they rejected me, they will send an email saying I am not competent enough. I have got no email so far and I am not going to wait for it.

After explaining all this to the people who test my sanity, they usually say “But dude, I have never heard of Warwick Business School”. What can I say man. Just because you haven’t heard it doesn’t mean it is bad. If you don’t believe me, you have to at least believe the Financial Times. They made a ranking of top business schools in the world for 2012 and Warwick is ranked 27^th. Financial Times. How I got admission, on the next blog post...

I know UK has a reputation of kicking students out of their country as soon as they finish their course, but I still think this is the best option I have right now.

My blogging friend BluBluBling, who is doing her CA told me that I should not go when I have TCS :D :D. There is nothing more awesome then working for the Tatas rite? Well she probably told me that because she is doing CA and has no idea what TCS is. Also she did not want brilliant minds like mine to leave the country. But if you are an engineer and if you ask me to join TCS, then you must really hate me.

Previous Post - The Bloggers Guilt

The Bloggers Guilt

2012-01-20T20:25:00.001+05:30

By a blogger for a blogger

Diary Entry – 40

Life has been hard the last few months. I have several things to juggle - application for masters, Project work and other things which keeps my hands full. But what I do instead is login to bloggers and type away some crazy shit like this. When I am blogging a voice inside my head says the following:

“Yeah go ahead. BLOG. They should write a management book, about prioritizing, based on your life” *sarcasm*

So what happens is I feel terribly guilty about blogging and close my browser half way, with the hope of doing something useful and productive but end up watching an episode of some soap opera. Previously the voice in my head had only good things to say whenever I blog, but all that changed when I attended this job interview.

Interviewer: What are your hobbies?

Me: I write sir. (Nothing else actually counts. Watching television, texting your text buddies no no)

Interviewer: Oh what do you write?

Me: Sir I have written for my college magazine, I have been an editor blah blah

Interviewer: That is not really an example if you say writing is your hobby. Hobby is when you do something in your spare time.

Me: I also have a blog. (What else was I supposed to say?)

Interviewer: Oh you have a blog? How much time do you spend on this Facebook?

Since when did Facebook become a blog? And how will you answer that question? Sir I visit facebook once a month? He asked me a question that had no right answer. So I said:

Me: Sir. I don’t have a Facebook account.

When the results of the interview came out, I knew that was not the right answer. I have been thinking how blogging is productive and how it is different from facebook, ever since. That is how the guilt started.

But you shouldn’t take the word of an old man on technology. It is the problem with people who are in their sixties. They confuse shit. You will often find someone that age, tell you that blogging is a waste of time. They will have no idea what it is to begin with. The other day an uncle who lives in my colony told my mom that he wanted me to come to his house. He had something to teach me. My mother thought he was going to give me lessons on spirituality. She kept bugging me to go. This is what happened when I went there,

Me: Hello Uncle. How are you.

Uncle: Oh hey. I wanted to show you something I learnt in the computer. The computer is on, come on.

He is going to show me something on the computer that I don’t know already? May be he is a SEO or a web designing guru. Wow I never knew.

I went and sat near his computer.

Uncle: You know how much I love videos and music?

Me: Yeah?

Uncle: I found this awesome site which has so many videos and songs. It is fantastic.

Me: uh?

Uncle: It is called Youtube.

Me: :| (WOW)

Uncle: I will show you how it works.

Me: Uncle I know how it works.

That is when I realized uncle was deaf. He could not hear a thing I said.

Uncle: These videos will cost me some 60 – 70Rs if I got them as CDs outside. Here I can get it for free.

Me: I see. :| (Shaking my head)

Uncle: You know you can download these videos also.

Me: Yeah I know.

Uncle: I will show you. Here is a thing which is called IDM.

For the next half an hour he explained how to search videos in YouTube, how to play them and then download them. We spent the next half an hour watching videos of old Hindi songs in HD. I should be given a medal for patience.

It will be fun to be an old man who tortures his grandchildren with long lectures about Youtube. But just hope you are deaf so that you cannot hear your own grandchildren cursing you.

