PoP : Power of Pause - a series of fortunate trainings

Today was day one of three days of intense training. Training that is not only mental but also physical. Much like Ogden Nash's torture at the dentist. Training that is going to change my destiny. Change the way the Moirae, the Three Fates are looking at my life. At me. Today, and for the next two days, we undergo the hallowed Communications Skills and Interpersonal Skills Workshop. How to communicate and personalize (?) better. And today, we learnt how to peep. PEEP. Which is fine by itself. But most importantly, today we learnt something specific. We learnt how to pause.

[Pause]

See wasn't that wonderful? Didn't you feel much better? I just gave you so much more time to digest all that information. And, hear this, I, me, mois, get more time to structure what I want to tell you. So thats the double power of pause. By the power of grayskull. I am Sshh-Man.

[Pause]

Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone. But the other thing I learnt today was even more interesting. Smile and the world smiles with you, snore and you sleep alone. That was true value add. Nay, value change. My life truly feels blessed.

T gave an inspiring speech about 300 today. About the misinterpretation of history through Hollywood. Like poor Cleopatra. And Elizabeth Taylor. And how Lizzie has a thin nose unlike Cleo who has a roman pug nose. And Alexander. And Indian savages. And Persians and Asyrian beards. It was quite an exciting trip. Especially when the video was fast forwarded. Dancing he was. Lithe ballerina he could be. If he rolls off.

The other key takeaway for me with my blue sky thinking, as I pushed the envelope of creativity and imagination, was that when the rubber hits the road, I could be in the same page as the other low lying fruit as far as the Bombay Duck is concerned. No, that was not supposed to make any sense, except for the Duck which by the way is a fish akin to the Black Isle Clipper. The indigenous version if you wish. I really learnt so much today.

[Pause]

Pausing is a powerful tool. As is effective eye contact. However not in all cultures. Because where I come from, effective eye contact could be misconstrued as a devious debauchee in action. Which is very wrong according to me. But thats just me.

Moral police-like,
H

300, more or less

Today, H & I learnt how the Spartans held their own at Thermopylae. It wasn’t owing to great graphics, by the way, or owing to the great nudity scenes (as H tells me) that are present in the movie adaptation of the actual event. It is, as my own analysis would tell you, owing to sheer incompetence on the part of the forces of the Persians.

Firstly, they didn’t have a great process manager. Everyone wanted to get to the front line as quickly as possible. This caused a great pressure build up in the stomachs of the Persians that ended up with pushing those very same stomachs onto the tips of the Greeks spears. To the right, is an example of an over-anxious Persian trying to die.

Secondly, was the absolutely great strategy of the Greeks. They, like the Pakistani cricket team, told everyone that their best players were going to be on the bench. That meant that the whole world thought that they had only 300 Spartans playing the field on the fateful day. In actuality, hidden behind these Spartans were, atleaset another, 5000 Athenians, Thebans (if they are Greeks) and others of the Mediterranean version. This brought down the odds from a fantastic 1000 to 1 to a rather mundane 150 to 1. Hmpf. Cheats.

Lastly, was the rather interesting implementation technique of the Spartans. Hold spear in front of you. Hold shield with defensive hand. Block with shield. Jump. Strike with spear. Repeat process. Note an over aggressive and happy Leonidas skewering Persians like sows at a buffet over to your right.

Ah yes, in maintaining the sanctity of this blog, allow me to comment on H’s post and other random happenings in the world. Oh yeah, La Vita Bella. Strange, with all of H’s wishes to be Italian and all that, I’m actually the person who met Italians for real and talked in Italian. Ino a veryo realo fashiono. Theo languageo is quite easyo. Not very hard to be a good actor once you start waving your hands above your head.

For the rest of H’s ramblings, I’ll let you figure it out yourself. Sunday, the 11^th of March. We’re having a nice time with Strong. Britney’s on the TV and before that, we got a good dose of Rachel’s ruminations. No idea how 300 came about.

Cheers, (for real)
T

Addendum: This post was written really long, back. A week ago to be honest, but wasn’t uploaded, owing to T’s camera not being connected to the comp to upload the requisite pics. Oh well...

By the way, we saw the movie on Friday. Absolutely fantastic, albeit a little over the top. A must see, folks. Enjoy. I was absolutely right about the strategies, incidentally.

T

Hoo-hah

Shakira coming to town isn’t very exciting for me. Sure, I don’t mind her songs. Or more so her videos. And for sure, her hips don’t lie. When she gyrates them with that ferocious velocity, she means well for each and every one of us. The darling. I wonder how she got her name. Sounds like the name of an evil witchdoctor or rather a shaman. Shakira the shaman, with the power to summon tornados (as a tribute to all that gyration). And with her talented latino voice to match. Then, her coming to town would be very exciting for me. Cyclonic event even.

