I’m over it, I tell you!

My LCD monitor crapped on me yesterday. Today, I took it to service. They told me it could take days. In the afternoon, they call me back and say that there was a power issue and they had fixed it. The downside, I am 2K down. Yet, in the middle of all this, I go ahead an buy this beauty – the Tech 21 Sansamp VT Bass Deluxe!

Finally, I have some balls. For the past two years, I have been chickening out on investing on something. Now, I have turned it around. 🙂 I have my monitor back and have the bass processor pedal in the market!

Shor Bazaar, Cirkles, Overhung, Bad Influence, and Ideat Savant – you guys are in for a treat!

Slutwalk for men?

First of all, let me make this clear. I am totally pro-Slutwalk. I totally agree with the concept that what women wear or not should not be a reason for men or women to feel like pouncing on them and sexually harassing them.

However, the only thing that I don’t understand is this: Why should Slutwalk be restricted to just women? Why can’t men also protest for the same reasons? Why can’t we also wear what we want the way we want and not be sexually provocative to women and men?

I think a sex-based Slutwalk is totally sexist. Who cares to share their opinion?

Horror at work

I am glad to admit that I work in one of the best office environments. The people are work place are just lovely and we have lots of freedom and flexibility. It’s quite a pleasure to be working there. But the pleasure ends when the clock strikes 9 pm in the night.

If for some reason, you end up staying at the office, doing some extra work after 9 pm, everyone plots to ensure that you have the most horrible experience. Mind you, I work in a company that deals in language editing and translation. So, peace and quietness are prerequisites.

So, this is what happens at 9 pm.

• The ACs in the main bay get switched off. I think it is a silly administration policy to save electricity, making it unreasonable to all those who work late.
• Once the comforting hum of the ACs are gone, form some reason people start speaking loudly. If you are trying to concentrate on your work, you might as well give up.
• The icing in the cake is the sudden onset of loud music. From almost everywhere – speaker phones, loud annoying ring tones, and people playing their choice of music on computer speakers! The other day, my boss, a fellow rocker, had the chutzpah to play Dream Theater loud. Give me a break!

I hope someone takes some action to prevent/avoid all of this.

Nominal idiosyncrasies

Well, this term probably doesn’t exist. Hence, I’ll define it for you.

Nominal idiosyncrasy (n): The phenomenon of an idiosyncrasy getting attached to a particular name of a person so much that it is hard to think of anyone else with the same name. Because of this phenomenon, ordinary proper nouns become adjectives.

I can think of a few. If you can think of more please add them as comments.

Arindam – someone who is a jerk, sycophantic, and is an attention-mongering whiner; a person with a stupid face, glasses, and a pony tail; a person who is certified number one in legal exposure.

Arnab – someone who is a jerk, who would never let anybody else complete a sentence, who never lets anybody else’s opinion seemingly matter; self-obsessed prick.

Anthony – someone who is a politician who will send out semi-obscene messages to young women with attached pictures of himself in his underwear; someone who has just an average penis but thinks that it is bigger than that.

Bill – someone who is a politician whose wife is also a politician; someone who has oral sex with his secretary (such secretaries are called Monica irrespective of their sex); someone who is obsessed with sex.

William Shatner–I love you!

I was a bit late. But I did it. I watched all the three movies in the Star Trek (original) motion picture series. I must say that William Shatner, who broke many a woman/man’s heart with his incredible looks and acting skills during the time of the TV series and the movie trilogy, just broke mine too.

All I can think of is to get married to him. And then I look him up on Wikipedia and find that he’s married. What the fuck? Is there no justice in this world? William, at least you could have remained committed to Spock, who says to him the following with such depth:

“Kirk, I’ll always be yours!”

To get rid of all your sins, William, I advise you to fly over to India, dip yourself in Ganges three times, come to Mumbai, wash all the dirt off in a clean shower, and invite me over to your hotel room for hot sex. Only that will do!

What do you call this?

So, I met this guy from Canada. He was born and brought up in India in the early days of independent India. He spent about the first couple of decades of his life in India (in Mumbai and in a boarding school somewhere nearby). Of course, he is gay. He realized back when he as a school-going child. And of course, he is handsome. And he is white.