If we become old and tell our grandchildren that we had a great blog when were young, we can expect a reaction similar to the one I gave my colony uncle when he told me about Youtube. It really is no big deal to have a blog. What is so productive about it? Maybe it is unproductive to a lesser degree when compared to watching soap operas and facebooking. But it is still a waste of time none the less.

I still chose to write shit like this over doing something else, because it is fun. But the guilt that comes with blogging when you have other important things to do is equivalent to the guilt a married man gets when he is cheating on his wife – you are not supposed to be doing this because someone (or in this case something) is more important than this. So an hour ago I took this questionnaire about blogging, that a fellow blogger made me take. There was this question on how important the number of readers were for me. It used to be very important for me before when I started blogging. But with the kind of comments that some of you give to my blog post, I think why in the world you people exist. I write a blog post about something and one blogger will give me a comment saying “Nice”, as if my blog is a girl’s ass or a costly sports car. People like that usually don’t read anything other than the title. They expect you to read their blogs in return for the great comment they left. If you have a blog with readers like that, you should feel even more guilty that you are writing stuff for such losers to comment on.

But I guess life is all about doing what you love and what makes you happy and if blogging makes you happy like it does in my case then that is reason enough to feel good about blogging.

Previous Post -How to get rich quick

How to get rich quick

2012-01-14T19:29:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry – 39

Ever since I grew my teeth and started to eat solid food, my parents have tried everything to try to teach me the value of not wasting food. At first they tried to be strict. They wanted to see their face in my plate after I finished eating. I sat there from afternoon till evening. My mother finally asked me to move because she was worried I will start attracting flies.

They brought god in next to help make me eat. I was told people who did not waste their food became intelligent because god himself is inside ever grain of rice. That failed to convince me because the fattest guy in my class always got the last rank. Persuasion, intimidation and even hope for divine intervention had failed. Guilt was the next thing they tried on me. I was told sad stories about children in Sudan and how they struggled to get even a small grain of rice. Though it did nothing to make me eat, I started to feel bad for people who beg and live without food.

So when I see people begging, I tend to drop a coin. I have to travel by an express train everyday to go to my project place. Begging is so common there and you will find a lot of people with sticks and black cooling glasses singing sad songs. When I saw one of these beggars in the train, I dropped a ten rupee note in his bowl. My friend came close to my ear and whispered, “ARE YOU CRAZY”. I explained to him why I hold on to my coins because the bus conductors threaten to throw me out of the bus when I don’t have proper change for the ticket. My friend asked me if my parents did not tell me to not entertain beggars as they are all a bunch of frauds and crooks. I told him how my parents made me listen to depressing sad stories of children from Sudan during every meal. He told me stone faced that India was not Sudan. I realized what he meant during dinner.

That day was the last time I gave money to a beggar. During dinner, my mom asked me if I knew the price of rice. Another vain effort of hers to try to make me eat properly, I thought. She told me that the price of ration rice in Chennai was 2 Rupees per Kg. She told me that with the amount we eat, we could last for months with just four or five rupees if we got ration rice. Did I just give that beggar enough money to feed himself for a year then? I did a calculation of the amount of money they make per hour and was blown away. The people who I thought were starving in the streets, make more than an engineering graduate.

Just in case you are considering begging as a possible career option, let me point out to you that you can make even more money as an entertainer. Along with the beggars come people who sing songs or play flutes. They don’t pretend to be blind nor do they wear tattered clothes. They just play their song and go their way. They get twice the number of coins the beggars do. But how much you get depends on what song you sing. Last week, one guy sang the Tamil or should I say English song which the whole world is crazy about. I swore not to mention the name of that song in my blog. You probably know what I am talking about, unless you were in a coma for the last couple of months. Anyway that guy was singing this song and everybody was tipping him. These are songs that anybody can sing like a pro. But make several thousand rupees with it in a few hours? You will richer than Yesudas without even singing half as well. A get rich quick scheme for those who have the balls to sing aloud in public. You don’t even have to pay taxes.

Previous Post - Who is the real Narcissist?

Who is the real Narcissist?

2011-12-31T20:58:00.002+05:30

Diary Entry – 38

Who is the real Narcissist?

Not Me...