Scent of a woman. What a classic. People sometimes downplay Al Pacino’s thespian skills by claiming that all his roles are the young angry man routine. Bah humbug. Stupid critics. Italiano magnifico. Especially in the Godfather. I almost ran away from home and joined the mafia because of him. The Italian mafiaso in specific. Then, I heard its hard work clearing the entrance exam (what with the horse’s head and sleeping with the fishes) and as it was I had enough of such tests, so I decided to postpone my entry into the underworld for another time and place. (I’m thinking that if I ever do a banking study, then that would be a good time)

When I was watching the movie, I remembered that I haven’t met my old school teachers in a very long time. Or rather school teachers who will now be old. I haven’t met my school friends in a long time either. The doctor, the roadside romeo, the gin boy and the automan especially. Atleast I’m in touch and in reasonable knowledge of their whereabouts. Will be good to meet them and relive the good times. Like the imshi imshi with the English teacher in tenth. And the first time we saw Titanic in one of our houses. And how, much to the personal angst of the host, we rewound and revisited particular scenes. Ah, permissible immature adolescence, how I miss thee…

Only one more month for the retreat. For Thailand. For Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3. For everything that we have planned, we are planning and we haven’t planned. Excitement. I could also be doing Croatia before that. Double excitement. Life’s good.

Que sera sera,

H

Rules of the game, or games, as it were

I am a little unclear as to how this works. There was once a flow. It was called a flow of thought. It was said to exist as clearly as one follows zero and two follows one. I know that depends on how you define it, but there it is. There are set rules, they are said rules. If you were juvenile, you would now say, Rules rulez or something like that. Nevertheless, once upon a time, there was this flow of thought. It was a happy flow; it, more or less, unperturbed by commas or exclamation marks, resembled other flows. It looked like a boat chart, even. The point is, that it was.

Then came H. In the name of speaking Italian and throwing in, as a lame excuse, an iQ (like iPod) of 146, he came up with another flow. While I talked of a golden eternal braid, intertwining one post after another, just like Godel (with an umlaut), Escher and Bach and all that crummy jazz, he talked of strands of horse hair. It didn't make an ounce of horse sense; it doesn't now, but there you have it. So H took the flow that was wriggling peacefully along and combed it like the desert till the braid came unravelled in his hand. And spake he, "Let all who look upon this flow, behold me and despair!" And all the flows trembled, for there were indeed scared. And a wise sage in the form of T looked upon this scene and nodded in empathy. He looked a bit troubled owing to eating some vada pavs near ET, but he empathised nonetheless.

Why, one might ask, would a genius speak in such mundane terms? Why would one think that T, would lose faith, when a week back, he lived a none too healthy life inhaling all the smoke he could and destroying his neck muscles as a poor excuse for dancing. And one wouldn't get an answer. For H, though he believes in women dancing for him, would go straight ahead and wring that flow by the neck.

So after whining for a while, let me go ahead and return the compliments that H was really begging for. Well, H, let's see. Dramatic pause, throat cleared. H is a lousy bastard of the worst kind. He works less than I, he parties, well, as much as I do and is, all in all, much cleverer than I could possibly be. "Well, he seems to be pretty good, eh?" I hear my naive reader say to himself. Not quite. He is a lousy bastard. Why? Well sir, because of the contrarian nature of his deviant mind. He, first of all, isn't a romantic. He is has this extremely staid view of life (have you realised that we accidentally use the same words the other has in the previous post? Cool isn't it? It's called mirroring or some such. And if it isn't, then it should) except when it comes to matters of the fairer sex. Totally mixed up case, as they used to say, down south.

So there you have H for you. Or for me, for that matter. Oh yeah, he mentioned Women's day. I agree, whole lot of crap. I love women, God knows. I love women's lib as well. Suits the world fine I think that women wish to take control of their own lives. What I don't like is the implications it has on us men. It would appear that the Walter Rayleigh's of today are worthless. Look at me, I've been told I'm a sweet talker, but a horrible seducer. I apparently give the woman too much respect. Sheesh. So, I'll always be this chap the women pull the cheeks of or rub the hair of. They might even, occasionally, rub up close or dirty dance, eh? And then, poof... the rascals of world have it made, young feller me lad.

On that happy note, and the fact that Shakira is coming to Mumbai - my friends, one a girl, whom I will not name, and the second, a colleague, are extremely overjoyed by this, I shall end this post.

Cheerio and pip pip,
T

Dance for me

I think it’s a frightening thought if I had indeed spent enough time reflecting on it. The whole idea of moving to a completely new city, moving in with people you don’t know, working on something you have no clue about, working, by itself, for the very first time; in short, to start a life around variable variables – as I said, a frightening thought… if I had indeed thought about it.

