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