The word Narcissism has its origins in the Greek Mythology. There was a handsome hunter named Narcissus who fell in love with himself after seeing his reflection in the water. He loved himself so much that he couldn’t take his eyes of the reflection. He was so captivated that he died there looking at his own reflection. So who are the Narcissists of the modern world?

If you use twitter or facebook you would have met them. If you use twitter to follow some of the great people you look up to, you will often find yourself disappointed. You probably like them for some awesome dialogue they said in a movie or something great they said during a speech. A dialogue or a line which gives you goose bumps each time you hear it. You thought there was nobody greater than this guy and you wanted to be like him someday. When you first joined twitter and when you followed him, you expected him to display that same greatness in his tweets. Instead, what do you get?

“I love the smell of warm coffee on a Sunday morning...”

What makes them give such light headed confessions? Narcissism of course. Recently I saw a chain message being circulated among guys in their facebook wall. It was a message to curb a type of Narcissism which is so widespread among the female population.

“4 out of every 5 girls' statuses (every now n then) read like:
awwww!!!♥ ♥ today had loaadsss of fun with nisha,isha, misha & gusha ♥♥...also stay at dundu's house wass awesumm...thnk u shoo muchh dundu :))) u r shoo shweet !! cant forget u guyyysss...:D :D and tuttuu ...will missh u shoo muchh :(( :(( ...hugss. ♥♥ !!
which is followed by (God knows for what) 35 likes and 142 comments!!! “

People who suffer from Narcissistic disorder reveal this kind of high levels of self focus and self importance. Some girls change their display picture every other day. They then text their friends and ask them to log in to facebook and like their new display picture. When a girl I know asked me to do it, I asked her why she was so desperate for my like in facebook. She said she was competing with her friend to see who got the most number of likes. So girls these days fight for likes the same way a politician does for the people’s votes. When a politician asks for votes it is called political campaigning. When a girl asks her friends for their likes, it is called Narcissism. If the handsome Greek Narcissus lived today, he wont be looking at his reflection in the river water. He will be typing status messages in facebook and asking people to like his display picture.

The most Narcissistic thing I did this year was changing my facebook display picture. The display picture I had before was the two hands holding a candle. It is the same display picture I use here in my blog and it is the same display I have had for the last five years. So changing my display picture and putting my own face in facebook was a big step for me. One hour and four likes later, I changed it back to my original picture. I was far too self conscious to put my face on display.

I was taking a closer look at my new facebook time line and I realized how boring my facebook time line was. I never put any real status messages like any of my other friends. My facebook timeline showed little about my history. The few status I did put, I deleted after a couple of days or a couple of hours. I realized I used facebook only to play poker and to promote my blog. Feel free to call me Narcissist but you should look at yourself before you call me that with the hopes of offending me especially if you are one of those chicks who puts display pictures and do a narcissistic campaign for likes.

So if you are wondering why in the world I named my blog Diary of the Narcissist, I have to tell you how I was inspired to write a blog to begin with. A guy in my facebook friends list was boasting that he got some thousand visitors for his blog in that month. I was amazed. I had no idea he was such a great blogger. I had to read some of his stuff. So I went to his blog to find the most boring piece of sh*t in the world. I thought if he can write such stuff and get away with it, I should write stuff too. His blog was about politics and sports. I could not write about such stuff because I barely read the news paper to develop an opinion about stuff like the lok pal. The only news paper I read is the New York Times. Though it might sound all fancy and hi fi, let me tell you it is more like a magazine and contains little latest headlines. So I couldn’t write about politics, sports, entertainment, business or social stuff. Not because I did not want to, but because I did not have any original thought in those areas. I decided I will write about the stuff that happens in my life and since I am focusing my blog on me, nothing can be more appropriate for a title than Diary of the Narcissist. At that time I thought nobody was so crazy enough to write blogs about their own lives. I wouldn’t be a Narcissist now had I known the number of people who wrote sad stories about their lives in such tragic ways that gives the reader suicidal tendencies. I guess it has ultimately served the purpose of giving me a unique identity as a blogger.

I was worried people will start thinking I have a personality disorder because of my blog title. But one gentleman gave such a fine review for my blog. He doesn’t know me but has got his review spot on. It has laid all my worries to rest about readers misjudging my personality. Check out the review he gave me by visiting Lucifer House Inc. He gives reviews for anybody who wants them (provided you satisfy certain conditions).

