In moments of darkness, look to the sky.

it takes little...

" Slavery isn't dead. You just don't recognize it anymore"


















It takes little...to reclaim your life.

The price of perfection

I have 2 expensive watches – Tag Heuer & Omega. Let me clarify that never in my right mind would I pay so much for a watch – these are my dads. Sometime early this year the Omega started acting up. It started running quicker by about a minute a day. I ignored it at first but then every week it would be offset by 5 mins! That’s quite a bit. So I figured maybe its time to do some sort of service on its mechanism. Till then I shifted to the Tag. Now after a while I noticed the same problem with the Tag! Strange.

At first I began conjuring theories on why this is happening only to the watches I wear. I figured I may have an inherent magnetic field strong enough to alter the mechanisms of anything around me if exposed to me for a significant continuous time period. A little warped I agree – but I did consider it.

Sometime back, I was at HajiAli and noticed the Authorized service centre for all these swiss brands so I decided to quiz them on my issue. I told him about my problem. The conversation was such

Sales dude – Sir, yours is an automatic watch while regular watches are all quartz. Automatic is far superior technology
Me – Then how come its showing the wrong time
Sales dude –Sir, your watch is 99.9% accurate
Me – So whats quartz? 100% ?
Sales dude – No sir, you are probably comparing your watch with your home clock, car clock etc..those are all quartz and those watches are wrong. Your watches are accurate – its just that the world is dominated by quartz watches hence it seems like your watch is the wrong one.

Interesting explanation. For a brief moment I thought that was the price one has to pay for perfection. But on giving it some more thoought - What crap!. My watch just needs to be serviced – Its been with me for almost 5 years dammit. And I know I’ve not been running on the wrong time for the last 5 years!

Wah Air India!

For the Dry-Day (Oct. 2nd) weekend I decided to head out to Dubai. Plenty of friends out there, a long weekend and over 3 years since I visited the place - enough reasons (not that I needed so many :) The trip was fantastic, and I'll put a post on that sometime soon too, but the real highlight would have to be my return journey on our very own Air India.

After this, it was evident why it was running into financial difficulties.
Lets start with the check-in at DXB airport. The guy over the counter was unbelievably slow. Relatively, the Air France counter next to mine, SIX people got their boarding pass before I got mine. SIX! And there was only one guy ahead of me. Imagine! The fellow seemed new, but he had avid arrogance about him which said 'Im a government employee - you can't touch me'. So not only did he take his own sweet time trying to read and understand what was written on the ticket, at no point of time did he seemed bothered that it took him 5 attempts to type my name into the Comp.

I picked up an Isi Miyake (is that how its spelt?). They promptly stopped me at the Boarding gate stating that no liquids were allowed on board as hand baggage. I remember that this came into being after the recent discovery of the London bombing threat. But then it turns out that Air India was the ONLY airlines at that time still enforcing it. I ofcourse got myself a refund but there were very unhappy, very vocal malayalees who weren't willing to part with their 3 bottles each of Johnny Walker. One guy, after creating quite a scene, finally got it on board. Think he gifted one of them a bottle. So much for security.

Now this is where the real fun begins. Our Air Host/Hostess are 2 extremely grumpy looking senior citizens. The dude looked like Mr. Air India himself. Refer below.

I think he may have been recruited simply for his moustache. His tone seemed a little harsh when I overheard him talking to someone else. But i dismissed it thinking I was reading way too much into it. While they weere serving lunch, i realized I was spot on about his tone. The dude was unbelievably rude. He ran the place as though he was Vijay Mallya and we were flying Kingfisher. He refused to serve one guy drinks cause he felt the guy had 'had enough'. Which was one peg. He actually scolded me for putting my glass into the same tray as the lunch plate as this made it difficult for him to dispose. I am to give him the glass separately. I asked for sugar he said to make do with whats there cause he doesn't know where the sugar is or even if there is more sugar. He scolded one woman who put had dropped the pillow onto the floor.

Mind you these werent scoldings of a old grandfather level (in a sweet tone) but outright rude and harsh but at a low decibel. After landing, everyone promptly stood before the flight had stopped - noone really listens to the stay seated warnings right - this dude was yelling right from the back -YELLING -asking people to sit - 'did you not hear the announcement?'. Everyone finally did sit but now they all turned on their cell phones. Promptly he started yelling about the cell phone to remain switched off till one if off the aircraft. Ofcourse noone bothered too much so to make an example I suppose he started yelling at this one guy. It was crazy!
He was better fit to run primary school. I still dont know why they need to keep cell phones off after landing and before getting off the plane.

Evident that noone prefers to fly them simply cause their service sucks. Period. But i guess like me, everyone was trying to save a buck.

Getaway

Made a day trip to lonavla. Was surprisingly fun. It was so misty that most of the journey in the mountain ghats were with blinkers & lights on and at cautious speeds. Could barely see 15 feet ahead.
Went on an impromptu trek, the place was PACKED with ppl, thanks to I-day hoilday. The whole of maharashtra seemed to be there. The view was scary from the top, but looked good from below :D

No more claims..

I am Back. And I have plans to remain for a while..but Im not going to claim it.
Historically, everytime I have claimed it, its backfired.

Its been a slow day at work. Just been going through various Car & Bike forums. been fun, but also kinda dull. Variety IS the spice of life.

Think I'll go play some squash.

Germany - 1 : BERLIN!

Our entire trip began with Berlin and we were real lucky at that. We had assumed the Malmo-Berlin train reservation would not be a problem. After the train arrived we saw that it was only sleeper coaches! and it was quite a tiny train! Luckily..and i mean LUCKILY we got the last 9 spots available. Imagine that. Cost us 15 Euro pax thanks to the Eurorail pass.

Believe it or not, this train spend more time at sea than on land :) Turns out to leave scandinavia the fastest mode is through Ferry; so this train boards a huge ferry.




It carries trucks, cars and god knows what else and was 7 storeys high. Pretty cool stuff.

Right, so we arrive at Berlin at some unearthly hour like 6am. Then we learnt an important lesson. Make reservations :)
3 guys split up and went looking for acco. Fortunately they got it without too much fight. It was a pretty cosy place and cost us some 15 euro/night. Good deal in all.

Berlin has lotsa architecture and a active night life...


..Couple of hot chicks as well.

We just walked about most of the while. All the famous places were kinda on the same long road. On the way we bumped into some Pakistani fella selling general touristy cool stuff; Russian Army caps and belts from WWII, handcuffs and stuff like that. It was fun to bargain, in Hindi that too :)
Right so Girish was eyeing these Handcuffs notoriously. After a whlie, once everyone was generally creating a ruckus on what to buy and bargaining and all, he quietly states his intent. Pays the man. Pockets the Cuffs. We all caught it though :)
Mane follows Suit (but he's pretty open about it). This is the beginning of a bond between the 2 that will strengthen in Munich (my next post :)
Chammi on the other hand didn't say a word during the whole thing. Watched. Smiled. Laughed. After we moved on, we checked around and saw Chammi is missing. Looking back we saw he was having a chat with the paki guy. he reached into his pocket handed the man something and took a brown bag in return. He tucked it safe within his 'Designed-for-the-Arctic' jacket and casually joined us.

So now we all headed for the parliament building. Its got a fabulous view from the top, we got in line for it. Now its the parliament so there is Xray screening and frisking and all :) The Xray guys were kinda shocked when the first pair of handcuffs showed up, then another. by the time Chammi's secret handcuffs showed up they were cracking up (amongst themselves :) Hahaha..frickin hilarious

Besdies the monuments, we also went to a Concentration Camp and the Zoo :D
Some pics below