Gay. Handsome. White. Kid.

What does that read to an average Indian boarding school-going kid who is elder to him?

Sex.

That’s as simple as that. Apparently, he was raped many a time (not always sodomized, but he was a few times, and that’s why he doesn’t like sodomy that much anymore). He claims that it was fairly common for this activity to be happening back in the ‘50s and guesses that it might still be.

I guess, India is far from homophobic then, isn’t it? Homophilic, perhaps. And what do you call this behavior? I know it is illegal to have sex with minors. But this phenomenon is not quite pedophilia, is it?

Sorry for being judgmental

I grew up to Nokia mobile phones. The first two phones that I had were Nokia. Since then, however, not just because I moved on to a better company (read Sony Ericsson), I have seen the company and their phones going from bad to worse. Much before the iPhone/Android invasion into the mobile space, Nokia started losing the plot.

Handset-wise, even now, everything they make seems like a copy of some other brand. But the real flaw in their set up was the good-for-nothing OS that they had. Symbian or not, every other company was making progress to do something about improving the OS. Blackberry had it’s own. All the other major brands went Android. And iPhone had iOS. Nokia just got stuck in that bad place.

Now, they are going to drop their Symbian platform and go for the Windows Mobile OS. If you are a PC user, you would have started hating Windows as soon as you started using it. Why did Nokia have to go for the worst amongst them all?

This is why I have decided that, as on this date 25/06/2011, anybody buying a new Nokia phone has to be either dumb or stupid. Either of those. Or both or those. Why would you buy Nokia when you have so many better options available.

If you think that I’m the only one out here who thinks like this, please check your social networks once more. You will realize for yourself.

The Dentist Appointment

I did it! Finally, after procrastinating for more than two years, I visited a dentist in Mumbai. Thankfully, everything is fine. I don’t yet need a root canal. One of cavities, thanks to my two years of braces, has progressed into a mammoth one size of a crater on the moon looked on from Earth through a telescope, apparently. But that was filled today. Next time it will be root canal.

I feel so empowered. I am taking care of myself now.

To be gay in India

Someone started a hashtag on Twitter #ToBeGayinIndia. I don’t quite know what was the motive behind it. I bet it was something negative –something about the hardships that gay/lesbian/transgender people face being out in public in India.

Having been out for about 15 years now, in varying levels of ‘outness’, with the present level being completely out, I think that India (Kerala + Mumbai) is very gay friendly. It’s just that people don’t realize it. That’s the irony in it. People just think that India isn’t all that friendly and they choose to stay in closets of relative sizes.

I have had practically no bad experiences having been gay in India, except for perhaps finding an apartment to live with another man in an apartment (when Vinokur came down in 2008). Other than, touch wood, it’s been a wonderful 15 years of being out in India.

Look at me – I am out in all facets of my life, out on all social networks, have an active blog, and have a very promising gay social life, which unfortunately I don’t participate much in. The only bad thing is that, because of the problem that I mentioned above, I haven’t found a good partner for me from India.

This problem would be solved if people started embracing  themselves instead of blaming the society for not embracing them. As simple as that!

Cam drinking

You must have already heard of or tried cam sex. It’s a very practical way to do what you cannot do otherwise – have sex with random people all over the world. Plus, it’s masturbation version 2.0.

However, have you ever thought of drinking with someone else on live video cam? It’s very comfortable, cheap and inexpensive way to socialize. You can hit up with anyone around the world and share a few drinks with each other without the annoyances of going to a bar/party.

I have never tried it out myself. But I’m sure I will soon, one of these days. All you need a good guy at the other end who’s interested in drinking and having a conversation. The only problem that I face is that the time that I like to drink happens to morning/afternoon in the Western world. Most people wouldn’t be up for a drink then.

My only worry is that this phenomenon might make me indulge in more alcohol than what is desirable. But I think I have enough self-control to not be an alcohol addict.

I also bet that this what ever alcoholic said to him/her before he/she became one.:P