It is been six months since I started writing and I am celebrating my blogs half birthday today. I know nobody celebrates half birthdays but where is the originality if everybody celebrates their birthdays after a year? And what is so special about the birthday? I got a new custom URL for my blog - www.diaryofthenarcissist.com.

Previous post - The Torture called Waiting

The Torture called Waiting

2011-12-24T11:42:00.000+05:30

Diary Entry – 37

There are some people in my family who will spend their entire fortune to travel a few kilometers without any form of discomfort. I have made it my life's aim to show these people there are cheaper ways to travel, without losing out on comfort.

Travelling in an auto-rikshaw was once a luxury for the people in Chennai. Rickshaw guys were an association of crooks a few years ago. I still remember how the rickshaw guy cleverly ripped me off during my 6^th grade on a rainy day when I was late for school. He told me it was eighteen rupees to travel where I wanted to go. When I reached the place, I paid him twenty rupees and asked him to keep the two rupee change. He told me to pay up sixty more. He said we agreed on 80 rupees and I had heard it wrong as 18. The twenty rupees was all the money I had. Mom gives me that to buy samosas if I was hungry. She is sometimes worried I will die out of malnutrition. I was gracious enough to give him the two rupees as tips but that was not enough for him.

But things have changed since the time I was in 6^th grade. Autos (or share autos) have become a lot cheaper now. When I came back from hostel late one night, I hired an auto to go home. The guy dropped me off near my house and he asked me for only ten rupees. Five years ago, I would have paid two hundred to travel the same distance. I made a mental note not to travel by bus ever again when I had these super comfortable and super cheap rickshaws. I could not have been more mistaken about the comfort part. The first time was very late in the night and there were only two other passengers in the auto. The second time however was a nightmare. There were twenty two people in the auto. The drivers change the design of the vehicle to accommodate more passengers. The auto could accommodate only ten people even after all the modifications. But the driver was determined in taking more. He started the ignition only when one of the passengers yelled at the driver in crude Tamil, “There is no space you fool. If you want one more passenger, he has to park his ass on my face. You better start the auto now, I have waited long enough.”

The next day I took the bus. Once I got in the bus, the driver starts yelling ulla po pa, ulla po pa (go inside, go inside). I am pushed into the centre of the bus to realize I am surrounded by women. A LOT of women. I was like the guy in the AXE effect ad, with females crushing me from all side, except it was not the Victoria secret models, which made things very unpleasant for me. It was a bunch of old ladies and small school girls. When a chick is surrounded by a group of men, men have the decency to maintain a distance of one foot radius around them (except for gropers). But what do the women do when a guy is stuck in their midst? They squeeze his life out.

So that evening, I thought I will try out the last option for transportation – asking dad to pick me up. My dad shows up late for everything. It is sort of like his personality trait. So in the afternoon I tell him to come pick me up in the evening from the Tambaram station. He asked me to get down at the previous station which is called Sanitorium. He told me it will be easier for him to pick me up from there. Since my dad is no paragon of punctuality, I tell him I reached Sanitorium even before I board the train in Nungambakam which is 30Kms away. Every ten mins I call him up and yell at him telling him, I have been waiting for so long and he has not even got here. But I am still in the train.

When I finally reached Sanitorium, I expected him to wait there fuming. But my dad is nowhere in sight. I call him up the tenth time, the first time I am calling him up after actually reaching the station:

Me: ACHA. WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? I HAVE BEEN STANDING HERE FOR HALF AN HOUR.

Dad: I am on my way... *Phone Cut*

After 15 mins. I call again.

Me: If you can’t come, I can come to tambaram....

Dad: I am coming wait. *Phone Cut*

Me: .... and take a bus home.

30 mins later.

Dad: I am nearing the station now. Where are you standing?

Me: I am standing where you asked me to stand.

Dad: Where is that?

Me: Near the Sanitorium Subway.

Dad: WHAT? YOU TOLD ME YOU ARE IN TAMBARAM. I AM IN TAMBRAM STATION NOW.

