Trisha, Uncle, a Coucal and a Shark

You never realise that a really boring and snail paced week does have a lot of random and really interesting things happening. But never is an adjective not to be used in this context as that would defeat the whole purpose of this post. By now you must have guessed what the contents of the post are..

The first thing for interesting things to happen to you even in your most sedate and boring days is to have a very good sense of humour; self-depreciating if possible. I believe that I have that requisite. Facebook is fast becoming an irritation (especially when you find out that its CEO is the world's youngest billionaire); but it did provide some comic relief the week past. The suggestions tab is a constant nuisance in Facebook but for once there was truly an awesome suggestion. It said, "Trisha Krishnan- become a friend" Unsuspectingly I was overjoyed (thinking for a moment that maybe I had a common friend) and was lured into pressing the "add as friend" button when Facebook quite hilariously turned villian and said "This person already has too many friends".
What was I thinking? It was a typical bollywood movie romance destined to fail.....

 Moving on.. (yeah already.. :D) you, definitely if you are male, maybe if you are female, must have played cricket when you were young (well younger). If so, you would have definitely come across this situation. The ball comes towards you and its a perfectly juicy one and for once you think you can really thump it. And thump it you do, but as usual lady luck smiles on you and the ball ends up in the last place you want it to be. Not the keeper's or the fielder's hands, you can live with that. Not even the stumps, you can digest that. But in the nearby house. Especially the one with the fiery pati. There always seems to be a fiery pati wherever you play galli cricket. So keeping that terror in mind, when the knock came I wasn't angry or irritated. The boys said the ball fell in the terrace, so up I went to fetch it for them. And I found the ball after some effort and threw it to the waiting hands only to hear the fatal words.... "Thank you Uncle"....


The other thing that happened this week was that I finally managed to cap eyes and shutter on an elusive guest. This particular guest was not just elusive but also extremely intriguing, what with its red eyes (no, not because of the camera), blue wings, brown tail and an extremely melodious chirping I was hard pressed not to try and go after it every time it flew away. But thankfully this time I had the sense to capture it on camera. Google of course helped me identify it as the Greater Coucal.

And finally yesterday I was able to achieve my life's dream of hanging myself without losing my life. I am an ardent Vijay fan as you probably know, but even I was not able to do much more than stop my friend from taking the mickey out of me. I am of course talking about Sura the Shark. Well I have high hopes for him still and he has said that this is his last masala flick. And his fans have been extremely patient and are now actually asking him to become a better actor. (See this letter). I have a few stories for him too and only wish I could contact him somehow. If anybody can help me this is my siren, please do.

Power Cut

I just survived a power shut down of humongasaurian proportions.. (If you do not know what Humongasaur is then go here.) and I've come up with a list of things you could do to survive a similar occurence. Also this might help people ranging from any part of Tamil Nadu other than Chennai as they have scheduled power cuts. Chennai of course maintains the oxymoron of being cool while hot.  So here goes..

10 things to do when power cuts and the summer gangs up on you..

1) Fluids. Make sure you are drinking a lot of water. Anticipate power cuts and make sure you have plenty of liquids in cold storage. Ginger and Lemon with honey is an awesome coolant. This might be the perfect time for you to try the new non-carbonated drinks on offer like nimbuz, lmn and tion. I recommend tiON.. especially the apple and orange flavours..

2) Sleep. This is the time to catch up for lost time and get some serious shut eye.. Try to change your body clock by sleeping an hour late at night.. (I would suggest getting up an hour early.. but that would be sacrilegious and hypocritical)

3) Movies. Now this is a great idea especially if you are like me and don't care much about what film you are going to see. Going to the theatre is preferred (and by theatre I don't mean the western interpretation but the local one) If you are in CBE I would suggest going to either KG Big Cinemas or VR Complex as all others supposedly put off their A/Cs and in some cases don't even put them on. An alternative would be to download some great movies and keep your laptop charged and ready.

4) Exercise. I know it sounds crazy but if you learn to revel in the heat you won't feel it as much. And all the extra sweating is not going to make you smell worse. If in the process you build some muscle and lose some flab, good for you.

5) Swear words. You can go about learning some new swear words so that you can be articulate and expressive when you want to criticise the power cut ministry.

6) Read. Those who already have a figure to die for, you can look at the more sedate pathway of reading. It sure is the next best thing to sleeping. If you haven't run out of excuses so far to read the book you've always meant to read the power cut will surely get rid of that.

7) Bath. Those of you who are just getting out of college, especially the hostel, there is this new invention, which came into being a few thousand years ago called bathing. 3 hours perfect for a long bath.

8) Cook. For all those planning to go abroad as a good for nothing else grad student, power cuts are perfect opportunities to learn new recipes and some experimenting.

9) Discover. Try visiting some new places, make new friends and find old ones. While making new friends, make sure that they live in an area with power cut scheduled at a different time than yours. This, remember, is the most important thing about summer friendships.

10) Ornithology. Lastly and as usual not leastly bird watching is a definite must during these times. The heat brings out all the pretty birds out of their nests making it a pleasure to the eye. The terrace is an obvious choice as a vantage point and remember binoculars are a strict no-no as they drive away birds in India.

So, that's my list. You can get inspired and write your own list. I've tastefully added some links which are interesting and/or instructive. Please go through them and increase your reading pleasure...