I didn’t. I don’t think it has sunk in yet either. I live a surreal life that is at best cathegorizable as strange. Many a time I find myself in an out-of-body experience more often than not pointing and laughing at the real me. At where I am and what I am doing. Why I am doing what I doing. For whom I am doing what I am doing for. Why I am doing what I doing for whomsoever it is I am doing that what. And other such meaningful and philosophically sound questions. In light of all this, I could sensationally claim everything has changed in my life and nothing has remained the same (but that would be an unnecessary repetition) and that’s hard to assert. (Hard because it’s actually hard to perfect perfection perhaps? No no no, I’m humble. Let the cookie crumble. No no no, this is not the time for random rhyme. Noooooooo……… let it go.). But at the end of the day the truth is, what they staidly continue to say, the truth (and its out there… near that tree) and the end of today, the truth is that there has been significant changes in my life.

One of whom is T (Awwww… such a cute intro). Before I started sharing an apartment with T, I always imagined him to be a prudish and snobbish yet mysteriously affable and amicable guy. I still think the latter. He isn’t as snooty though. Charmingly funny. Clichédly chauvinistic. He turned out to be a different pea compared to the other peas I had seen. He was a black-eyed pea. I think. He was a dreamer. A romantic. An idealist. A fantasist. He who dreams of being a knight hunting down treacherous dragons with gilded swords. Rescuing damsels from draconian warlocks (damn you, honourable knight, my scorpicores shall rise again). Finding magical artifacts in lost islands. Oh how adorable.

Or atleast that’s how I remember him from our younger days. When I was 21. Ah, those days, when he was younger than he is today but still the philanderer he still is. He seems changed. Jaded. Perhaps he has lost faith? In the entire grandeur of life? And all such magnificence? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Happy Woman’s day. Yet another commercial offspring of Hallmark and the West. Not such a bad one though. Power to the women! Bring me my food and dance for me. Umm, something like that.

Smiles,

H

One is the loneliest number - much worse than two

Shoot. He got there before me. He even cheated by writing it all down in Word first so that he could post while I got round to making sure that the settings were just right. Serves me right for being so J, eh?

Well, now that the cribbings done away with (and now that I have said to myself atleast three times, "Don't mention the words 'Dragons' or 'Wizards' on the blog" (and having failed)), let me take the chance to welcome you, our agressive, cut throat, "call me Blackbeard" readers to our new blog by saying it outright - Keep away. We don't want you here. Don't listen to us. We don't want your opinions and keep your comments to yourselves. Like all other highly successful authors, we write only for ourselves and not for our audiences. I mean, what audiences? So there. (H, hope that bit of reverse psychology increases readership by an awe inspiring 50% to 3!)

Now that I have gone through the introduction like a good writer should, let me jump straight to the body of the post. Dragons. I really must try to concentrate a bit. This blog is meant to be on global warming. It plots the effect of typing too fast on a computer keyboard on the mico-degree rise in global temperature. It especially attempts to calibrate the damage caused by Clarke Kent when he pounds on his old Remington. Not Remington Steele.

Speaking of Remington Steele and jumping straight in to Pamela Anderson (wonder how many of you got the connection - Steele - Bond - Denise Richards - Blonde and Blonder - Pamela Anderson. Cool isn't it? My dear friend Sp____s, I believe I won that round. You know who you are); I've now forgotten what I had to say on Pam.

So anyway, this blog is on the mundane, its on the trivial, its on two guys thinking without necessarily trying. Its on their journey from top dogs to the mongrels in your alleyway. Its a journey of mutual self discovery (wow!) in a platonic, cathartic (?), bohemian (??), cool-adjective-that-makes-you-sound-clever, fashion. Willkommen. Namaste. Vannakkam. Namaskara. Chi-hua-hua. Koff-pec-see-pee. Welcome.

Cheers,
T

And then there was one

There are a lot of things not right with this world. Too many things in fact. The poverty of Africa, the war in Iraq, global warming, rising cauliflower prices, George Bush, etc. However, it makes no sense for one to crib or complain for along with all these nefarious evils of this world are the many blessings that go uncounted. Like the rain. And the sea. And football. What is this life so full of care, if indeed we have no time to stand and stare. And appreciate.

Which brings us to the subject of this post. The fact of the matter. The essence of this essay. The fructose in the honey. The $e$ in the $e^{-i\pi} + 1 = 0$. A reason for one and all to be truly happy. To appreciate life in its grandest splendor. Something to be thankful for. Something to be grateful for.

Ladies and gentlemen, the blog that is the Heads and Tails.

Heads and Tails? Why heads and tails? What heads and tails? Whose head and whose tail? Valid questions, valid questions. Further, I would also like to add a clarification whether heads and tails refer to the noun forms or the verb forms. Now… that is an insightful question. No offense meant to the remaining set of questions. They should feel no inferiority complexity. They have no right to feel discriminated. They are in their own respects, insightful questions. Valid and insightful. And valid and insightful questions require valid and insightful answers.

That’s my value add, nay, value change for the day. The very first day. The day that thresholds as the dawn of a new era. An era that shall not be constrained by lack of creativity or talent which has been the case ever since Maugham left us for a better place. Switzerland. For we have arrived. Here. Now. Stop.

Over to my better side.

H