Me: No I said I can come to tambaram if you can’t come.

Dad: I DONT HAVE THE TIME TO PLAY YOUR GAMES.

Me: Acha I have been calling you for the past one hour, telling you I am waiting in Sanitorium. I know you think I am gifted, but I have not been blessed with the power of teleportation to be here for one hour and then instantly appear ten kilometres away.

Dad: Wait I will come pick you up. *Phone Cut*

Me: Grrrrrrr

So I ended up waiting an extra half an hour for my dad to pick me up. Going in an over cramped share auto looked like travelling in a limousine now.

The discomfort of suffocation and lack of space is nothing compared to the torture of waiting.

Previous Post - What are you?”, she asks

“What are you?”, she asks

2011-12-04T14:56:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry – 36

When I was a kid, they told me I had a star when I was born. I felt quite special and thought I was meant to do great things because I was under the impression that the only other person who had a star during the time of birth was Jesus Christ. That is what happens to little kids who live in Christian colonies and who go to sing carols during Christmas.

Then one day one of my uncles killed himself. It was a very sad day for the family but his death helped me dispel the notions I was the next Jesus Christ. My grandfather comes next to me and tells me not to turn out like my uncle. Worried that my grandfather thinks I am mentally unstable, I ask why he thinks I will kill myself. For this he tells me that I share the same star as my now dead uncle. So much for starting my own religion.

In the stone ages, when there was no electricity, our ancestors used to stare at the starry sky instead of watch soap operas in the night. They noticed constellations and other celestial bodies and made them into zodiac signs. Women I newly meet keep asking me the question, “What are you?.” They are expecting me to answer with my zodiac sign. I have ended up losing my individuality because of my zodiac sign. Whenever I am talkative, they attribute me being chatty to me being a Gemini. When I am not being a conversationalist, they attribute my laconic nature also to me being Gemini. So when a girl asks me to tell me about myself, all I have to do is say I am Gemini. They will decide my character, personality, the compatibility I have with them and the possibility of me being their future partner.

It would have been lot easier if they had a universal astrology sign. But your signs keep varying with the time zones. I am Gemini in the west, a goat in India and a sheep in China. The Chinese zodiac reading a girl gave me was especially crazy. She told me I was wise, gentle, and compassionate and I am compatible with Rabbits, Pigs, and Horses.

But there is nothing weirder than that concept of Gothra. When I was travelling alone, I happened to talk to this Brahmin guy who asked me what my Gothra was. I thought it was a new astro hokum invented in Tamil Nadu because I have never heard of it before. I conveniently tell him that I am from Kerala and there is nothing called Gothram in the place where I come from. For this he tells me that every human in the world has it. When I ask him how to decide which Gothra I belong to, he told me that it was the name of the male ancestor from whom my people have descended in an unbroken male line. When I went home and asked dad what my ancestors name was, he told me something weird in Sanskrit which I have trouble remembering to this day. So I did a Google search on the list of Gotra names and picked the one I could easily remember. So when people ask me what my Gotra is these days, I tell them it is Kashyab. It is one of the Gotra names and it is also the name of my classmate, which makes it easy to remember. If you are Christian, I hope you won’t be asked this question. But if you are ever asked this question, you can always say Adam.

I have successfully memorized all my astrological details. If you live in India, remembering them is very much necessary because you will be questioned like an American immigration officer questioning a Cuban. I had to get my Letter of Recommendation from a professor in my university. Before he signed my LOR he asked me my sun sign and the name of the star I was born in. When I told him almost instantly, due to repetition, he looked up and pondered for a moment and did some calculations in the air with his hand. Then he said very good and signed my LOR. Never underestimate the need to remember your astrological signs. If you don’t know them, ask your parents today or search them in Google and pick one which you find most catchy and remember it.

This reminds us of Sheldons dialogue on zodiacs. I recommend this video to all people who use zodiac signs to judge peoples personality.

Previous Post - I See Gay People

I See Gay People

2011-12-04T09:04:00.000+05:30

Diary Entry - 35

Priyanka Kamnath asked me to write a guest post for her. I thought she was going to kill herself after she read this post. But she liked it and god bless her for that. Anyway the links in her post are dead and she refuses to update them for some reason. I think she stopped blogging. So I put the post here since it is after all something I wrote.This is also partly the reason why I don't write content for other people.

