My new pet!

All, meet 'Samrat' (The emperor), the latest addition to my family. I decided to adopt him as part of the 'Gou Bandhu' (Friend of the cow) program initiated by our Guru, Sri Raghaveshwara Bharati Swamiji of Ramachandrapura Math.

This gentle giant is more than 20 years old, stands over 6 ft at his shoulders and has horns that extend more than 4 ft! He is the pride of the Gou shaala. He is now leading a retired life at our ashram after a long career of pulling carts in Ahmedabad.

There are over 500 such cows that need our help. You can adopt a cow at a measly Rs.50 a day! Please contact me if you are interested.

Air Travel

I couldn't help but ask these questions to myself during my recent travel from JFK to namma BengaLuru:

1. Why do the airline staff at airport counters take their jobs so seriously? All they have to do is to check whether I have a valid passport and a valid ticket. Why do they have a supervisor walking around giving them instructions and looking all serious? Why do the staff have so many problems in doing this simple task? Do they have such a screwed up IT system? or are they exceptionally stupid?

2. The airlines charge me exorbitantly for every extra kilo of baggage. Why don't they pay me back if I carry less than the specified load?

3. Why should my carry on baggage be of the exact dimensions specified and be under 8 kilos? As long as I can lift my bag and load it in the storage area and as long as it fits, what is the airline's problem?

4. My laptop and cellphone seem to 'interfere' with the flight's navigation systems but surprisingly, the flights entertainment system which is strikingly similar to my laptop doesn't seem to affect the flight in any way.

5. Why aren't the three point safety belts installed on flights in place of the two point safety belts? The two point belts have been found lacking (even harmful in some cases) in automobiles and replaced with three point belts long ago. Are the airlines too cheap to get these belts replaced, but put on a show of caring for our safety?

What grinds my gears....

People on chat saying "Busy", "Do not disturb". Go invisible or log off, morons! It's just an arrogant way of saying "I am important, you will have to wait if you want to talk to me". Nobody gives a s**t.

Google Buzz, Twitter - what the f**k is all that about? Why should I tell people what I am doing now and what do I care about what others are thinking about? People, these are just ways to pump your already bloated egos - '11 followers', '100 followers', feels good, doesn't it? Again, trust me, nobody gives a s**t.

People going on a rampage because some 33 year old chap made love! Miserable lowlifes, get a life. I don't know what the people were pissed about? I think the reason is more of "damn, why didn't I think of this? I could have been in bed with an actress!" than the so called "betrayal of trust". By the way, I do consider that chap enlightened. He does know how to live life!

The Global Financial Meltdown

Part II of my earlier blog never saw daylight... and nobody (including me) cared. So to hell with that. Let's just move on....

With the global financial meltdown affecting spending everywhere, I wasn't surprised to see these things in NYC the other day, and it's called 'Interceptor', no offence, but what do they plan on 'intercepting' with this?

But then, wait a minute. With NYC traffic, this might actually be their best bet at getting someplace real quick! And they must be getting something like 100 miles to a gallon... They might really have something here... :)

Maybe it's time to give autorickshaws to all our mamus.

AK in Amrika - I

“AK, you are travelling to Mumbai for 2 weeks, please book tickets and accommodation” says my manager, interrupting my crucial daily team meeting that decides on our venue for lunch. I wanted to tell him that we are in the 21^st century where we use a wonderful tool called email, but I let it pass. “But why should I do all that? We have a travel dept!” I retorted, this being my first tryst with the dreaded bureaucracies that my company’s support departments are.

Between roars of laughter, my team explained to me that the travel department has more important tasks on hand like making employees run around getting copies of documents, attending parties at the rooftop cafeteria, ignoring telephone calls and such. Three days were spent planning for travel, an entire evening was spent getting my dusty suitcase down from the attic, packing stuff and telling my folks that I will be gone for 2-3 weeks.

“AK, please cancel the trip and return the advance” said my manager, two days before I was supposed to leave. “Things like this happen”, I told myself as I painfully undid three days of hectic planning. This was in November 2007. Then Delhi happened, Hyderabad happened, Chennai happened, then Singapore and USA. Soon, my travel became a joke. “Folks, I am leaving for Singapore this Friday” used to evoke sympathetic smiles from my parents, a wink from my wife and smirks from neighbors! All the while, the packed suitcase lay on the floor and I was literally living out of a suitcase in my own house!

I wasn’t doing much in office either, other than locating good travel deals on www.travelguru.com and www.yatra.com and waiting for my manager to announce the next exciting destination. Finally, after six months of preparation, I got the email – “6 weeks, consulting assignment at Phoenix”. I completed the paperwork in a record time of 3 weeks (yes, that’s a record for my company); postponed my travel for three more weeks, one week at a time and kept my plan under wraps at home. On the day of travel, I announced “I am flying to Arizona tonight”. I guess the happy feeling that my suitcase would finally get on a plane slightly overtook the fear that I was going to land in a desert in peak summer, 48 degree centigrade for a Bangalorean is pretty much death sentence.

(to be continued)