A few days ago, I wrote my last undergraduate exam. It was time to leave the hostel for good. I could not help but think how much I was going to miss some of the people in hostel. I thought I should give them the customary good bye hug before I leave. Then I realised how awkward over the years, hugging another guy had become. Guys today cannot give proper hugs to their male friends (note how the term boyfriends has been replaced by male friend so that you will not raise eyebrows). If in some situation they are compelled to hug another member of the male sex they reciprocate the hug like Sheldon Cooper. (For those who have no idea what I am talking about, watch the video down below. Even if you know what I am talking about, watch the video.)

Guess who is gay in real life? The guy who plays Sheldon Cooper

So men these days hug each other like Sheldon Cooper because they think hugging each other any other way will make them gay. In the process they end up looking gay even if they don’t have any homosexual tendencies. Men act this way because they are paranoid. If they think another guy is staring at them, it will take only minutes to think that it is a gay guy out to rape them. On the contrary, very few men worry about other people thinking they are gay. What they fear about the most is the idea of being molested by another man. Some smart people use this to their advantage. When there comes a guy they can’t stand, to get rid of him all they have to do is tell thim he looks sexy. The paranoia will drive him away and he will never bother them again.
The downside to this is that it renders all forms of saying goodbyes to a friend impossible. Very soon even shaking hands is going to irk people and everybody is going to switch to our age old Indian Namaste. On the contrary women have no such paranoia about homosexuality. It is amazing how two straight women can call each other soul mates in public.

P.S – Just so that you don’t think I suffer from homophobia (fear of homosexuals), I would like to point out that I support lesbians. ;)

Previous Post - Men Flirt Women Gossip

Men Flirt Women Gossip

2011-12-03T19:38:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry – 34

After a very long time I met two of my buddies Yoda and Stud.

Stud: Wassup dog? How many chicks have you managed to pick up in the past few years? (Tamil – Enna da naye? Ethana figureeh correct panne?)

This is the way buddies greet each other these days. They think that the general well being of a person depends on how many girls he has been with.

Me: Haha. You definitely have not changed much. How are things with you? Girls in your college chasing after you like always?

Stud: No man. The girls who I study with have a really weird taste in men. They are after this girly dude who looks and acts like a gay fashion designer.

At this point the wise Yoda steps in.

Yoda: I thought an alpha male like you would have punched his face by now.

Stud: Trust me, a lot of people in my college want to do that but we can’t. It will be like hitting a girl. It feels so very wrong. I have no idea why all the women flock around him.

Me: Maybe girls like him because he is a real charmer.

Stud: Charmer my foot. Dude I can probably flirt with chicks better than him.

Yoda: Girls flock around him because his area of interest matches with theirs. That is why they like him so much.

Stud: Area of interest? Dude some of the chicks are really stupid to discuss subject related stuff with him.

Yoda: I was not talking in an academic point of view you fool. I was talking generally. Like the general area of interest of most men being flirting.

Stud: Oh so what do you think is the area of interest of the females in my college?

Yoda: Gossiping

Stud: Gossip? How do you gossip macha?

Me: We are doing it right now.

Stud: Those chicks are all a bunch of aunties da. (Tamil - Ellam seri ah na mami macha.)

Yoda: Dude, you know what the girls are saying right now? They are calling us a bunch of flirts. (Tamil – Kadala Party)

Stud: What is wrong with being called a flirt? Is that not a compliment recognizing the efforts we put in?

Yoda: Well not exactly. Being called a flirt is like calling a woman a gossip monger.

Stud: That can’t be good.

Yoda: It definitely is not.

Stud: So you are saying I should change my approach when it comes to women? Start gossiping instead of flirting?

Yoda: I don’t think it will bring the effect you desire.

Stud: Why?

Yoda: Flirting is something you have been doing for years. Your current level of skill and knowledge can be compared to that of a bachelors’ student and before you get married you will have the skill of a masters’ student.

Stud: Okay?

Yoda: Just like how you have a bachelors degree in flirting. The chicks you seek to mesmerize have a similar degree in gossiping. But you my friend are still in high school when it comes to gossiping and the girls will be in preschool when it comes to flirting.

Stud: Why do you think they are in preschool?

Yoda: How many women have told you that they do not know how to flirt, as if it is something to be proud of?

Stud: Oh yeah. But I can work on my gossiping skills rite? Make it better to match their skill.

Yoda: Yeah go ahead and talk about us behind our back. It will make us very happy to have you as our friend.

Stud: Hmmm sorry.

Yoda: There is nothing you can do about it. When those chicks get married and have children their gossiping skills will have attained doctorate level and when they become grandmas they will probably win a noble prize if ever there was one for gossiping.

Me: Uh some people will call this stereotyping you know. :D

Yoda: Oh I am not saying that all women are like that. There are exception to everything just as there are some women who are like angels from heaven with an exceptional talent when it comes to flirting.

Stud: Boy don’t we wish all women were like that :D

Yoda: If only we lived in a perfect world.

Stud: But dude if women like that get a PhD in gossiping by the time they have kids, wont we have a similar level of skill when it comes to flirting at that point of time?

Yoda: If you pursue your PhD after your marriage you will get something you don’t want for your degree certificate.

Stud: What is that?

Yoda: Divorce papers signed by your wife.

An apt reaction for this post would be:

If you are woman – “Men! They never change.”

If you are man – “Haha! That is so true.”

If you are a gay fashion designer – Say the same thing the women are saying :D

Previous Post - The Crooked Tooth

The Crooked Tooth

2011-11-22T00:00:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry – 33

Mom: We should take you to a dentist sometime.

Me: Why? Is something wrong with my teeth?

Mom: Mmm there is nothing wrong with your teeth but it does not hurt to get an opinion about things from a professional.

Me: Uh? Opinion about what?

Mom: Your teeth of course. I think we can make it look better than what it is now.

Me: Oh you mean get a cleaning? I could use that. I hear women these days are attracted to weird things like manicured nails and straightened hair. Whitening my teeth seems a lot more logical that all that.

Mom: Well I was thinking more in the lines of braces da.

Me: What? Why do I need braces? Is my teeth misaligned or something?

Mom: I think your teeth are a bit crooked.

(I run to bathroom to look into the mirror.)

Me: Oh my god. Mom why did you not tell me this before? I thought normal human beings had teeth like mine. :O

Mom: It is nothing to worry about. We can get it fixed in a few months.

Me: Will wearing braces be painful.

Mom: You don’t have to worry. It will be a little uncomfortable at first but you will get used to it. Also these days they have these internal braces you can wear.

Me: Okay. I want to get this done as soon as possible.

Mom: You can also get your teeth whitened when you are there. The Dentist is my patient so you will get quality treatment.

Me: Hmmm okay.

I go to the dentist. Lie down and get my teeth cleaned and whitened.

Dentist: Your mother tells me that your teeth are crooked and you might need braces to fix it.

Me: Yeah she told me that too. Is it very bad?

Dentist: Exactly the teeth in which jaw does she find crooked?

Me: What? You are asking me?

Dentist: Well I am not sure which tooth she finds crooked.

Me: Why don’t we call her up then?

I call.

Mom: Hello. What happened?

Me: Amma. Which tooth do you have a problem with?

Mom: What? Give the phone to the dentist.

Me: Okay

My mom and the dentist have a small talk and the dentist hands the phone back to me.

Dentist: Open your mouth.

Me: Aaahhhhhh.

Dentist: I think she is talking about this tooth over here. It is slightly crooked.

Me: Can we fix it? Is it very bad?

Dentist: Tell me. What course are you doing right now?

Me: huh? I am doing engineering?

Dentist: You plan to make a career as a model or movie star?

Me: What? No.

Dentist: Then nobody is going to notice this one crooked tooth of yours. Have a good day.

When in doubt about how I look, I ask the opinion of the lady who noticed the crooked tooth that even the dentist could not find after examining my mouth. Most of the time she thinks I look great. Nothing can be more reassuring.

Previous Post - The Boy Friend

The Boy Friend

2011-11-10T18:53:00.001+05:30

Diary Entry – 32

When your friend starts acting weird, there is usually only one reason for that. They have a boy friend. When Lulu (name changed) started acting weird, I did not know why. Lulu and I were far from being best of friends but we used to talk to each other a lot and I would like to assume that that was enough for us to be more than mere acquaintances. Then she started acting weird and a few weeks later, I learn from one of my friends that she has a new boy friend.

I first thought it must have been something I said, but I learnt that her other male friends were not getting any special treatment either, so I just let it pass thinking she will come around when her senses return. Three months later, my friend tells me that she put her facebook status which hinted she was going to get married to that boy friend of hers. Dear lord, we thought J Lo (Jennifer Lopez) was crazy. If you do not understand what I am talking about, note how J Lo is getting married with a different man in each magazine cover.

I did not believe my friend when he told me Lulu put a facebook status that suggested she was going to get married and so I wanted to go check this out myself.When I went to her facebook page to confirm what he said, I realized I was not there in her friends list. You may be arch enemies with someone in the real world but they will still be your friends in facebook. Some of my friends got deleted from the friends list by accident and I thought this case was no different. But when I tried to add her back, I couldn’t. So I talked to her –

Me: Hey! Did you delete me in facebook?

Lulu: No Abhi. Why will I do such a thing?

Me: Lol. Maybe your boy friend hacked your account and deleted me or something. :D

Lulu: No he wont do anything like that. You don’t know him.

Me: Mmmm. I am sorry if I said something wrong. I was just kidding. Your boy friend doesn’t have your passwords rite?

Lulu: Yeah he does. I gave them to him.

Me: WTF?

Lulu: What is wrong with that?

Me: What is wrong with that? What is wrong with YOU? My god. He gets to access your entire personal life? You don’t have any privacy at all.

Lulu: It is all about trust da. Me giving my password shows how much trust I have in him and gives him reasons to trust me.

Me: Oh yeah? So you trust him enough to not misuse it and take control of your life.

Lulu: He will not misuse it in anyway abhi.

Me: I sure hope for your sake he doesn’t. But add me back in facebook. I am not able to add you.

Lulu: Lol I will do it in the night. Facebook seems to have a lot of bugs ever since Google brought in Google+ :D. We should complain.

Me: Lol yeah I guess.

The next day

Lulu: I am really sorry. You were right. My boy friend read some of our chat and felt insecure. He blocked you in facebook. I think he gave report abuse also. That is why you are not able to add me.

Me: WHAT? He gave report abuse because I am your friend? HOW IS THAT ABUSE?

Lulu: I am sorry.

Me: How can you put up with this guy? He doesn’t even trust you.

Lulu: He trusts me very much. You don’t know him.

Me: He trusts my ass. Jealousy I understand. But blocking your friends from facebook? :x.

Lulu: You don’t know him. He is not like what you think. He must have thought you were like all guys - a jerk.

Me: If he trusted you so much when you gave him your password, why will he find the need to go through your Gtalk Chat history?

Lulu: He trusts me okay. He just gets very jealous. He doesn’t even like other guys looking at me. He is very possessive.

Me: WHAT? Is he going to make you wear a purdah then?

Lulu: Hehe. No abhi.

Me: Sheesh Lulu don’t you see that your boy friend is everything you women have been fighting against in the last century? I know a feminist who will shoot you down with a machine gun for making him your boy friend.

Lulu: He makes me very happy da. He is like this because he loves me and I love that about him.

(What can I possibly say when she loves that?)

Me: Hmmm. For your sake I hope I am wrong. If you live happily ever after like Cinderella, I will be very happy. BUT, if you break up with him, please add me back in facebook.

Lulu: Okay. I am sorry again. There is nothing I can do. Bye.

Six months later

Facebook

New Friends Request

Lulu

Lulu: Abhi!

Me: Hey Lulu. I guess your boy friend finally started trusting you more huh?

Lulu: My boy friend is an asshole.

Me: (Did I not tell you? :D) Oh! What happened?

Lulu: He cheated on me.

Me: Oh you poor thing. :D

Lulu: I dumped him but he keeps stalking. I want it to stop. Tell me how to change my passwords abhi. Tell me FAST.

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